Puff Pastry Cream Cheese Danishes

Defaulting to an easy process for generating a last-minute dessert last Monday night, I let refrigerated puff pastry dough rescue me from the lack of any other plan. Sweetened cream cheese filling was a cinch to whip up, and the requisite eggwash brushing gave a nice golden-brown shine to the outer edges (except where the generous dollop of filling had spread out and over). Perhaps over-browned once I pulled them from the oven...but our eager tackle of our respective rectangles was unhindered by any visual detractions.

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"Starbucks Cheese Danish (Better Than the Coffee Shop Version!)," by Chahinez Tabet Aoul of Lifestyle of a Foodie. [Updated 11 October 2025]

Apple Crisp Cheesecake Bars/Apple Chai Cream Cheese Strudel

Apple featured prominently in a couple of recent desserts here. The first of those was Friday a week ago, when a joyful gathering of dearest friends of the Roediger House occurred, and our sweet finisher was apple crisp cheesecake bars. I went to work on this marvel mid-day, prepping the brown sugar shortbread crust, whipping up the chilled rolled oat crisp topping, mixing together the vanilla bean cheesecake layer, and dicing a mix of Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples with sugar and spices. Once assembled, into the oven it went and by early afternoon it was ready to cool down and then be chilled. It’s been just shy of three years since I made a batch of these, and this was only their fifth appearance here. It was music to my ears to hear the high praise from the assembled crew, which signals pretty clearly that once every three years is not enough.

We ended up with only a couple of cheesecake bars left, but with fellow Tar Heel Kelly coming for the succeeding Sunday night meal, I took inspiration from its insufficient remains and created a variation for a different dessert: apple chai cream cheese strudel. Starting with refrigerated puff pastry saved me a lot of trouble; then I cooked some finely-diced Honeycrisp apple with plenty of brown sugar and cinnamon, and I whipped cream cheese with sugar and egg yolk and chai spice. The rolled-out puff pastry was sliced just so, in order to create an elegant strudel braid to seal it all up. A nice egg wash and some turbinado sugar sprinkled on top set it up for a proper baking time. I finished it off with an eggnog glaze just before serving up our plates to round out our Sunday dinner hour—and our bellies, I suppose!

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"Apple Crisp Cheesecake Bars," from Meghan McGarry of ButtercreamBlondie.com. [Published 03 October 2014 / Updated 09 December 2023]

Adapted from "Easy Apple Strudel with Puff Pastry,” by Hyegyoung K. (Holly) Ford, founder of the blog Beyond Kimchee. [Published 15 September 2021 / Updated 02 June 2025]

Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014 / Updated 25 April 2025]

Meal No. 3996: Bacon Cheeseburger Soup

I was really disturbed by the deep chill that rolled in to the northwest Piedmont on Thanksgiving and then lingered for almost three weeks. But if daytime temps are gonna remain in the low 30s on a Tuesday in early December, I’ll just go ahead and rail against it with a hearty pot of bacon cheeseburger soup. Well-seasoned and happily herbed, built from a Marsala-spiked mirepoix base, meaty with beef and bacon, populated with potatoes and with cheeses that pleases: our steaming bowls were eagerly attacked while a grey afternoon light barely penetrated the kitchen nook.

But kitchen pursuits were not wholly concluded with dinner cleanup, especially since that was National Pastry Day and I had something on my mind to prepare for it. While one is guaranteed of a far superior result if creating cream cheese danish pastries from scratch, as I did back in 2021, the trade-off involved in shortcutting the process with storebought refrigerated puff pastry does still have its compensations. That's how I handled dessert last Tuesday evening, knowing we were pretty full from that delicious soup, and still craving something sweet to finish up the night.

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Based on "Bacon Cheeseburger Soup," from Catalina Castravet and Holly Nilsson of SpendwithPennies.com. [Published 01 March 2018]

"Starbucks Cheese Danish (Better Than the Coffee Shop Version!)," by Chahinez Tabet Aoul of Lifestyle of a Foodie. [Updated 11 October 2025]

Puff Pastry Cinnamon Star Braid

A couple of refrigerated puff pastry rolls were ready for deployment after our carbonara supper last Wednesday, so I did a lousy job of crafting a cinnamon sugar star braid with them. But once baked, I served up delicious pastries with a vanilla sweet glaze that made it all much softer on the eyes and well-tuned to our tongues.

