Adventures in laminated dough

Okay, I’m a little behind here. A while back, I made a big ol’ chunk of laminated dough. Because really, it’s a pain in the ass, so you might as well make a lot and then bake it off in batches as you feel like it. The big takeaway here is that when you’re dealing with Earth Balance, it’s not going to firm up after a couple of hours in the fridge. You probably want to give it at least overnight. Otherwise, this will happen:

 

failed croissants
failed croissants

 See all that goo on the pan? That’s most of the Earth Balance. The resulting croissants were tough, not at all flakey, deep fried in Earth Balance on the bottom, and just wrong.

I thought the dough itself was a complete failure. But I still had 2/3 of it left, so rather than throwing it away, I continued with my experiments. It got to rest in the fridge for a day or two and then I made cherry cheese danishes. Yes, vegan cherry cheese danishes. I posted a tease pic from my iPhone a while back, but here they are in all their glory.

 

cherry cheese croissants cooling
cherry cheese danish cooling

There’s still a little bit of leakage. But then, it’s summer in Georgia and I don’t keep my thermostat below 75. But starting with a well-chilled dough seems to have made a huge difference.

 

layers on cherry cheese danish
layers on cherry cheese danish

Seriously, look at those layers! And here it is all pretty on a plate moments before I shoved it in my face.

 

cherry cheese danish
cherry cheese danish

But I’m not done yet. There’s still a third of the dough left plus some more cream cheese mixture. Time to try another shape and another fruit! How about an apple cheese danish?

 

apple cheese danish cooling
apple cheese danish cooling

And again, about to go in my mouth.

 

apple cheese danish
apple cheese danish