B-b-b-baking: Rhubarb-Cream Cheese Danishes

Last summer, P had rhubarb growing in his backyard, so I had a harvest of fresh rhubarb to bake with. Unfortunately, I never got around to blogging about it. Fortunately, my dad's friend gave him some fresh rhubarb from his backyard!

What I learned this summer about rhubarb:
- Actually, last summer was the first time I ever tried rhubarb. I thought it would taste like celery, but it just tasted very tart. Very very tart. The texture, however, when raw was very much like celery.
- You can cut that tartness with sweetness or something creamy. For example, Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie is definitely not unheard of, and cream cheese is often used to offset the tartness of apples in pastries.
- Rhubarb breaks down really quickly and easily, which makes it really easy to bake with as a filling or topping.
- While it's typically used for desserts, apparently, rhubarb is considered a vegetable!
- Rhubarb freezes very well, but when you work with frozen rhubarb, it'll retain more of its reddish pink colour when cooked. If you use fresh rhubarb right away, it'll turn a caramel brown sort of colour, which is what happened with my pastries last summer. This summer, I didn't have time to bake it right away, so into the freezer it went!

These are the Rhubarb-Cream Cheese Danishes I made last week. I've made puff pastry in the past, but this time, I halved a recipe from a "Bake with Anna Olson" video on YouTube. I find myself liking this puff pastry a lot! It's pretty fool-proof! Do note that making puff pastry is a time-consuming process. These danishes took me a total of 10 hours to make where half of the time was spent chilling dough in the fridge. However, I found that it was very worthwhile at the end.

One stalk of rhubarb, and very necessary cleaver, because Asian.

Pastry diamonds ready for the oven!

The finished product! Some didn't puff up as much as others because I still need to work on the whole "equal sized portions of pastry dough" thing. But it's okay, because now they're rustic :P

Rhubarb-Cream Cheese Danish!

Rhubarb Danishes
*Makes 12 rhubarb danishes with leftover puff pastry for about 6-8 more danishes*
Puff Pastry (Adapted from Bake with Anna Olson)
1 cup room temperature butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp table salt
1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup chilled butter

1. Line a 6-8" container with a large piece of plastic wrap.
2. Mix 1 cup of room temperature butter and 1/3 all-purpose flour until just combined. Spoon out on plastic wrap in container, and cover surface with plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for 2 hours until solid.
3. In the mean time, combine and knead remaining puff pastry ingredients into a rough dough. Wrap with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 1 hour.
4. After chilling, take the dough and roll it out as flat and wide as possible on a floured surface. Place the square of solidified butter in the middle.

Yes, that large mass in the middle is butter.

5. Fold each third into the center to cover the square of butter. Roll out the dough and fold each third into the center again. Chill and rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours before handling again.

A double fold before sticking it into the fridge for the first chill.

6. Remove the dough from the fridge, roll it out to be about the length of the rolling pin but a bit less wide than it, and fold each third into center. Repeat once. Chill and rest in the fridge for another 2 hours. Try to avoid doing more than 1-2 folds between chilling so that the dough isn't overworked, and remains tender.

Another double fold and back to the fridge for the second chill.

7. Repeat step 6, but only do one fold. Chill and rest in the fridge for another 2 hours.

A single fold this time, and back in for the third and final chill.

8. Remove the dough from the fridge, and roll it out as flat as you can into a rectangular shape for easier division. It's ready to use and shape!

Rolled out as flat as I could make it. A lot of elbow grease went into that! Phew!

Fillings (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
4 stalks of fresh/frozen rhubarb
1/3 cup white granulated sugar

1 cup cream cheese
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup white granulated sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice

1. Chop rhubarb into bite-sized pieces.
2. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, add rhubarb and 1/3 cup of sugar, and simmer for 15 minutes covered.

Rhubarb and sugar! The sugar is very dissolved already, because I made the decision to take before and after pictures a bit into the simmering.

After simmering for 15 minutes without stirring, magic happened. 

3. In another medium sized bowl, combine cream cheese, egg yolk, 1/3 cup of sugar, and lemon juice.
4. Keep covered in fridge until ready to use.


Rhubarb Danishes
Rhubarb filling
Cream cheese filling
Puff pastry

1 egg
1 tsp water

1. Preheat your oven to 375 F, and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment.
2. Divide rolled out puff pastry into 20 equal squares. It's a good idea to keep the remainder of the dough chilled in the fridge if you're not working with it right away. Butter and science is why. I only did this for one baking sheet, and it turned out the best.
3. Take one square, and roll it out a bit if it's too thick. Shape it however you'd like. I used a diamond fold, and have included pictures below, however, it's also at 6:50 in the Anna Olson video.

Use a paring knife to slice 2 L's facing each other, but make sure they don't touch so that you cut out a square.

Take one corner of the "frame", and bring it to the opposite side of the inner square.

Do the same thing with the other side, and adjust if needed, et voila!

4. Place about 4 unfilled pastry shapes on each baking sheet, making sure that you leave plenty of space between them so that they puff up nicely while baking.
5. Add a dollop of cream cheese filling and rhubarb filling on the pastry - I used 1-2 tsp of each.
5. In a small bowl, beat 1 egg with 1 tsp of water, and brush exposed surfaces of each pastry with egg wash. This will cause the pastry to brown a bit. You could also opt to sprinkle some turbinado sugar on top, but I didn't have any.
6. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
7. Carefully remove from the oven and cool for a couple of minutes before serving. Considering how it is a pastry with cream cheese and rhubarb, they should freeze quite well, but who would want to do that?

Of course, this puff pastry recipe would work for any kind of topping. Anna Olson made smore pastries, salted caramel pear tarts, and apricot-marzipan tarts. They looked really good, but I had rhubarb. There's always next time, because I still have enough puff pastry left over for 6-8 more pastries!

I guess this is a farewell to summer baking for the year, since it snowed yesterday in southern Alberta.

-M

P.S. I can't believe that I've officially had this blog for 2 years (and counting)!