Cream Cheese Cherry Danish

Good morning, everyone!  I hope everyone had a lovely Labor day yesterday!  Today, I'm going to talk about another lovely, easy breakfast!  With the holidays coming up, I thought it would be nice to post about an easy, delicious breakfast for all of the company that will, undoubtedly, come with the holidays!

I've done one other danish post before (you can see that here), which is another favorite of mine, and also very easy to put together.  I usually put my original danish recipe on my holiday rotation, but these just seem a little bit more festive, with the red cherries!

Here's your grocery list for this one:
1 sheet of puff pastry (this will make 6 danishes)

1 can of cherry pie filling

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon juice

1 egg beaten, for an egg wash

To start off with, thaw out your puff pastry.  I like to set mine on the counter for about 30 minutes, or you can also put it in the fridge to thaw out overnight.  Obviously, it will thaw out much quicker sitting on the counter for about 30 minutes.  If your puff pastry thaws out to the point that you can't unfold it, check out my previous danish post (again, you can find it here). 

Once your puff pastry thaws out, preheat your oven to 400*, and let's turn our attention to the cream cheese.  I normally use a hand mixer, but I just didn't feel like breaking it out this morning, so I just mixed it all by hand, and it worked out just fine.  I started off by creaming the cream cheese with the vanilla and the lemon juice.  This filling wasn't sweet, so if you're wanting a sweeter filling, feel free to add a tablespoon or so of sugar, or until it tastes sweet enough to you!

Set the cream cheese mixture aside, and dust your work surface with flour, lay your thawed out puff pastry over it, then dust the top of the puff pastry with a little bit of more flour.  Gently roll the puff pastry out, just a little bit, so that it is about 1-2 inches bigger on each side, so that if it starts off 8"x10", you'll end up with 10"x12".  I'm not sure what the starting size is, but you get the idea.
If you over roll out your puff pastry, it won't puff as much in the oven, so just be aware of that.  It's pretty forgiving stuff overall, though, so don't be afraid to work with it!

Cut this puff pastry up into 6 mostly equal pieces; I cut mine in half, and then into thirds with a pizza cutter.  A knife will work just as well, but, for me, a pizza cutter just works so much faster.  Once that is done, I scooped all of the cream cheese mixture into a zip top bag, and, like I always do, just cut the corner of it off, so that I have control over where it all goes.

This filling is enough for 4 big danishes, but I was okay with that, because my husband doesn't like cream cheese, so I just put the cherry pie filling in two of them by itself.  Squeeze out 1-2 Tbs of the cream cheese mixture onto the danishes, and top with 1 spoonful of the cherry pie filling.  I overfilled mine, causing them to open up while baking, but that's okay.  They're still pretty, and, more importantly, pretty tasty!  

I wrapped my danishes up, and moved them to a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  Using a pastry brush, brush the danishes gently with the egg wash, and bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated 400* oven, until they are golden brown and flaky!