I was lying in bed the other night when my iWatch tapped me on the wrist. (The watch has a haptic function that allows it to tap you lightly on the wrist with a vibration to deliver reminders, alert you to the end of a timer you’ve set or indicate when you should make turns while driving. Kinda cool.)
This particular message told me that I could meet my daily exercise goal if I would only take a brisk 29 minute walk. It was 11 p.m.
Hmmm. What to do?
I could venture into the dark and forbidding reaches of my cold garage and walk on the treadmill for 29 minutes or I could get up and burn some calories cooking until I felt sleepy again. Life, at least my life, is full of tough decisions.
This pastry recipe for almond puff loaf had been on the top of my ever-growing stack of must-try recipes for a couple of weeks, so I decided to give it a late night nod. The recipe had piqued my curiosity because it combines a shortcrust pastry with a pate a choux pastry all in one recipe. I’ve never done that before. Fun. Somehow, when you layer the two doughs one on top of the other, magic happens in the oven and the two doughs fuse into one delicious whole, giving you a crisp bottom (like a cookie) and an airy top (like an eclair). The end result is a beautiful pastry worthy of a fancy bakery shop–a light and flaky pastry you thought you never-ever-never would be able to bake at home.
This recipe is currently the star recipe on King Arthur Flour’s April “bakealong.” Each month the baking site selects one great recipe to feature and encourages home cooks to bake it and share their experiences. This recipe has received glowing feedback and some of the posters have pointed to a decades-old Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe for kringle as its long-ago inspiration.
Kringle is a recipe that was brought to Racine, Wisconsin, by Danish immigrants in the late 1800s and is now the state’s official pastry. (I just looked it up. California doesn’t even have a state pastry. What in the heck is wrong with us? Write your legislator!)
An authentic kringle is a labor-intensive hand-rolled pastry that has many flaky layers and can have a sweet or savory filling. This Betty Crocker/KAF recipe uses the two-dough shortcut to save you a lot of time and yields a delicious result.
Here is a short video about Racine’s kringles. The video gives you a peek at the kringle obsession that grips Wisconsinites every November and December: Racine, Wisconsin and Kringles .
Now that I’ve seen the packages of Wisconsin kringles in the videos, I realize that I’ve seen similar packages in Trader Joe’s during the winter holidays. (Trader Joe’s never ceases to amaze me. From bags of frozen Hatch chiles to sugared jalapeno slices to cans of authentic San Marzano tomatoes to kringles, the chain is unerring in its ability to identify food trends. Now, if they would just bring back those colorful boxes of roobios and honey bush tea that I’ve become addicted to!)
Since I’m a party of one, it has been a big task to eat all the pastry from this recipe but, trust me, I’ve given it my best. Now I really do need that brisk 29 minute walk!
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Here is the link to the original recipe from King Arthur’s Flour: Almond Puff Loaf.