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Adapted from “Puff Pastry Star with Cinnamon Sugar,” from Rebecca Neidhart of Good Things Baking Company. [Published 30 September 2022]

Super Awesome Eggnog Ice Cream

While the weather last week was making me feel pretty blah, I still found something to celebrate: the deliciousness of a fresh batch of homemade eggnog ice cream (no actual eggnog was harmed in the making of this treasure!). The base was made last Tuesday, and the ice cream got its churning Wednesday morning, and then it was put away to set up in the freezer to be ready to serve after dinner on Friday night. And it wasn't alone: I also whipped up a chai-spiced sweet cream cheese and apple strudel, and they were a fine pairing!

Also, best I can tell from the blog, it's been almost three years since I made eggnog ice cream, and it's been almost four years since I used this particular recipe...in spite of how good it is!

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"Eggnog Ice Cream," from Bi-Rite Creamery's Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones, by Kris Hoogerhyde, Anne Walker, and Dabney Gough. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2012), p. 186-187.

Based on "Easy Apple Strudel with Puff Pastry," from Hyegyoung "Holly" K. Ford of BeyondKimchee.com. [Published 15 September 2021 / Updated 29 October 2023]

Apple Filling based on "Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]

Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]

Puff Pastry Cinnamon Twists

A little sweet treat was called for last Wednesday night, and I thought I'd try a fun new twist on dessert. I do mean that literally, because it was puff pastry cinnamon twists, with a vanilla glaze. I didn't know what the heck I was doing and I thought it was going to be a bit of a disaster...alas: apparently it's hard to mess up. Simple and delicious, not so very difficult, rewarding: all that adds up to success.

National Apple Strudel Day

Once more driven by the latest National Day of, the Roediger House celebrated National Apple Strudel Day with a puff pastry strudel and the side highlight of homemade sweet milk ice cream. Some dessert ideas are better realized than others, and last Monday's effort looked like it was going to fall short of what I'd envisioned. My own primary misstep was in preparing the apple filling too late in the process; it was still way too warm when I wanted to spoon it onto the bed of chai-spiced sweetened cream cheese. The other dilemma, which made it all so much worse, was the puff pastry was entirely too sticky to work with. I didn't leave enough time to return it to the fridge to chill more. So: a flat, poorly-filled, leaky apple cream cheese strudel was the closest I could come to improperly celebrate the occasion. And you know what? It was actually kind of perfect! The apple filling settled into the chai-spiked sweet cream, even though some oozing led to some losing. The frothed egg white brushed on before baking proved an excellent adherent for a generous dusting of cinnamon sugar, sort of in the direction of a cinnamon crunch bagel topping. And then there was the fantastic vanilla sweet milk ice cream, making this a surprisingly excellent Monday night dessert. No need to be careful when this is the sort of treat you wish for.

Update: The following Friday night, I repeated this strudel recipe, with a fresh batch of the sweetened chai-spiced cream cheese and the other half of the cooked apple filling. I did cook the pastry longer than I should have, so the result was not as good for this second round...but the ice cream was even better because (in the meantime, between first and second strudel nights!) I'd made a new batch of dense, chewy, New England-style vanilla ice cream. That was quite the crowning touch!

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Based on "Easy Apple Strudel with Puff Pastry," from Hyegyoung "Holly" K. Ford of BeyondKimchee.com. [Published 15 September 2021 / Updated 29 October 2023]

Apple Filling based on "Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]

Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]

"Sweet Milk Ice Cream," published in the King Arthur Flour catalogue some years ago, but no longer available on their website.

Apple & Chai Cream Strudel with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream

A night with Amy and Gern and Kristen and Mookie is all by itself going to be a wonderful evening, and true as ever was this the case last Saturday night. Following our huge meal of beef bourguignon, I was hoping to have a dessert that respected the change in weather that weekend, which was signalling more strongly that the season of autumn was upon us. Enter a wildly adapted concoction whose one shortcut was to employ a store-bought refrigerated puff pastry crust: apple and chai cream strudel. Everything about that dessert was a variation and creation from too much ideation, stealing notions here and tactics there from past recipes I've used. The outcome was passable, albeit grander in size and scope than our already-full bellies might have otherwise handled. We were dedicated conquerors, though.

I also decided to modify a dependably delicious ice cream recipe to scale up the quantity, which meant churning it in my old-fashioned electric ice-and-rock salt ice cream maker. I looked back at recipes from my friend and colleague Donna as well as a couple passed down from family to try to approximate the right approach. In the end, we had a fine and plentiful batch of brown sugar cinnamon ice cream as a seasonal addition to the braided pastry on our plates. I've written up what I did and added it as a clickable link below, with a downloadable pdf of that modified ice cream recipe.

