Cheese Danish

Published March 13, 2023

When I visit diners or bakeries, one of my favorite treats to order is cheese danish. I love that they have fillings and toppings such as almonds, fruits, and more.

This week, I decided to make cheese danish at home and customize it with my favorite preserves — apricot and black cherry.

Ingredients for Homemade Cheese Danish

I used store bought puff pastry for this recipe, which made this much easier to bake.

For the filling, you can choose to leave the recipe as is and enjoy the vanilla flavor. I wanted to try a customized version, so I have listed my two favorite preserves — black cherry and apricot. This allowed me to have some variety of flavors and colors for the cheese danish. You’re welcome to customize your flavors based on your preferences.

How to Make Cheese Danish

Tools for this Recipe

• One medium bowl

• Spoon for stirring the filling

• A tablespoon, teaspoon, and butter knife for the filling / preserves

• Measuring spoons

• Two Parchment-lined cookie sheets

• A sharp knife for cutting the puff pastry

• A fork, brush, and bowl for the egg wash

Cooking Notes

A few notes to keep in mind:

1. Ensure your cream cheese is softened to make it easier to mix. I rested mine near the oven while it was pre-heating and it softened it.

2. The puff pastry does not have to be 100% thawed before you work with it. Mine was 85% thawed and was still malleable. You may notice if your puff pastry is still frozen that it cracks while folding the edges down. That’s fine as long as it is still attached to the bottom dough.

3. Don’t be alarmed if you see the puff pastry rise while baking. Once the danishes are removed from the oven, the pastry dough will fall and the danishes will look like their classic circular shape.

Final Product

I’m excited with how the cheese danish turned out! They were much easier to bake than I expected, and I could see myself preparing them in the morning for breakfast. It does not take long to whip up the filling and most of the time is spent baking them in the oven. I loved all of the flavors of filling and could see this as an easy way to customize the filling for people’s preferences.

Recipe Score

I give this cheese danish recipe a 10/10 for the following:

• Recipe Level

  • Easy: There’s no going wrong with this recipe. The eggless filling means you could eat the filling raw (it’s cream cheese with flavoring). The store bought puff pastry removes the complexity of puff pastry from scratch, and makes it easy to fold and assemble the danishes.

• Ingredients

  • You should be able to find all of these ingredients at your local grocery store. You can customize the puff pastry with additional flavor and color by adding preserves or jam, which you may already have on hand. If you’d like a sweeter cheese danish, you could even drizzle some icing across the top.

• Prep

  • The only prep to do is preheat your oven and let the cream cheese soften.

• Flavor

  • 10/10: The airy puff pastry, creamy filling, and mellow fruit flavor makes this a glorious treat to eat hot from the oven.

K. Martinelli Makes Cheese Danish

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