Strawberry Cream Cheese Danish

This month I was assigned to The PinterTest Kitchen, which is a blog written by Sharon and her two daughters, Allison and Jessica. They go through the popular recipes we all see pinned over and over again on Pinterest and make them, letting us know if its really worth our time and effort to try something out.

That's genius. I mean, really. I can't tell you the number of recipes I've pinned simply because they looked good and then went to make them, only to realize the recipe didn't include steps for most of the ingredients or the comments said that the recipe didn't turn out at all. Now, I've been cooking for a while now and I can usually figure out what needs to be done without instructions, but not everyone is like that, and having this great group of ladies testing recipes out for you and saving you that hassle, is totally worth it.

I had a really hard time figuring out what to make, mainly because I wanted to make everything. Finally I decided on danishes because I realized I've never made them before.

Since I love peaches, I really wanted to make this with peach jam but I didn't really want to end up with another partially used jar of jam or jelly that would live in the back of my refrigerator for an indeterminable amount of time before I finally figured out something to do with it or it passed the expiration date. I had just a tiny amount of strawberry preserves left in a jar so I decided to switch this to a strawberry version to use them up.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Danish
Source: Sharon of The PinterTest Kitchen
Servings: 12
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Ingredients:

• • 1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
  • 4 oz. cream cheese
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • ½ tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp. heavy cream (or milk)
  • 2 tbsp. strawberry jam (or your preferred flavor)
  • 1 large egg + 1 tbsp. water
  • sugar, for sprinkling
  • for the icing:
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 1-2 tbsp. water (or milk)
  • ¼ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Unfold the puff pastry and cut into 3 sections at the folds. Cut each section into 4 equally sized parts, for a total of 12 pieces.
3. Use the tip of a sharp knife to score a rectangle about ½" from the edges. Be careful not to cut all the way through the pastry or it will not rise.
4. Combine the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla extract together in the bowl of your stand mixer (or use a hand mixer) and beat together until smooth. Spoon a teaspoon of the cream cheese filling into the center of each puff pastry rectangle.
5. Add a small dollop of the strawberry jam on top of the cream cheese filling and swirl with a toothpick.
6. In a small bowl, beat together the egg and water and brush the egg wash on the outside square of each pastry. Sprinkle with sugar if desired. (Regular sugar is fine, sanding sugar or sugar in the raw will give it a crunch when baked)
7. Bake for 13-14 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool.
8. Meanwhile, prepare the icing by adding the powdered sugar to a bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of water or milk and the vanilla and stir with a fork until it has thickened and formed a glaze. If the glaze is too thick, add the remaining tablespoon of water or milk drop by drop until the right consistency is reached.
9. Drizzle the glaze over the danishes with a spoon.

These are delicious! Like really, really good! I don't know why I remember store-bought danishes to just be an "okay" tasting breakfast option because you might have a really hard time only eating one, or two or lets be real, three of these.