The Latest Panhandler

Speaking of that quantity of ice cream, since there was enough to share, I took a container down the street to neighbors. As I was heading back home, an unfamiliar person approached me. “You look like you're wanting to talk with me," I called out. "What do you need?”

“A friend,” she replied.

“Well," I said, "since I don’t know you, I’m probably not that person. What do you need from that friend?”

“Some help,” she said.

“I have to tell you that Spring Street is a strange place to be looking for help. The good news is: Samaritan Ministries was hoping to help you. They planned for you. Bethesda Center was wanting to help you. They also planned for you. The Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army and Crisis Control Ministries and The Dwelling were all planning to be there for you. Why did you walk past where the help is, and come to where the help isn’t?”

Twenty years of downtown living has gotten me to a place of utter befuddlement about the panhandler dilemma, but I am working through my thoughts on why it is an off-kilter and confused situation, from my perspective. Perhaps that will be some lengthy future blog post. What I am convinced of at this point is that there is not a legitimate need that drives the pursuers of the hand-out on my street or on Restaurant Row. If there were, all these organizations dedicated to helping street people would be out here giving them money. Why do you suppose they don't think that's the best solution?

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Apple Filling based on "Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]

Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]

"Old-Fashioned Chest-Churned Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream," adapted by me from "Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream," from Heather Tullos of SugarDishMe.com. [Published 11 September 2015]

Cream Cheese Danishes / Pains au Chocolat

As if my recent foray into cream cheese danish pastry braids wasn't enough, I decided I had to tackle danish pastries themselves, just as I had done one other time back in March 2020. On this latest occasion, since I chose to go with the fancy Kerrygold Irish butter, it might have almost overwhelmed the dough, making the rolling and folding a bit of a challenge.

But the multi-layered laminated dough still turned out pretty darned awesome, even with notable flaws here and there, and it had absolutely no deleterious effect on the baked pastries that resulted. Oh my gosh, these cheese danishes were remarkable! They were an incredibly unwise lunch on the final Tuesday of June, with yet another also reheated after supper. I really liked the filling from a different recipe and substituted that for the one recommended by the danish pastry recipe author.

Oh, but the recipe makes plenty of dough for other forms of pastry, and on the final day of June I rolled out a bit more and formed it into chocolate croissants or, more precisely, pains au chocolat:

Yet again, we are talking about a wonderful pastry treat that feels like a special occasion out-of-the-ordinary creation!

Those two previous endeavors used up only half of the laminated dough, so with a good portion of the sweet cream cheese filling still in the fridge, I made four more cream cheese danishes for dessert on Thursday, July 1st. Here is a shot of one of them:

I think you get a decent sense of the flaky layering that results from the way the dough is prepared, with that thin layer of chilled butter and all the folding and rerolling and rechilling and folding and rolling and so on. If you've got the time and the patience, I'd say this is well worth the effort!

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Laminated Pastry Dough was guided by "Danish Pastries," from Michelle Lettrich, who blogs at BrownEyedBaker.com. [Published 03 March 2020]

Cream Cheese Filling was based on "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid", from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]

Cream Cheese Danish Braid

Time, inclination, resources, ingredients, disposition, and appropriateness are awfully hard to all bring together, and one of my kitchen challenges is to be ready to, and able to, make new recipes that I am intrigued by at a time that won't cause me problems with other goals (especially weight management!). A week ago was not an occasion of that elusive perfect alignment but I proceeded anyway with a dough endeavor: a cream cheese danish pastry braid.

Back on Tuesday, June 22, I worked up the yeast dough, tucked it away to rest and chill, made the sweet cream cheese filling, rolled out the dough, cut and wrapped it, chilled it some more...and then brought it out as a ridiculous dessert following dinner. Of course, it had to have a sweet glaze on it, as if things were not already out of control. The entire braid was consumed in two parts, all before bedtime.

Ah, but this recipe itself makes two parts, if you will: enough for two complete cream cheese pastry braids.

With the dough and cream cheese filling already made, all I had to do was unwrap that second dough disc, roll it out to the proper size, cut it strategically, line the filling down the middle, and then wrap and egg wash it.

So the following Thursday night, it took hardly any time at all to come up with a fresh new pastry braid, with a more practiced hand and a finer aesthetic result. And every bit as tasty as the first one.

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Based on "Homemade Pastry Dough (Shortcut Version)" [published 29 October 2013], and "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid" [published 16 February 2014], from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction.