I think you always go back to your favourite flavours for comfort food. A lot has been going on on this side of the screen that I'm not ready to talk about, so when the GBBO decided to do an enriched dough on their finale, I decided I wanted to attempt a lemon danish recipe. Well, that was after I googled what an enriched dough was, of course, because I'm usually clueless on things like this. Before this entire challenge, you could have told me puff pastry, shortcrust, rough puff...and I would not be able to define exactly what the difference is. See? Learn something new everyday....while munching on yummy lemon danishes.
When I was younger, I think my favourite flavour was sweet. Seriously. So any candy would do. Any cake, any sweet baked good...and especially any ice cream. Yes I was obviously consuming gluten and dairy back then. I can't pinpoint my favourite flavours, but I can say I loved a cherry cheesecake and a black forest cake and anything with whipped cream and of course chocolate. Then of course I loved my salt and my spicy (as most Trinis do). When I moved to Canada I started craving just a plain cake, because everything you bought there came with lots of cream and fancy stuff, and sometimes, just sometimes you just want something simple....like my Grandma's cake - a plain vanilla cake. A few years ago, I realized that I really enjoy the flavour of lemon. I think if I had to choose a favourite flavour now, that would be it. So lemon cheesecake (when I was eating dairy), lemon sorbet (yum! especially if it's nice and tart), lemon in savoury food even. And with an old addiction to pastry (man I love a good pastry!), a lemon danish was the obvious choice when I was trying to choose what to make this weekend for the Great Bloggers Bake Off.
I had also wanted to make my own lemon curd. I mean we all have those things that we know are simple to make, but have never made....so this was my opportunity to do just that. Make my own lemon curd instead of buying a jar of the stuff. I mean, as convenient as the pre-made, pre-packaged stuff are, many times those items have a lot more sugar or fat in them than you really need. Especially for something like lemon curd. As I said above, I like slightly sweet but tart lemony flavours - so if there's too much sugar in something like a lemon curd, it really puts me off. So making the lemon curd it was...and it literally took a few minutes to be honest....and it was spectacularly easy and wonderfully tart. Perfect for me. Of course you can always add more sugar if you prefer something sweeter.
The pastry I made for this was a rough puff. Mainly because I don't have time or energy to do a full puff pastry with all the butter packeting and folding and rolling and fridging with my recent going ons. If you have the time and energy, however, I would advise you to do a full puff....which is similar to the rough puff, except that you make the pastry part, then place a butter packet in the middle, fold, over the pastry, roll, refrigerate and repeat at least 4 or 5 times. I'll do step by step instructions one of these good days for you, hopefully with decent photos (you know how I am with photos!) and then you can ask your questions then. In the meanwhile, rough puff it is. This is the same pastry I used for the mille feuille I made last week (see link in the list of my GBBO 2015 bakes below) and works well for both. I have yet to figure out if it will twist nicely into a cone to make cream cones, but ... c'est la vie. It will happen at some point. Or maybe I need to make a full puff for that.
Anyway. Lemon danishes. Gluten Free. Dairy Free. Yummy Full.
Gluten Free and Dairy Free Lemon Danish Loaf
Lovely, light, flaky pastry surrounding a tart and creamy lemon curd.
http://www.bewilderedbug.com/
This post is part of the Great Blogger Bake Off 2015 and is inspired by the Great British Bake Off 2015, Week 10 - FINALS!
If you liked this recipe, please also check out my other bakes for 2015...
My bake from week 1 (cake) - White Forest Cake (gluten and dairy free). My bake from week 2 (biscuits) - Chocolate Dipped Orange and Cardamom Biscotti My bake from week 3 (bread) - Nutella bread (gluten free and almost dairy free) - that WON a prize in the Great Bloggers Bakeoff 2015 for that week! #chuffed My bake from week 4 (desserts) - Cheesecake stuffed meringue nests (gluten free and dairy free). My bake from week 8 (Patisserie) - Chocolate and Chilli Mille Feuille (gluten and dairy free) My bake from week 9 (Chocolate) - Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Tart (gluten and dairy free) (gluten and dairy free).
I am also linking up with another bake off group this week in an attempt to win some lovely Silver Mushroom goodies for my kitchen.
Click on the badge below for the link to that page - some awesome stuff there I tell you!
