Let’s talk about these Raisin Danishes for a few minutes, shall we? I know, we’re moved on from the “food from our childhood” topic, but I had to slay this dragon, as it were, so here we go.
These are Rosienenschnecken. Pain au Raisin in French. Raisin Danish or Swirls. It’s not a Cinnamon Bun, mainly because there isn’t much cinnamon in it. In Germany, there are lots of these Schnecken (fun fact: Schnecke also means “snail” — so this is like the swirl of the snail house). There Zimtschnecken, Nussschnecken, Mohnschnecken (cinnamon, nuts and poppy seeds respectively); they can also be called Schneckennudeln, which literally translates to snail-noodle, which is kind of funny. My Oma’s nickname for me was “Kleine Schneckennudel” or “Schneckle” or “Nudel”. Yep, my grandmother called me snail as a term of endearment. I don’t know if that or Noodle was cuter. Just like Gurken and Spätzle, these things were — and still are — one of my favorite foods.
The dilemma? They are really flippin’ hard to make.
I should have learned my lesson when I tried last decade but no, I didn’t. And so when I picked the topics for this Stuck at Home Bake-a-Long during the Global Pandemic, I thought “this time, I will conquer the noodle!” Yeah, well sorta no.
You see, sort of like croissants, these use what is called laminate dough. Roughly and without going into too much detail it is a yeasted version of a puff pastry, but in between the layers of dough, you fold in, over and over again, large thin sheets of butter. Really good laminate dough may have up to eighty layers. Two weekends ago, I started the process of trying to make a laminate dough. I made a few layers and thought I could at very minimum roll it out, add in the vanilla and raisin filling an bake it up for you guys to see. But well… let’s just say there was too little structure and too much butter and it was a complete failure. Back to the drawing board.
So I cheated. You see, turns out, you can *buy* frozen laminate dough. Granted, usually they are selling it wholesale and you have to buy a minimum of 50 kilos, but I found a bakery in New York City who will sell you just 10 pounds, if you ask nicely. And so, on Tuesday, a few dollars lighter, a Fedex shipment arrived with four large sheets of dough. Three promptly were stashed in the freezer and yesterday, I baked up my first real Rosienenschnecken. I rolled a log and cut 10. Of the 10, 4 semi unrolled at the edges (still perfectly edible, if not photogenic) and a couple got a little dark on the bottom because the filling burned onto the silpat, so here are 4 beauties that I wanted to show you.
And thus end the story of the raisin-snail-noodle. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. 🙂
