"Quick" Danish Pastry

Well call me crazy, but I'm feeling inspired. This weekend I caught an episode of Baking with Julia (that would be Julia Child of course) and she was making puff pastry. I have made puff pastry a couple of times before and it turned out quite well, but my God it takes lots of time. It did remind me of a recipe by Nigella Lawson in her book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. It is made in the food processor to speed things up and now being a mother of three, that sounded good to me. My husband had been asking me to make something with almonds so I decided to use Nigella's recipe for her almond filling in half of the danish and make a little apple filling in the other half. If anyone has cooked from any of  Nigella's cookbooks before, you will know that all of the ingredients are measured using the imperial system, so unless you have a scale you will need to find a conversion chart online. Here goes nothing!
                   WARNING: THIS DOUGH NEEDS TO BE REFRIGERATED OVERNIGHT
Recipe:

60 ml warm water                                            1 tsp salt
125 ml milk, at room temp.                              25g sugar
1 large egg at room temp.                                 250g unsalted butter, cold & cut into cubes
350g white bread flour                                    
1 pkg yeast

Pour the water and milk into a small bowl and add the egg, beating lightly with a fork. Set this aside for now.

Put the flour, sugar, yeast and salt into the food processor. Give it a quick pulse to lightly combine.

Add the butter and process briefly so that the butter is cut up but still in visible chunks...Like this:

Empty the contents into another bowl and add the milk water and egg mixture. Use your hands or a spatula to fold the ingredients together. Don't overdue it! Expect this to be a gooey mess with chunks of butter still through out it. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.                                                                                        

The next day............

Remove the pastry from the fridge and turn it out onto a floured surface. Nigella does not tell you to use flour at all, but I can't see this dough not           sticking without it.  Let the dough come to room temperature.                                                         

Roll out the pastry to a 50 x 50cm square. I found it a little difficult to get a perfect square, but I tried.

Fold the dough into thirds, like a business letter.

Roll out the dough again into a 50 x50cm square and then repeat the folding and rolling out 3 times...I know, Ugh.

Refrigerate the dough for 30 min. In the mean time, prepare the filling of your choice. Like I said, I followed Nigella's recipe for the almond filling:
150g blanched almonds
80g icing sugar
2 tbsp unsalted room temp butter
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 large egg white
Process the almonds and icing sugar until finely ground. I used my mini processor and I know it didn't do get the almonds fine enough, so I would pull out the big guns next time. Add the butter and pulse again and then add the almond extract and 2 tbsp of the egg white. ( I saved the little remaining and the yolk for the egg wash later) This will be enough filling for half of the dough. You can at this point refrigerate or freeze the remaining half. I wanted to be done with this so I  made some apple filling for the kids. I just diced up some apples and cooked them in some brown sugar, lemon zest, butter and a little cream.

At this point the book gave little guidance or at least not enough for me. I will tell what I learned from my mistakes...and there were many.

Roll out half of the dough into a square about 30 x 30cm. I am guessing at this size because the recipe just didn't say. Cut the dough into 9 equal squares. It is worth it to make sure they are squares when it comes to the finished product. I didn't take the time to do this and I regret it now. Take about 1 tbsp of almond filling, shape it into a log and place it diagonally across the square of dough. Bring up opposite corners of the dough and pinch them together. Slightly flatten the danish. Place the finished Danish onto a baking sheet. I lined mine with parchment paper. I continued this process with apple filling, but I brought all of the corners to the middle and pinched them together. I wanted the apple to look a little different from the almond danish.

I will warn you now...they ain't pretty.
With the left over egg yolk and white from the almond filling recipe, add 2 tbsp of milk and mix. Brush the danish with the egg wash and let them rise for about 1 hour. Don't look for them to "double" in size because they won't. They will become a little puffy and the dough will just be softer to the touch. I also sprinkled the almond danish with slivered almonds in an attempt to make them look more attractive.

After you feel the dough has "risen" enough, bake them in a 350 degree oven. When I looked for the conversion of 180 C, I got 356 degrees. I really felt that the oven should have been hotter.  The directions are to bake these for 15 min or until golden brown. This took about 25 min. I was getting worried and pulled them out. I should have let them get a little darker as I don't think the middle were as flaky as they should have been.

I really wanted to cry when these came out of the oven. I wanted an oooh...ahhhhhh, or a "I can't believe that you made those yourself!" But you really really could believe these were homemade. They completely opened up in the oven. They were little puffy ...... things. On the bright side...they did taste good.
Nigella calls for a them to be glazed twice, once with a clear glaze while they are hot:
100g sugar
60ml water
and then when the danish have cooled with:
100g icing sugar
                                                                                     1-2 tbsp warm water
I did not have the heart to glaze these little guys. They had gone through enough already. Would I make these again? Yes I think I would. I have learned a lot from my mistakes and they did taste good!