Danish for Lunch
Every summer we're faced with the pleasant task of trying to figure out how to use all the fruit from our trees. Most of the fruit gets ripe at the same time and it's not possible to eat it all fresh. Right now the apricots, apriums (cross between apricot and plum), plums, and sour cherries are almost all ripe. The fig tree, which usually has 2-3 crops per year, is also beginning to have some ripe fruit. Carol doesn't like jams or jellies so that rules out one method of preserving them. I like jam but I rarely eat toast, so I don't go through the jam very fast. Besides, my brother keeps sending us his homemade blackberry jam that's better than anything I ever make. The obvious solution then, is to make lots of pastry with fresh fruit. Yesterday it was puff pastry tarts, today it's apricot and plum danish. And they're just in time for lunch.
The Danish dough is the Danish with Biga from ABAP. I left the fully laminated dough in the refrigerator an extra day because I was too busy to use it yesterday. In addition to the fruit, they are filled with pastry cream (also from ABAP) flavored with li-hing powder (1/2 teaspoon of li-hing powder to 2 pounds of pastry cream). This dough had a mind of its own. They were supposed to be shaped like the one in the left front in the photo but most of them unfolded themselves while proofing.
Comments
You are so lucky to have a tree with 'sour cherries' too..we can't find them around here..not fresh! Everything looks delicious..If you don't like jam you could always can some fruit up for winter in just a light syrup. When my MIL had a hugh apricot tree we used to freeze apricot's sweetned and chunky pureed for fried pies or just halved, bagged and frozen with a little lemon juice or fruit preserve powder and some in jars with light syrup and our favorite apricot jam. You probably already have a freezer full and many happy neighbors!
Sylvia
Thank you for the suggestion. I'll try that. Freezing would be a lot less work than canning.
and yet another thing to try and find in my little limeted town. The hi-ling powder. Oh well if I can't find it will just have to improvise!
I freeze a lot of fruit, and do cherries, the worst part of that is the pitting, I wouldn't freeze them with pits, that might not be a good idea. But the apricots and plums etc, just slice in half and freeze in bags, or lay out on a sheet, and freeze and put into the bags, they go great in smoothies for breakfast, just put in the blender frozen with some milk, yougurt, or water, and other goodies and blend. Drink a fruit shake for breakfast in the winter, and you will not have to pay for that ungodly fruit from Chilie that I wind up getting in winter becuase I'm starved for fruit.