The dough used in danishes is similar to the dough used in croissants. It is a very flaky, buttery yeast dough that takes more than a little bit of time and patience to put together. Sometimes it’s nice to dawdle over a batch of pastry on a lazy weekend morning, but other times it’s nice to get something delicious onto your plate a little more quickly. One solution is to run to the local bakery and pick up some danishes, but another is to make a quick batch of danish using puff pastry instead of a more traditional danish dough. Puff pastry is easy to work with and produces a crisp, flaky delicious danish - especially considering that it takes so little time to make a batch.

The secret to making these danishes so good is the cream cheese filling inside. It is made with cream cheese and white chocolate. The white chocolate gives it a rich, creamy feel and just the right amount of sweetness. A good quality white chocolate (not white baking chips) will have notes of milk and vanilla in it, which will help round out the flavor of the cream cheese. The cream is delicious on its own and bakes very well, staying tender and moist within its crisp puff pastry shell.

Now, if you’re a purist, you could keep the cream cheese danish filling plain and serve the pastries that way. I used mixture of raspberry and peach preserves to sweeten them up a little more. Any flavor of jam will work here, but thicker jams and preserves will tend to spread less during baking and produce a slightly prettier danish in the end. This is another good example of a recipe that you can use as a jumping off point for creating your own variations. The 1,2,3 Puff! Contest that Pepperidge Farm is holding is still accepting entries and a mouthwatering Danish - or similarly enticing pastry - sounds like it would have a great chance of being a prize winner. The grand prize is an all-expenses paid trip to New York (along with some foodie bonuses, like a tour of NYC pastry shops and bakeries!), but that’s just the bonus of experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.

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When it comes to baking - and cooking in general - there is always a place for new ideas, but there is often no substitute for experience. Ann Amernick, author of The Art of the Dessert, has been in the pastry business a long time and shares a lot of her knowledge - as well as a lot of her recipes - in this volume. The recipes range from the simple to the complex and are more “pastry chef” than “home cook.” That said, the recipe instructions are very clear and detailed, so not only is it not difficult to follow along, the fact that the book is offering something different from the average cookbook means that it might get more use when it’s in your kitchen.

While the recipes include cakes, pies, cookies and both warm and cold desserts, dessert sandwiches (they have their own chapter) appear to be a signature type of dish. This doesn’t mean that everything goes into a panini maker, but instead that different individual desserts are layered together for interesting presentations, as well as flavor and texture combinations. The cover photo is a good example, with coconut slices, a cream cheese brownie and coconut sorbet. The recipes can stand alone, though after reading through the instructions you’ll often find that putting them together for the pastry chef presentation isn’t difficult at all.

There is a detailed introduction at the start of the book where Amernick explains tips she has picked up over the years and describes the methods and ingredients used in the recipes. There are also lots of tips throughout the book, mixed in with the recipes at points when they might come in handy. The book is illustrated, but is a little bit short on photos of the finished dishes, with more snapshots of kitchen prep and various in-between shots filling up what would otherwise be empty space. This isn’t much of a problem because the shots that are included are very nice, but it is a touch disappointing to find out that your need to try everything else to see what the dishes look like after you get past the beautiful shot on the cover.

It has been a long time since I made a batch of gingerbread pancakes, and an even longer time since I posted about them! I am always tweaking pancake recipes and, while the first batch from a few years ago is still good, a couple of changes make them even better.  Gingerbread really needs to have some molasses to give it a good gingerbread flavor, but it also needs some spices to give it that warmth that we expect from gingerbread.

I kept these pancakes simple, with just cinnamon, ground ginger and some nutmeg in the batter. Freshly ground nutmeg is always the most flavorful, but preground will work if you have none fresh. My favorite part - aside from the maple syrup that I poured all over these - is the chopped candied ginger (Ginger People’s Ginger Chips work perfectly here) that is mixed into the pancake batter. They really add a nice spicy sweetness and are a pleasant surprise when your bite into a little piece! I sprinkled some extra on top of the pancakes to mix in with the maple syrup, as well.

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While I like heating up a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers and having a holiday dinner all over again, what I really like to do with leftover turkey is make sandwiches. The breasts are usually so large that you get perfect slices of meat - meaning that they’re quite big - for sandwiches and don’t need to spend too much time piecing together little bits of turkey meat (as sometimes happens with leftovers from a small roast chicken).

