Homemade Dutch Letters

Yesterday, I tantalized you with a description of amazing Dutch baked goods. Today, I’ll show you how my own baking is going.

In short: Tasty, but not so pretty.

The first batch, I shaped the letters into the Iowa-style “S” shape. They were somewhat warped by the time they finished baking. Somehow, I accidentally deleted the pictures. However, the pastries were all consumed within six hours of baking them, so I couldn’t take additional pictures. The photos below are from my second round, with a little knowledge from my first round.

Using puff pastry sheets saves tons of time, and is a bit of a cheat. I think I’m ready to make my own puff pastry soon, but this stuff makes it very easy to make Dutch letters. The puff pastry is available in the frozen food section of my local Fareway, by the pies and such. It’s not necessarily sold in all grocery stores. If you have trouble finding it, try your grocery store that caters most to baking. If you’re in the Fareway region, most of them would have the pastry.

This box contains two sheets of pastry, I used one for each batch. The sheet needs to thaw for about 40 minutes according to the box, but I thawed mine longer. Then, I unfolded it onto a lightly floured non-stick baking mat. This ended up being super-handy. I rolled the dough a little thinner for this batch. The first batch, I didn’t roll the dough, and the finished products were much thicker than I expected. That batch only yielded four pastries, and the six from this batch seemed about the right size.

I cut the dough into six strips with a pizza cutter and put about a tablespoon of filling down one side. This was a pain, and I’m looking into finding a better way to spread the filling. It was a bit of an experiment to put the filling on one side instead of the middle, but I thought it might be easier to roll this way.

I brushed egg wash on the bare side of each strip and rolled the filled side onto the egg side. Then I brushed the top with egg wash and sprinkled with some brown crystal sugar stuff I have. After the first batch, my husband specifically said he didn’t care if they were fancy shapes, so I just made logs.

The pastries baked at 375°F until they were done. The recipe says that’s 30-35 minutes, but I don’t remember. I cooled them, and we promptly ate them. They were a little bumpy and unevenly browned, but they tasted fully delicious.