Quick & Easy Cheese Danish

After finishing the Blackberry Lemon Cake I made for Easter last month I had about 2 cups of cream cheese frosting left. I didn’t want to toss it or put it in the refrigerator, since that meant I would have to use it within a few days and I had no clue what I would use it for, so I decided to freeze it. I know a lot of people freeze anything and everything, but I always have reservations when it comes to freezing baked goods and frosting. Slowly but surely though those reservations are going away.

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I wasn’t sure what I was going to use the frosting for at first. It crossed my mind that I could make a mini carrot cake. But then I remembered that I had puff pastry in my freezer as well so I decided that I would try to make Cheese Danishes with it.

To defrost the frosting I put it in the refrigerator overnight. Since it only consisted of cream cheese, butter and sugar I decided to stir in an egg yolk to help thicken the mixture.

After defrosting a sheet of puff pastry I sliced it into 4 squares and brushed the outer edges of each with an egg wash.

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I then folded the corners of each square and then folded the sides to form an octagon.

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Next I placed two tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture into the center of each square. I brushed the puff pastry with the remaining egg wash and sprinkled sugar on each.

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I baked them in a 400 F preheated oven for 14 minutes. Right out of the oven the cream cheese mixture was quite puffy…

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But, within 30 seconds the pastries had deflated. Considering that the cream cheese mixture browned considerably in the oven I could have probably taken them out a minute or so sooner, or, lowered the oven temperature. Regardless though, they were quite good and a good way to use the leftover frosting. I had enough frosting that I could have made 8 of these, but I decided to stick with 4 since I was testing the recipe out. The recipe below is for 8 Danishes, but, if you only have a cup of frosting left you can make 4 like I did.  

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