At Ellen Madsen’s Little Denmark Cafe, I make a lunch of her counter of pastries—in the interests of research. While Ellen talks about the fall festival at California’s Danish town of Solvang, in the Santa Ynez Valley, founded in 1910 by the Danish Lutheran church, I dream of Christmas and Danish kringles. The reason Danish pastry is so good is that the dough is a butter-layered puff pastry, sweetened and leavened, and filled with nu
