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Scandinavian Baking Recipe: Poppy Seed Danish

By CW Contributor on 8/9/2015

Scandinavian Baking Recipe: A new pastry for the smorgasbord! Try this poppy seed danish delightful breakfast treat

What started out as a love of home baking for her son turned into Trine Hahnemann’s career. Her latest book, Scandinavian Baking, features a host of delicious triple-tested recipes for cakes, cookies, cream buns and Danish pastries, interspersed with fascinating titbits of information about baking traditions in Scandinavia.

Add this poppy seed danish to your breakfast smorgasbord for typically Scandinavian treat.

Poppy seed danish

At the weekend the traditional Scandinavian breakfast is rolls, cheese, butter and jam, your favourite Danish and – of course – filter coffee. This recipe is very much a Copenhagen thing. Just 100km away, where my family is from on the Island of Fyn, they call this pastry a Københavner, meaning somebody from Copenhagen. I still find it fascinating that in such a small country there can be so many regional variations. You can leave the marzipan out of the filling here, if you prefer.

INGREDIENTS

Makes twenty

150g marzipan, coarsely grated (60% almonds; see below for Home-made marzipan)
125g softened butter
3 tbsp caster sugar
1 quantity Basic Danish pastry dough (see below)
00 grade (tipo 00), or plain flour, to dust
1 egg, lightly beaten
50–100g poppy seeds

METHOD

Mix the marzipan, butter and sugar together to make a smooth paste and set aside at room temperature.

Roll out the Danish pastry dough on a lightly floured work surface to 56 x 36cm then cut it in half lengthways. Roll both out a little more until you have a pair of even-sized rectangles, each measuring 60 x 18cm.

Halve the marzipan filling. Take one portion and spread it evenly, lengthways, on one half of a dough rectangle. Fold the plain half over the marzipan half to give a filled pastry measuring 60 x 9cm. Repeat with the other dough rectangle. Push the seams of the dough gently together.

Brush both with the egg (reserve the remaining egg) and dredge with poppy seeds. Cut crossways into 5cm pieces and place them on baking trays lined with baking parchment. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/gas mark 7.

Brush each pastry with reserved egg on the cut sides, so they turn brown. Bake for five minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6 and bake for another 15 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Recipe extracted from Scandinavian Baking by Trine Hahnneman (Quadrille Publishing, Hardback £25)