December’s here, which means you’re in full holiday baking mode.
’Tis the season for something extra-special: a traditional family Christmas bread, or a deluxe breakfast dish.
But during this hectic time of year, the last thing you need is to spend hours in the kitchen laboring over a single fancy treat.
Which brings us to our Butter-Pecan Kringle Bakealong challenge — an elegant yet easy way to salute the holidays.
Back last summer, we were having trouble deciding which of our favorite holiday pastries to feature for our December Bakealong.
Light bulb moment! Why not survey our friends on Facebook?
We offered several choices, and while panettone and hefekranz had their champions, in the end it was classic American-style kringle that won the day.
What is kringle, anyway?
In its simplest American form, it’s a large (typically 13″), oval Danish pastry filled with pastry cream or fruit filling, and iced.
Scandinavian in origin, it’s been adopted by Midwesterners — particularly Wisconsinites.
In fact, kringle is Wisconsin’s Official State Pastry, and has put Racine, Wisconsin, onto the culinary map — courtesy of its numerous bakeries offering mail-order kringle worldwide.
Making Danish pastry at home can be a bear(claw); think butter-pounding and pastry rolling, folding and turning, cutting and shaping and filling…
And all of that’s before you even get to baking and icing.
Suffice it to say, I did it once; never again. (Though those of you with a “crafty” bent would probably enjoy the process.
It’s the journey, not the destination, right?)
Still, who doesn’t love Danish pastry?
We’ve devised a way to make a clone of true Danish pastry dough in an utterly simple, two-step process that takes kringle out of the bakery into your home kitchen — where all baked goods rightfully belong, come the holidays.
Source: Butter-Pecan Kringle Bakealong – Flourish – King Arthur Flour
Leave a Reply