Three Girls Cook: Baked Brie

Last weekend I met up with two friends and we made Paula Dean's Brie en Croute #2. Oh, should I say, I took pictures and they made this treat for us. It all looked pretty simple though.

I'm going to list the recipe here as

Ingredients:

• 1 sheet frozen puff pastry (package comes with 2 sheets)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 1 small (8 oz.) wheel Brie
• 1/2 cup raspberry jam
• 2 eggs, beaten

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Defrost 1 sheet of puff pastry for approximately 15 to 20 minutes and unfold (place remaining sheet in freezer for later use).
3. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Saute nuts in butter until golden brown, approximately 5 minutes.
4. Spread the jam on top of the Brie and place the nuts on top of the jam.
5. Gently roll pastry with a rolling pin to increase the size of the sheet 1 to 2 inches in each direction. Brush both sides of the sheet with beaten egg.
6. Center the wheel of Brie on top of the pastry sheet. Bring all four corners of the sheet together above Brie and twist slightly to form a "bundle."
7. Tie gathered pastry with kitchen/cooking string (tie string in the form of a bow), arranging pastry until you are satisfied with the "bundle" shape.
8. Place "bundle" on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes until pastry is golden brown. Serve with top-quality crackers.

So the original directions say to put the jam on top of the nuts, but I guess the video on the site shows it being done with the nuts on top of the jam. At any rate, we did the latter here obviously, and the recipe I copied reflects that. Oh, and we chose walnuts.

The key to making sure the dough is going to fit around the cheese seems to be to roll it out pretty well and get it to stretch as much as possible.

That way, when you fold it over the cheese, all the cheese will be covered will stay contained within the pouch. Or "bundle" as Paula calls it.

The folding was actually a little bit tricky, as the dough was prone to tearing.

One of the things we realized that if the dough did tear a little bit, you can use some pieces from the ends to repair the tears, or use some of the dough from the extra sheet.

The folding continues until...

the brie is finally contained in a nice little bundle! Into the oven on a baking sheet you go, bundle of brie.

Finally, about 25 minutes later, we brought out the now golden brown bundle. And then we dug in to the deliciousness. I don't think I even really waited for the gooey cheese to cool. It doesn't get much better than this!