Danish pastries are so tempting because they are loaded with butter, cream and sugar. Even though it's called Danish in the English-speaking world, the base for these pastries was actually introduced to Copenhagen from abroad so in Denmark laminated dough is rightly called Vienna bread (Wienerbrød). What happened is, during the second half of the 19th century Danish bakers went on strike and were replaced by Austrian bakers, who used their own techniques. The delicious viennoiseries quickly became a fashion so most of the famous Danish cakes of the last 150 years are made with Vienna bread. This dough is buttery like puff paste but it's leavened with yeast, resulting in a more substantial texture. Like Hungarian beigli, it doesn't rise much but Danish pastry is more extravagant and often stands on its own.
Vienna bread is used for Danish Seven Sisters cake - whose namesake is featured in Hungarian, Polish and Jewish American cuisines. However, the Danish recipe is so different from all these other versions that it mustn't be compared to them at all. Even though it's uncertain that Stefánia torta and ciasto Stefanka were dedicated to a lady or inspired by folklore & tradition, the Danish recipe was supposedly named after the Pleiades - the constellation of the Seven Sisters that leads seafaring men. There is a myth for the seven stars in nearly every known cultural tradition. According to the Greeks, they were seven nymphs who followed the goddess of hunting but for the Danes, the 'Syvstjernen' were (named after) Freyja's hens. The goddess of beauty, love and fertility was more often depicted with cats and pigs but chickens or hens with chicks were also important in Norse mythology. As we are told in Völuspá and other famous poems, the last battle Ragnarök was to be announced by three roosters.
Unlike Hungarian, Czech & American Jewish seven-layer cakes, the Danish (or American Danish) version of Seven Sisters cake is made up of seven rolls that are filled with almond paste & vanilla custard and baked in a shell. The dough for this cake is made of Vienna bread. Recipes circulate around the Web, mostly by US bakeries. Since I have not found a version in a Danish cookbook, I'm not at all sure it's a traditional recipe. Even if it was, it couldn't have been older than late 19th or early 20th century because that's when laminated dough became a fashion. Marzipan dates from centuries earlier, of course, but Scandinavian desserts that use almond paste (mixed with butter, sugar and eggs) are relatively modern.
In the following version of Danish Seven Sisters cake, I used a recipe for quick Vienna bread ('enkla Wienerbrød') from Cakes, Cookies & Bread from Sweden (1985) by Görel Kristina Näslund. Making this version is a little scary at first because the dough looks unattractive but all ends well, I promise you. Incidentally, the Swedish word for 'quick' (enkla) in my cookbook rhymed with the vocative form of 'angel' in Old English (engla) and it reminds me of "Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast". This is a poem J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about Eärendil the Mariner, my favorite Silmarillion character, who guides seafaring men & other travellers, like the Pleiades do, as he sails across the heaven in his boat Vingilot. The phrase Tolkien used was borrowed from the Old English poem Crist II, in which Jesus Christ "the brightest angel" is the Morning Star that guides Christians through life. I wouldn't go as far as to replace the Seven sisters with a roll of Danish pastry to represent the Morning Star but I chose 'enkla Wienerbrød' over classic Danish pastry with the folding and the chilling and 1/3 as much butter for the same amount of flour. The small changes I made to Görel Kristina Näslund's recipe are highlighted in yellow. The almond filling, egg wash and icing were made from scratch.
I n g r e d i e n t s
for the dough:
400g strong flour
1 sachet (= 7g) dried yeast
a pinch of salt
3tbsp caster sugar
225g butter, at room temperature
less than 200ml cold water
for the filling:
500g ground almonds
500g caster sugar
75g melted butter
1 egg + 1 white, lightly beaten
for the egg wash:
1 yolk, lightly beaten
1-2tbsp milk
for the icing:
100g powedered sugar
1tsp vanilla sugar
cold water, as needed
M e t h o d
To make the dough: Sift the flour, yeast, and salt in a bowl. Mix in the sugar, then cube the butter and rub into the flour mixture as for tart dough. Add enough water to make a soft paste, knead lightly, shape into a ball, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours. Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Combine the almond flour with the sugar, butter and lightly beaten egg + white, and knead into a paste. To build the pastry shell and rolls: Roll out 2/5 of the dough to fit a buttered 24cm round pan. Make a pastry shell, trimming the edges if you like. Roll half of the marzipan into a circle and line the bottom and sides of the shell. Then roll what's left of the dough and the marzipan into 2 equal-sized rectangles. Place the marzipan on top of the pastry, fold, and divide into seven rolls with a sharp knife. To assemble the cake: Fit the pastry rolls into the shell. Combine the yolk and milk for the egg wash. Brush the surface of the cake, then bake at 190-200C for 35 minutes or longer, until the bottom is done. (Using a glass baking pan is ideal for keeping an eye on that but you must start with a cold oven as I did, readjusting baking times.) Cover with aluminum foil if necessary, to avoid burning the surface. To make the icing: Combine the sugars in a bowl, adding water as needed. Brush the cake liberally, filling the gaps between the pastry shell and rolls.
N o t e
Dough that's filled with moist ingredients in a roll is often under-baked (as I have noted in the story about Roman placenta) and things would probably have been worse if I had used vanilla custard filling, which is a standard in Danish American versions of Seven Sisters cake. Perhaps seven cups of Vienna bread, filled halfway up with marzipan and then with vanilla custard, would be much better off if placed in the shell halfway through baking time.
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