Mini Cranberry Cheese Danishes
These mini cranberry cheese Danishes are the perfect size and pack a ton of flavor!
I made these single-serving mini Danishes with a cranberry cheese filling. I got a bit carried away with the filling quantity; like a kid with a bowl full of Halloween candy and a tummy already aching, I couldn’t help myself. I kept over-stuffing because I wanted to eat all of that filling!
When presented with a breakfast tray of pastries, I typically avoid Danishes. They are always huge and seem like they will cause a guaranteed food coma within the hour. Secondly, while cupcakes, muffins, and cookies are still delicious at room temperature, cooled puff pastry always has that guy-with-too-much-hair-gel feel to me.
Most of us have experienced the joy of hot-out-of-the-fryer donuts (if you haven’t – get on it!). Hot-out-of-the-oven Danishes are a less common but equally magical experience.
If anyone refused to eat these hot bundles of buttery, cheesy, sweet, and tart joy because of a little extra filling creeping out the side, well then, more for me!
(Sara Coba posted on Cupcake Project’s Facebook wall that she wanted advice on making mini Danishes. It took a while, but here they are.)
Preparation Tips
To prepare the mini Danishes, you could just wrap some puff pastry around a glob (a heaping tablespoon) of filling, press to seal at the top, and then bake in a cupcake liner. However, I wanted mine to have a braided effect. You can decide for yourself whether it’s worth the effort.
Press a 3 1/2 inch square of puff pastry dough into a cupcake liner in a cupcake tin.
Fill with a heaping tablespoon of filling, or less if you don’t like filling explosions.
Use kitchen scissors to cut two sides of the pastry square into small strips (4 or 5 strips on each side).
Here’s an overview of what this looks like.
Cross the top strip from one side over to the bottom of the other side.
Repeat with the top strip on the opposite side.
Keep alternating until you’ve reached the liner.
Fold down the extra bits at the top and the bottom of the mini Danish and press to seal. If you have a lot of extra dough on the ends, trim it off.
Mini Cranberry Cheese Danishes
Ingredients
- 8 ounces cream cheese room temperature
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 large egg yolks room temperature; reserve some of the egg whites to brush on top of the pastry
- 2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons cranberry jam I used my homemade cranberry jam. You could also use any other flavor of jam that you like.
- 12 ounces puff pastry This is most of a store-bought box. Use any leftovers to make croissants filled with chocolate!
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 F.
- In a medium-sized bowl, mix the cream cheese and sugar until smooth.
- Slowly mix in the egg yolks, ricotta, vanilla, and jam until just combined.
- Prepare the danishes as shown below.
- Brush the tops with egg whites.
- Bake for 20 minutes or until they are puffed and just starting to brown.
- Serve hot!
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