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Mealtime with Meredith: DIY cheese danishes

an hour or so to fully cool before indulging, though I enjoy them hot. 

Additional danishes can be stored in airtight Ziploc bags for up to a week.

This recipe makes 10 servings, so you can enjoy these danishes throughout the week or bring them to a holiday party as a special treat!

One of my favorite Starbucks treats is its cheese danish.

These danishes have a flaky puff pastry base and a sweet cheese topping that adds both creaminess and a vanilla flavor to the treat. 

However, I have always been a little bit ambivalent about Starbucks food. 

Given the baked goods are mass-produced and frozen far in advance, they never quite taste fresh, and $3.65 is quite the price tag for a frozen danish.

Hence, for this week’s Mealtime with Meredith column, I decided to explore a longtime ambition of mine: Could I recreate the Starbucks cheese danish at home, and could I make it taste better than the original bakery item?

While researching, I found that food blogger Lifestyle of a Foodie had created an easy copycat Starbucks cheese danish recipe. 

While I didn’t copy her recipe directly, as I wanted to customize the flavor of my danish a bit more, her recipe taught me the basic building blocks of the danish: puff pastry dough, neufchatel cream cheese, vanilla extract and sugar.

Photo by Meredith Perkins | The Miami Student
This Cheese danish only requires six ingredients, some of which are pictured above.

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For my recipe, I wanted to create both copycat danishes and cinnamon cream cheese danishes: a twist that would provide a deeper flavor profile than the typical Starbucks recipe.

This beginner-friendly recipe is ideal for anyone looking to save money — my danish is 75 cents per portion, nearly one-fifth of the cost of a Starbucks danish — and to bake a quick treat. This recipe can be finished in less than 30 minutes.

I start by preheating my oven to 400 degrees.

Then, I unroll my bundle of pre-made refrigerated puff pastry dough on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and divide the puff pastry sheet into 10 squares with a pizza cutter or knife. 

I then spread the danish rectangles on two cookie sheets so each danish has enough room to cook.

After, I combine one stick of softened cream cheese, a teaspoon of vanilla and three tablespoons of sugar with a spatula in a medium bowl. If you want more cream cheese per danish, I recommend using 1.5 sticks of cream cheese and increasing the vanilla and sugar to taste.

Once the cream cheese mixture is combined, scrape the mixture into a plastic bag and cut a 1-inch hole at the corner to make a DIY-piping bag. Add cream cheese to the middle of each danish, making sure to leave at least an inch of room at the edges.

If you want to make cinnamon danishes, sprinkle cinnamon on top of half of the danishes or combine cinnamon into your cream cheese. You could also make pumpkin spice danishes by adding pumpkin pie spice, if you prefer.

After the cheese is added, the danishes are ready to bake. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, switching the two cookie sheets to different racks halfway through to ensure they cook evenly.

If you want to mimic the Starbucks danish texture, wait an hour or so to fully cool before indulging, though I enjoy them hot. 

Additional danishes can be stored in airtight Ziploc bags for up to a week.

This recipe makes 10 servings, so you can enjoy these danishes throughout the week or bring them to a holiday party as a special treat!

perkin16@miamioh.edu

Photo by Meredith Perkins | The Miami Student
Perkins' cheese danish recipe pairs perfectly with one’s morning coffee.

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