You can put anything on a sandwich, but there are a couple of types that I always fall back on with leftovers. The first is a Turkey and Stuffing Sandwich, with a good amount of cranberry sauce spread in between to keep things moist. There is no recipe for this one, just a joining of all the ingredients you have tucked in tupperware in your fridge - with a bit of mayo, salt and pepper. This is a great sandwich to have hot or cold.

The second is a Turkey, Cranberry and Brie Panini (above,before being pressed). Creamy brie is a great match for tangy cranberries, and the brie melts fabulously, bringing all the elements of this sandwich together in slightly gooey harmony. If I have a lot of cranberry sauce, I’ll make some bbq sauce with it and enjoy some Turkey Sandwiches with Cranberry Barbecue Sauce. I’ll actually keep the sauce around for a while, too, and use it with other dishes when the leftovers are done.

Finally, my last fall back is for Mini Turkey Sandwiches, made using whatever type of bread or roll you seved with Thanksgiving dinner. I make bite-sized sandwiches on cornbread, dinner rolls and biscuits and much through a few. This is also a great option if you still have family around and want to serve a snack, but no one is up for a full meal.

One of the best things about Thanksgiving dinner is that there are always plenty of leftovers for the next day or two. This means that all the time and effort that went into cooking and cleaning on Thursday makes up for the fact that there is no need to spend much time in the kitchen for at least a day or two. Aside from heating up the leftovers, of course.

It can be a bit boring to just eat plates of the same dinner items over and over again, so I try to repurpose them a little bit. This year, I’m doing Leftover Turkey Sandwiches with Homemade Cranberry Barbecue Sauce. The turkey obviously comes from the bird and you can use either white or dark meat. The cranberry bbq sauce starts out with whole cranberries that are made into a quick sauce (you can substitute 1 1/4 cups leftover cranberry sauce for the first three ingredients in the recipe below), to which some classic barbecue sauce flavors are added. The finished sauce has a nice tang to it and a good amount of sweetness from the cranberry sauce.

The sauce, like the turkey, will keep well in the fridge so feel free to make it in advance and just pull it out when you’re ready to dig in to leftovers.

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• Pumpkin pie is easy to make as homemade pies go, but there are plenty of pumpkin desserts that are even easier. One of these is Tartelette’s Pumpkin Semifreddo. A semifreddo is a frozen dessert that is a cross between mousse and ice cream, with a soft, light consistency that belies its richness. It’s also very easy to make and requires no special equipment (unlike ice cream). Tartelette’s includes pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices in the semifreddo base, and she topped hers off with a crisp and spicy sprinkle of gingerbread crumbs. It’s a nice touch, but I suspect that you could get away with gingersnap crumbs if you don’t have time to make the crumbs yourself on short notice for the garnish.
• Salted caramel is as popular as ever this holiday season, so you might want to stock up on coarse salt so you’re prepared to tackle recipes like the Chocolate Caramel Bars that Deliciously Organic cooked up. Her version of these bars has a shortbread crust for a base and is topped off with a chocolate-enriched caramel layer and a generous sprinkle of salt. Sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy - it covers almost all the bases you could want in a dessert (including gooey if you let them soften up a lot!). A batch of these is sure to be a crowd pleaser at a holiday party.
• Every pomegranate seed looks like a little jewel in Sugar Plum’s Pomegranate White Chocolate Macadamia Crumb Cake. This cake features a rich layer of cream cheese infused with white chocolate, pomegranate juice, dried cranberries and orange zest that takes it from just another coffee cake to a very indulgent treat. Pomegranates are not one of the most commonly used ingredients in baked goods, and it’s nice to have a recipe on file where they’re showcased.
• Sometimes, comfort food desserts just aren’t the same without chocolate, and desserts don’t get much more comforting than the Brown Sugar and Chocolate Baked Pudding with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream made by Fresh New England. It’s like a pudding cake, soft and gooey and rich with chocolate flavor. That flavor is enhanced by the addition of dark brown sugar, which has some deep molasses notes to it. Ice cream is always a nice topper to a dessert served warm, and you can opt for homemade or your favorite brand to finish this off.
• Butternut squash, with it’s slightly sweet and mild flavor, is just as versatile as pumpkin and can be used in many recipes, including Laura’s Best Recipes‘ Butternut Squash Apple Cake with Ginger Streusel. The golden cake is filled with orange zest, apples and raisins, and has a generous amount of sweet-hot crystallized ginger in the topping. You’ll need some butternut squash puree for this recipe, which you can make yourself or find canned in some markets.