I had bought some Pillsbury crescent rolls in the tubes to make at Thanksgiving time, but didn’t end up making them as my sister-in-law had brought some other rolls as well. So, the other day I went looking for something to make with the unopened rolls of dough. I had seen several times the recipe for the layered cream cheese concoction of cream cheese sandwiched between two layers of the crescent roll dough but instead, I came across several different YouTube videos on making cream cheese Danish instead.

Is it a Danish? Is it a pastry? Is it a kolache? Who knows, it is a semblance of all of them I guess and a lot easier than making actually pastry dough the old-fashioned way. Most of the recipes were similar in their approach and to make the easy pastry, Danish, kolache is as follows…

Open up the tube of crescent roll but do not unroll the dough.

Slice the tube of dough into six equal round discs.

Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and then using the bottom of a cup or bowl or jar, etc, press down each round til there is a depression in the center of the disc, and they are enlarged a bit.

Fill the center of the depression with a cream cheese mixture or with a dollop of fruit filling, or both.

The cream cheese mixture consisted of an 8oz. block of softened cream cheese, granulated sugar, an egg, and either a bit of vanilla or lemon juice.

Brush the Pastry with an egg wash (I didn’t). and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

You can drizzle on a powdered sugar glaze which was optional.

With a little bit more tinkering I think it could be a pretty good easy go to idea for breakfast for company or just for family. I think next time I would try it with frozen puff pastry instead and maybe try adding the fruit filling along with the cream cheese filling.

I’ll give the recipe a B or B+.