We’ve had homemade danish on Christmas morning for as long as I can remember. This year we gathered at sister-in-law Lana’s house for Christmas eve and since we were going to be scattered for Christmas day I made the danish for dessert after supper.
Mom told me last night that she originally got the recipe as bonus extra from a door-to-door salesman selling Successful Farming magazine in the mid-1950’s. I guess my memory of danish being a lifelong event for me is accurate.
The danish aren’t hard to make, but it is a lengthy process involving rolling dough numerous times with hours of chilling time between each rolling session to produce the flaky dough.
This Christmas morning we had a bit of the uncooked pastry leftover from last night. Our oven quit on us a week ago. It’ll get up to temperature but then won’t heat any more and gradually returns to room temperature. The danish cook at 400 degrees for just 8 minutes, so Debbie and I figured it worth a shot to try to cook the danish, hoping they would be cooked before the oven lost too much heat. It took about 12 minutes for them to get done, but they cooked up nicely.
Drizzled with a little caramel sauce made with butter, brown sugar, and a splash of cream, they were delicious. It was nice on a Christmas morning to have their buttery yeasty good smell filling the house as they baked. Continuing a 50-plus year tradition makes me happy. I like to look back over the years gone by, all we’ve lived and loved and lost and gained, and wonder about the years ahead, and wonder if something we’re doing today, something as simple as a giveaway recipe in a farm magazine might still be echoing 50 years later.
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