Cooking Challenges -- The Braid!

This is the second of Willow Bird Baking's Challenges.

The Task:

This week's challenge was to make our own Braid based on Julie's Raspberry Almond Braid.

The Changes:

My changes were small this time around. Instead of Raspberry, I used a jar of Peach preserves I had in the pantry. Instead of almonds, I used walnuts. Also, for the icing, I followed it as written, but also sprinkled in a little ginger and cardamon. It gave the icing a little kick to combat the sweetness.

The Results:

One of the easiest recipes ever! Instead of doing it in a food processor (mine's not big enough! *hint Santa*), I made the dough in a bowl with my pastry blender. Because I'm old-fashioned. Also, despite of my unevenish cutting of the strips on the side, it still looked really good. The only thing I might do differently is to put more filling in, I erred on the side of caution and the dough could have handled more I think. Since this was so easy (maybe just over 30 min start to finish) - I definitely see myself doing this again!

The Pictures:

Horizontally:



Vertically:

Tastbuds Say:

Yum! This is great breakfast food. I don't think I overworked the dough at all, and it still didn't come out airy and flaky, more like a pie crust consistency, which really works for this recipe. The addition of almond extract and the cream cheese also makes it a very full-tasting dough. (Did that make sense?)