Top tips for making Danish pastries

The master recipe

• Find our Danish pastry dough recipe here

Tricks to getting perfect Danishes every time

• It is best to start the dough recipe the night before so the pastry is chilled and rested before assembling the pastries.
• Roll the pastry in one direction, as this distributes the butter evenly, and helps to create the light, flaky layers.
• Ensure the butter is softened at room temperature, so that it spreads evenly throughout the pastry. If the butter is too hard it will make the pastry streaky.
• It is important to roll out the pastry to a long rectangle 4 times, to evenly spread out the butter and create lots of layers of light, flaky pastry – otherwise the pastry will be heavy and dense.

Can I freeze the dough?

• You can make the master recipe for the dough up to the end of step 7, then roll up between two sheets of baking paper (with the paper inside), into a sausage shape, wrap in cling film and foil and freeze for up to a month. Defrost fully before using.
• If you’re cooking the finished Danish pastries from frozen, bake them for 5-10 minutes longer than the recipe until golden brown and cooked through.
• For a cheat’s version, use a 500g block ready-made all-butter puff pastry instead of making your Danish pastry dough – it’s not quite the same but still tastes great.

The recipes

• Chocolate and vanilla custard buns
• Classic almond pastries
• Cinnamon and raisin swirls