Danish Pastries

Danish pastries are rich confections based on a yeast dough with milk and egg, into which butter (essential for the flavour of the pastry) has been folded by a method similar to that employed for making croissants. Before baking, the pastry is cut into small sheets and filled. Of the various fillings, the most ‘correct’ must be the traditional Danish one, remonce; this is a Danish (not French, and of unknown etymology) term which means butter creamed with sugar and often almonds or marzipan too. But confections called Danish pastries are made in vast numbers outside Denmark, and common alternative fillings include differently flavoured sugar and butter mixtures, almond or hazelnut mixtures, jam, crème pâtissière—alone or in any combination, often with dried fruit or candied peel.