Much like fanny packs, I like these danishes better in theory than in practice. The pastry bread itself (the MSBH Danish Dough) is, as always, delicious: buttery, flaky, perfect. The filling just doesn’t play out well, however. It’s a layering of pistachio pastry cream and chopped semi-sweet chocolate. Again, brilliant in theory but it just doesn’t play out in the end.
The MSBH recipe for Pastry Cream is mixed with pistachio nut paste. Pistachio nut paste is essentially just like natural peanut butter, only made from pistachios. It’s very oily, you have to stir it well to incorporate the oil, and it smells like a dream.
This is mixed will with the chilled pastry cream. In the MSBH photos demonstrating the different steps to this recipe, their resulting cream is a beautiful soft green hue, but mine remained fairly yellow.
Half of a recipe for Danish Dough is rolled out into a rectangle and the pistachio pastry cream is spread on top. Then, chopped chocolate is spread on top of that. I think the recipe calls for far too much chocolate. I held back about 1/3 cup and I still had too much chocolate for my liking.
The rectangle is then rolled into a log just like the Sticky Buns and the entire log is chilled to make it easier to slice into the individual rolls.
Even chilled, the log was difficult to slice. The chocolate chunks would slide around on the slippery pastry cream. You know what would have been better than chopped chocolate? Chopped pistachios and a sparse sprinkling of miniature chocolate chips.
The individual rolls are then covered with plastic and allowed to proof until doubled in size. This took FOREVER.
Then it’s just a matter of baking. My rolls did not remain tightly wrapped like the finished product in the MSBH photo, but I still think they’re presentable. As for taste, like I said, the pastry itself was divine but the pistachio pastry cream – which tasted AMAZING by itself – was completely overshadowed by the chocolate. In fact, the chocolate pretty much overwhelms everything about this danish – there was just too much of it.
I will probably attempt these again, but I’ll reign in the chocolate for sure.
