Gluten Free Cream Cheese Pastry Food

GLUTEN FREE CHEESE DANISH

Steps:

• In a small bowl, add the yeast, one teaspoon sugar, and warm milk. Allow sitting for 10 minutes to let it get frothy.
• In a large bowl, add the dry ingredients and whisk to blend.
• In a medium-sized bowl, add all of the wet ingredients. Pour in the frothy yeast mixture and whisk to blend.
• Pour the wet ingredients, including 4 of the tablespoons of butter melted, into the dry ingredients and mix.
• Place plastic wrap onto a cutting board. Sprinkle with flour.
• Put the dough to the cutting board. Sprinkle the top of the dough with more flour. Use a rolling pin or your hands to press it flat to 3/4 inch thick. Use as much flour as needed to prevent it from being sticky. At any time you can refrigerate the dough to help.
• Add chunks of butter and then fold the dough onto itself. Roll flat again.
• Add more butter chunks and roll again. You will keep repeating this process so that you have lots of butter layers. This is what makes your pastry dough flaky. It is a bit time consuming but it is worth it!
• Repeat this process until you use all of the butter. Again, you will want to refrigerate the dough a bit between each butter layer. Cold butter works a lot better in making flaky layers.
• Make the cream cheese layer by adding room temperature cream cheese, the egg yolk, and sugar to a mixer and whip until creamy.
• Roll your dough to 1/2 to 3/4 inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut out circles, or another shape.
• Place the danish dough rounds in a warm place to rise for 45 minutes.
• Use your fingers to press down the dough in the center of the circle. Add one spoon full of the cream cheese mixture and jam to each center.
• Preheat the oven to 350º F.
• Beat an egg in a small bowl. Use a brush to spread the egg onto the exposed dough of each pastry.
• Bake for 18-20 minutes until done. Allow cooling.
• Make the icing with the powdered sugar and lemon juice to a bowl. Feel free to add more lemon juice to get the right consistency. Drizzle onto each Danish.

CREAM CHEESE PASTRY DOUGH

Steps:

• In a food processor blend the butter, the cream cheese, the flour, and the salt, pulsing the motor, until the dough just begins to form a ball, gather the dough into a ball, and flatten slightly. Dust the dough with flour and chill it, wrapped in plastic wrap, for 1 hour. The dough may be made 1 day in advance and kept wrapped well and chilled.

CREAM CHEESE TART SHELLS

Steps:

• Blend cream cheese and butter or margarine. Stir in flour just until blended. Chill about 1 hour. This can be made ahead and chilled for up to 24 hours.
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
• Shape dough into 24 one-inch balls and press into ungreased 1 1/2 inch muffin cups (mini-muffin size) to make a shallow shell. Fill with your favorite filling and bake for 20 minutes, or until the crust is light brown.

GLUTEN-FREE CREAM CHEESE PIE CRUST

Steps:

• Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
• Cut butter and cream cheese into flour mixture until you have pea-sized pieces or smaller. (Dough can't really be overworked since there is no gluten).
• Sprinkle with 2 tbsp ice water and stir together with a fork until dough starts to form a ball. Use more water if needed to get dough to form. Don't let it get too wet though.
• When ball starts to form, bring dough together with hands and knead slightly to get a uniform texture. Pat into a disk.
• If you want to roll the crust, let the disk chill in the refrigerator at least one hour, or up to 24 hours. Roll between sheets of parchment paper to desired size. Because of the high butter content keep dough and rolling pin cold for best results.
• You can use the dough without chilling if you want to simply press into shape. If you press it too thin or make a whole, simply patch it by pressing it back together or adding a bit more dough and pressing it inches This is what I usually do to form a bottom crust for a pie. I don't often make a top crust because I hate rolling them out and crimping them to the bottom.
• Fill pie as desired and bake according to the directions for the type of pie you are making. You can blind bake the crust by baking at 350°F for 30-35 minutes, or until lightly browned. Let cool and fill.

CREAM CHEESE PASTRY

Steps:

• In a large bowl cream together cream cheese and butter.
• slowly sift in flour and salt.
• Shape into 2 balls, wrap in plastic and chill for at least 3 hours or overnight (I chill overnight) in the fridge.
• Roll out on a floured board and use as you will.

GLUTEN FREE CREAM CHEESE PASTRY

Steps:

• 1. cut cream cheese and butter into tablespoon size pieces and chill well.
• 2. Place flour into bowl with starch, sugar and salt, mix well. Add in the lemon zest at this time also.
• 3. Rub the chunks of flour and cheese into the dry until you have nice slivers throughout
• 4. Beat your egg whites until foamy, and stir into your mixture, until it comes together. Wrap and chill discs of dough.
• 5. Roll out onto floured board as you would for any pies or tarts.