Korean Melon Jam + Cream Cheese Pastries


Our Korean Melon adventures continue, this was the last one from our CSA basket from the previous week and we received another in our latest basket. I do appreciate the size of them, the melons are a great individual size rather than the large size of a cantaloupe or honeydew. Whenever we use them all of the melon can be used in one recipe. If you do not have access to Korean melons, honeydew melons are the most similar in taste and texture, but any type of melon would be fine in the jam. I removed quite a bit of sugar from the initial recipe, I thought these were sweet enough and I didn't think any extra sugar should have been added after trying the finished pastries. We ended up only using half of the melon jam and created six pastries in the finished product. The pastries were crisp and the melon jam and neufchatel cheese went together nicely.

Slightly adapted from Two Red Bowls.

Ingredients:
-1 Korean melon, chopped
-6 tablespoons of sugar
-1 teaspoon lemon juice, divided
-4 ounces of nuefchatel cheese, softened
-1 egg, beaten
-1/4 tsp vanilla extract
-1 frozen puff pastry, thawed

Korean Melon Jam

This can be done ahead of time. Simmer the melon with six tablespoons of sugar until the melon is soft. Stir in a 1/2 teaspoon of the lemon juice. In order to have a nice consistency, I blended the melon/sugar mixture for 10 seconds in the Magic Bullet. Refrigerate the jam until ready to use.

Pastries

Whisk together the nuefchatel cheese, half of the egg, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of the lemon juice, and the vanilla until the mixture is smooth. Whisk the remaining egg with water to create an egg wash for the pastries.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and cut the puffed pastry into 2x4" rectangles. On half of the rectangles spoon the jam (you will likely have leftovers, we only used about half of the jam we created) and the cheese filling. On the other half of the rectangles, score the tops and place the scored rectangles over the ones with filling to create the top. Use a fork to press the edges of the two pieces of puff pastry together. Brush the pastry with egg wash and bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.


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