Blueberry-Raspberry Cream Cheese Braid

I thought it was high time for a baking post. However, I am away at the moment staying with friends in their beautiful condo overlooking the Gulf of Mexico on Okaloosa Beach. What to do?! Find an easy recipe, requiring simple, easy to find ingredients and no fancy kitchen equipment. WordPress blogs to the rescue, and a great recipe from Diane’s Kitchen in Ohio. I saw this a few days ago and thought that it would be a nice thing to try.

I added some raspberries to the blueberries because I love that combination. You could use any combo of berries really, blackberries and raspberries would also be tasty I think. The hardest part of this recipe was locating items in an unfamiliar kitchen and working out how to turn the cooker on! I haven’t used a pack of Pillsbury crescent rolls for decades, and the dough is quite stretchy and difficult to fold over neatly. Mind you it was warm and humid this morning so that probably didn’t help. I was worried that blueberry juice would ooze out of the pastry while it was baking, but that didn’t happen at all. I imagine that’s the addition of flour to the berries.

Another hard part was waiting for the braid to cool down before eating it with coffee for a late breakfast, watching the waves crashing on the white sandy beach.

This recipe did not disappoint at all, and everyone loved it. The berries were a beautiful colour and oozingly juicy. Although my braid was not as neat as Diane’s, and the icing was a bit runny it still looked great. And the time/effort: result/taste ratio is definitely a positive one! Thank you very much Diane for a great recipe!

A more authentic Florida dessert would be Key Lime Pie. But that will have to wait until I get home, because a) I’m not going to start making pies on holiday, and b) you can buy a very good Key Lime Pie at the supermarket!