Forming a figure-eight Danish?

[Chris Hennes]

Growing up we had a bakery down the street that made my favorite pastry: a figure-eight shaped danish with apricot preserves in one "pocket" of the eight and cream cheese in the other. I want to make them, but I don't know how the eight is formed in such a way that the filling doesn't just come out the bottom. Does anyone know the technique? This bakery has an image of basically what I'm looking for.

[Kerry Beal]

Found this - https://rachelshenk.com/home/2017/5/4/how-to-shape-figure-eight-danish

[Chris Hennes]

Nice, thanks @Kerry Beal. I guess you must sort of press the spirals together before adding the filling. I sense a mess in the making! I will try to remember to take pictures .

[gilbertlevine]

Chris

proof the figure eight shapes before adding the filling

 

[Alleguede]

Hi Chris,

 

the way we do it, is you swirl a strip of 4 cm by 25 cm long. The tighter the less developed it will go.

it will slightly pull longer as your swirl it. Close the two edges together and bring the sealed piece over itself on the other half to create your eight.

don’t make the holes too big and let proof. Once proofed the shape should remain but no gap in the boucles should be there. Fill with very dry jam or frangipane and fruit amd bake immediately

[Chris Hennes]

I ended up going with the technique in the video @Kerry Beal posted -- I cut strips 2.5cm x 50cm, twisted them up tightly so they looked like a rope, then formed the figure like in the images on that site (I think...). Here's what I ended up with:

 

They are proofing now, and I am taking @gilbertlevine's advice and not filling them until after that step. I have also hedged my bets, I only made half of them so far. I am going to bake these off and see how they turned out, and if necessary do the second half of the batch differently, using @Alleguede's strategy.

[Chris Hennes]

Hey, they worked! After proofing they were solid enough for filling:

 

I used peaches that I pureed and then cooked down to a fairly stiff and dry consistency (reserving a few solid chunks to add on top), and I made a sorghum-sweetened cream cheese for the other side:

 

Both fillings were excellent: not too sweet, but sweet enough. I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe for the danish pastry itself. It includes a little bit of cardamom, which I was worried would be overpowering, but it turned out great. Thank you all for your help recreating this bit of childhood nostalgia.

[Kerry Beal]

5 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

Hey, they worked! After proofing they were solid enough for filling:

 

I used peaches that I pureed and then cooked down to a fairly stiff and dry consistency (reserving a few solid chunks to add on top), and I made a sorghum-sweetened cream cheese for the other side:

 

Both fillings were excellent: not too sweet, but sweet enough. I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe for the danish pastry itself. It includes a little bit of cardamom, which I was worried would be overpowering, but it turned out great. Thank you all for your help recreating this bit of childhood nostalgia.

Yours look way better than the picture you posted above!