Apple Cream Cheese Danish

Christmas morning is usually the big pastry holiday in our house, but this Thanksgiving I decided to make my own pastry. Last year my mom made too big of a breakfast and a lot of us remember not being as hungry for the main feast as we would have liked. I came across this blog post on Annies Eats and I knew it was time for me to try my first pastry. She adapted the recipe from Baking Illustrated and her step by step instructions make it look really easy. But it doesn't only look easy, it really was easy! It does take a while though, I started it the day before, but I repeat, it is easy. To make the dough you have to fold, and turn, and kneed in butter, and refrigerate and do it all over again a few times. So it does take some advanced planning, like I said, I did it the day before I wanted to cook it. But all that time is so worth it. This was delicious. I made two. Well actually I made one and Garrett made one. But that still wasn't enough to feed our big breakfast crew. The cream cheese was a great addition to the apple filling, but I did make part of it with just apples. Our favorite Christmas pastry is pineapple cream cheese, and I can't wait to make this again and try that and other fillings. I'm posting my pictures below of how to assemble the danish after the dough is made, but visit Annie's site for great step by step instructions for the whole process.

Apple Cream Cheese Danish