Alright everyone, I need a show of hands here: Has anyone ever heard of a Butterhorn, not counting 20 seconds ago when you read the title of this post? Anyone??
I had no idea these danishes were so unfamiliar to so many! I grew up with them and last week suddenly realized I hadn't had one in years. My Dad always brought home store-bought packages of them and I really enjoyed them. I was about to run to the store and grab some when I happened to look outside and notice the 12 feet of snow and well, at that point I decided I'd better see if I could find a recipe myself!
The fact that no one but myself {and my Dad and sisters} know what a Butterhorn is made that process somewhat challenging. Thankfully, I did find a good one posted a couple years ago at Mennonite Girls Can Cook. I made a few minor changes, but otherwise feel it is a very good recipe. This process isn't difficult, but the dough does require at least 4 hours to rest. I recommend making it the night beforehand and letting it sit in the fridge overnight. The dough takes about 15 minutes to pull together, then the next day there is about 1.5 hours required, although 1 hour of that being time for the rolls to rise. It's so worth it though! The dough is so soft and buttery, I think I'll make dinner rolls out of it soon.
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 2 cups flour
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup butter {1 stick}
Put the yeast and sugar in a small bowl, add the warm water and let sit 10 minutes.
Measure the flour, second amount of sugar and salt into a bowl. Cut the butter into the flour using a pastry blender. The mixture should be well blended afterwards- you shouldn't be able to see any clumps of butter.
Warm the milk in the microwave for about 45 seconds.
Add the slightly beaten egg to the milk.
Add the yeast, milk, egg into the dry ingredients.
Stir well until it all blended together. The end result is a cross between a batter and a kneadable dough. Resist the urge to add more flour!
The dough will increase in size a bit, so make sure your bowl is larger than the mound of dough.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.
~~The Next Day/ After 4 Hours~~
Sprinkle flour on your counter. Roll the dough to 1/2 inch thick. The dough is sticky, but it most easy to work with when it's cold, so don't remove the bowl of dough from the fridge until you're ready to use it.
Use a pizza cutter to slice 3/4 inch strips, twist them, starting at one end, then roll it up into a circle. I was a little nervous about this process, but it was actually really easy and went really fast!
Put the twists on a greased pan.
Let rise about 1 hour or until doubled in size. {I turned my oven on to preheat for about 2 minutes, then turned it off. I let my rolls rise in the warm oven- right now my kitchen is just too cold; the dough would take 4 days to rise sufficiently!}
After the dough rises- For strawberry cream cheese danishes, you'll want to add 1/2 tsp of each strawberry jam and cream cheese to the center of the rolls. If you want to do just cream cheese, add 1 tsp to each center, or likewise, all strawberry, then add 1 tsp strawberry jam to each.
Bake at 350 for about 10 - 15 minutes.
Make a icing of 1 cup icing sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and enough milk to make a spreadable consistency.
For Maple Walnut Danishes- Finely chop about 1/4 cup walnuts. Use an alternate icing-1 cup powdered sugar, about 2-3 TBSP real maple syrup. Whisk to combine, adding more syrup until icing is spreadable.
After danishes are done baking, remove and let cool for about 10 minutes.
Drizzle icing over top. Add walnuts if you'd like!
Use a pastry cutter to easily blend the butter with the flour. I love my Norpro pastry cutter!!
Yeast will expand quite a bit while resting!
Chill in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight. I made the dough the night before, then had it rest overnight.
Roll out dough until it's about 1/2" thick. I'm not sure if I got it quite that thin, but it was close.
I used a pizza cutter to cut 3/4" strips off one side. Holding one end, twist the other end, then curl into a circle. To curl, I just set one end of the strip down on the counter, then wound the rest of the strip around it. It was super easy and creating all 20 rounds took less than 10 minutes!
When I was cutting strips, I quickly decided mine were getting too long, so I stopped and began cutting from a different direction. {See how I was cutting horizontal strips from the bottom of my dough? I stopped after a few and began cutting vertical strips.}
I was able to make 20 danishes of varying size. I'm sure if I was more concerned with them being uniform, I could have made them all more the same, but I wasn't!
After the dough rises, add strawberry jam and cream cheese. I did about half this way, then left the other half plain, so that I could put the maple icing and walnuts on top.
Bake the danishes at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes. Watch carefully for browning after about 7-8 minutes. I ended up putting a piece of foil over the top of mine {didn't seal the edges or anything, I just places the foil on top of them.} I cooked mine for about 12-13 minutes.
Let rolls cool for about 10 minutes, then drizzle icing over the top. Sprinkle with walnuts if you'd like.
ENJOY!!
