Apple Cream Cheese Danish

Christmas morning is usually the big pastry holiday in our house, but this Thanksgiving I decided to make my own pastry. Last year my mom made too big of a breakfast and a lot of us remember not being as hungry for the main feast as we would have liked. I came across this blog post on Annies Eats and I knew it was time for me to try my first pastry. She adapted the recipe from Baking Illustrated and her step by step instructions make it look really easy. But it doesn't only look easy, it really was easy! It does take a while though, I started it the day before, but I repeat, it is easy. To make the dough you have to fold, and turn, and kneed in butter, and refrigerate and do it all over again a few times. So it does take some advanced planning, like I said, I did it the day before I wanted to cook it. But all that time is so worth it. This was delicious. I made two. Well actually I made one and Garrett made one. But that still wasn't enough to feed our big breakfast crew. The cream cheese was a great addition to the apple filling, but I did make part of it with just apples. Our favorite Christmas pastry is pineapple cream cheese, and I can't wait to make this again and try that and other fillings. I'm posting my pictures below of how to assemble the danish after the dough is made, but visit Annie's site for great step by step instructions for the whole process.

Apple Cream Cheese Danish

Oak Glen Apple Farms

My birthday was on Thursday! First just a big thank you for everyone that wished me a happy birthday and made my day so special. I love that my birthday is the same day as Veteran's Day because as a school teacher we get that day off each year. This year, because it was on a Thursday was also got Friday off! Who doesn't love a four day weekend? I wanted to spend my birthday doing something I don't usually get to do. So I looked around at little day trips and decided I wanted to go see beautiful fall leaves and do some fall activities.

EnterOak Glen, a little town up by Yucaipa, CA located up in the San Bernardino Mountains, about an hour away. There are a bunch of different apple farms there where you can pick your own apples and enjoy all kids of apples desserts. So my mom, older sister and I headed out to spend the day enjoying a fall that we don't really get in Orange County. The funny thing was, that we got there we completely forgot that it might be cold. My sister, Mikken, had on a skirt and t-shirt, and was pretty cold in the 57 degree weather. I was loving it. I love fall, I miss fall. All the leaves weren't quite as red as I would have liked. Most were more green turning yellow, but some were beautiful.




When we got there we checked out a few farms and decided where to eat. We settled on Rileys' at Los Rios Rancho and ate at their BBQ and Bakery. I had an amazing pulled pork sandwich while Mom and Mikken had deli turkey sandwiches with potato salad. Mom got hot apple cider which was a nice treat on our cold fall day. I loved Los Rios Rancho. We browsed around their cute store, bought apple butter and fresh baked bread, and tasted all kinds of apples picked fresh from their orchard. I would have been fun to pick our own apples, but it was a little late in the season and they didn't have a ton left on the trees.


Next we drove back to first farm we passed on the way in, can't remember it's name. (It's the one with Apple Annie's country restaurant.) We went into the bakery and bought a slice of apple pie, an apple empanada and an apple burrito. We didn't eat it all ourselves though, we took the goodies home to share. We also got hot apple pie mini doughnuts. I had read all about these apple cider mini doughnuts, but we weren't at the right stand. These doughnuts were good, but tasted very fried, I only ate one but my dad and the boys loved them. I found out that the real mini doughnuts I wanted were located at Snow-Line Orchard. These are the famous ones. Oh well, that gives me a reason to go back next year.




If you have kids there are tons of fun little activities to do. There are hay rides, petting zoos, pumpkin patches, and you can press your own cider. We could have stayed up there much longer than the three hours we did. There is so much to do and see and eat! It was definitely a great way to spend my birthday. I can't wait to go back next year.