Cheshire Cat Tails

April 13, 2020 Kungaloosh Radio

I’ve always wanted to make those delicious pastries from the Cheshire Café. Unfortunately, there are hardly any recipes online, and many are missing some of the key ingredients. These snacks are a “twist” on the classic chocolate danish recipe.

There’s still debate whether these things contain cream cheese or not. Some online reviews call for curd, while others say they just contain chocolate chips. I went with the most fattening option: cream cheese and chocolate chips.

We are going to start with:

1 puff pastry sheet
4 ounces cream cheese
1 large egg yolk (reserve the white)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 1/2 ounces baking chocolate or 6 tablespoons chocolate chips

There are two items you will need to bring up to room temperature before starting on these treats: the puff pastry and cream cheese. The pastry should be soft enough for you to work with it. If it’s frozen, let it sit for about 40 minutes. A refrigerated pastry will only need 5 minutes of rest time. You should give the cream cheese an hour at room temperature before mixing it with the other ingredients.

First things first, you want to preheat the oven at 400F degrees and get your baking pan greased for the tails.

Once the cream cheese is softened, we’re going to add the cream cheese, egg yolk, vanilla, and sugar. You want to mix it until smooth. There will be a few lumps in the mixture. My mix is a little curd-y because I failed to let the cream cheese fully soften…oops.

Now is the time for the pastry part. Remember, don’t buy pie crust pastry. They won’t puff to give you a flaky crust.

You want to dust a solid surface with some flour to prevent sticking. Once you have down that, lay out one sheet of the pastry. I rolled it out just for a little texture.

You need to carefully spread out the cream cheese mixture over the pastry. It will look a little crudy, but that’s okay.

Next, you want to add the chocolate chips to the top of the cream cheese mix. I went with the semi-sweet ones for this dessert. Spread those evenly across the pastry.

Now that everything is layered, you will want to carefully place the second pastry sheet (rolled out) on the top of this pastry. As you go along the edges, make sure to seal them so that you don’t get a chocolate/cream cheese eruption as you bake them. I also trimmed along edges for a nice uniformed look.

You want to cut the pastry into 6 equal strips. Grab one of the strips and use your other hand to twist the pastry. That will give you the twisty part of the tails. Place them on your baking sheet or pan.

I beat one egg and added a little water for an egg wash. You want to brush that on the pastry before you add to them to the oven.

I baked them at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. But keep on eye on them, they tend to bake up pretty fast.

We can now get started on the icing. You will need:

1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons milk
Purple and pink food coloring

Add the milk in by a tablespoon at a time. You want to have a slightly thick frosting. Unlike me, I made the icing a little runny, and it didn’t hold up on the pastry. Once you get the right consistency, you want to separate the mixture into two bowls. I had pink and purple food color, so that worked out great.

All this time, you need to check on the pastries. When they are golden brown, they are ready to take out of the oven. You want to let them cool down before adding the frosting, or you could end up with a messy Cheshire tail.

Now the icing was thick until it hit the pastry. There was one recipe that called for butter in the icing and only a tablespoon of milk.

The one mistake I made with these was the frosting. I made the powdered sugar too runny and it didn’t want to stick to the pastry. For further batches, you want a thicker consistency for the pink and purple frosting, so you will need a piping bag to add the finishing touches.

Anyway, these turned out really great, but the tails are extremely sweet. You can grab one and be on a sugar rush for the entire day.

This was an extremely sweet croissant, and the end result was a huge treat I could barely finish. After I ate one, I spent the day on a sugar rush. I felt like Cosmo Kramer walking down the street.

There are a few things I would do differently.

One pastry sheet and fold it over, instead of rolling out two

Powdered sugar instead of granulated for the cream cheese mix, or leave out the cheese mix together.

Add butter to the icing and reduce the milk.