Yep, thats right, I've been making Danish pastries again. Our first timed assesment at college involved making four different shapes of Danish with four different finishing methods in four hours...phew! I admit that I was rather nervous about this one...four hours may seem like plenty of time to some but I knew that I'd be working right up until the last minute!

I decided to be a little creative with my pastries and try out some new recipes for fillings and toppings using ingredients I thought would work well together. My finished Danish consisted of the following:
Apricot frangipan diamonds,
Dark chocolate and cherry plaits,
Maple and pecan pinwheels,
Honey and raisin snails.


Overall, I think the maple and pecan pinwheels looked the best, but my favourite were the honey and raisin snails as I just loved the combination of ingredients and flavours. Unfortunately they didn't hold their shape too well in the oven so look more like snakes than snails but never mind!


After this, we had to decorate a vanilla sponge cake with whipped cream and our own choice of additional ingredients such as fruit, nuts and chocolate. There were some really interesting creations amoungst the class- coffee & walnut cream, chocolate curls and one guy even made mini profiteroles to top his cake! I chose a fairly simple and classic look by toasting flaked almonds to stick around the edge of the cake, and fresh fruit symmetrically placed upon the top.