Cream Cheese Danish

Cream cheese danishes.

Cream cheese danishes.

 

These dainty breakfast treats are filling and much easier to make than you might think.

Ingredients for 3 servings

1 portion puff pastry dough

4 oz cream cheese

1 egg – separated

1 – 2 tbsp sugar depending on taste

Start by rolling out your puff pastry dough into a rough rectangle of about 18″ x 12″ (46cm x 31cm). You’ll be doing a bit of folding around the edges, so don’t worry about getting the dough to perfect proportions. Slice the dough into  six even sections.

Squares of pastry for danishes.

Begin folding in the edges to make a roughly circular rim. Start at one corner and work your way around.

Start folding and pinching at one corner.

Fold and pinch around the edge.

Continue until you have formed a roughly circular rim.

Form rims on remaining pastry squares. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese egg yolk, and sugar with a fork. It should be the consistency of a thick sauce. Spoon one sixth of the cream cheese mixture into the center of each danish circle. and put them on a foil-lined toaster oven baking sheet. Brush the egg white on the top of each pastry to help it brown more evenly.

Danishes ready to bake.

Puff pastry needs to bake evenly to puff up and become flaky. Use both top and bottom heating elements to cook your danishes and watch them carefully. I recommend cooking them for about 20 – 25 minutes, but this will depend on your toaster oven. If the tops of your danishes appear to be cooking too quickly, switch to the bottom heat source only until the last two or three minutes of baking. Usually a toaster oven will cook foods more quickly at either the front or back. So when you have about five minutes left, remove the  baking sheet and rotate it.

For a slightly faster method, you can smear the cream cheese filling diagonally across the pastry squares and then fold in opposite corners. Baking is done in the same way.

Alternative danish preparation.