TWD: Cottage Cheese Pufflets

First, can I start out by saying that hosting was so much fun! The validation of all the comments made my low self-esteem rise just a bit for the week. I'll get to do it again in about a year and a half. ;-) Seriously, thanks for all the great comments. Seems the recipe I chose was a winner.

Now on to this week. I really liked the finished product. All two of them that actually came out... This was a TOUGH recipe in execution. In theory, it's simple. Just whir together some ingredients in the processor, chill your dough, roll, and then bake.

If only.

My food processor is a big one -- 14 cups. I had to make the full recipe of dough or it wasn't happening. In hindsight, I should have used my (slightly hated) mini prep and quartered the recipe. The butter kept creeping up on top of the blade and I had to stop a zillion times to push it down. The rest of the ingredients went in just fine. I got my VERY sticky dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and I put it in the fridge. Four hours or so later, I took out a quarter of the dough and rolled it out in a plastic bag. (The rest was well wrapped and put into the freezer) The bag went into the freezer. After what I had read from other bakers I figured it was a safer bet.

In the time that it took me to cut the three edges of the plastic bag off, the dough had become soft. Back into the freezer. Then I realized that it was too thick. Now I put it between two sheets of plastic wrap, rolled some more, and then it went back into the freezer. It came out, I cut it into squares, and.... it was already too cool and wouldn't transfer to the pan. I got two squarish pieces, I dabbed some jam in them, and then I dumped the rest of the dough onto the pan.

They baked. They browned. They were delicious! They were, however, such a huge pain to work with that I'm not sure what to do with the rest of the dough. Any suggestions? What bummed me out is that I've done a recipe for cottage cheese pastry before and it was much easier to work with. Maybe I'll post that one later in the week.

Here are the two that actually came out shaped and filled.

Here is the "dumped" set. I scored them on the plastic wrap and tried to separate them. Didn't work. So I just turned it out onto the parchment and dabbed some jam on.

Anyway, we liked the flavor. Even the dumped and topped ones. Oh, I used some cherry jam that I made with this recipe from David Lebovitz.

Thank you to Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes for getting us to try something new. Go check out her blog to see what these are supposed to look like.

*** Edited to add: I just looked at my other recipe. It calls for the same amount of butter and cottage cheese but two cups of flour. I think that extra 1/3 of a cup makes a huge difference in handling.