Cheese Puffs Pastries

 

 I cannot take any sorts of credit for this recipe. A dear sweet friend up in Washington, Lisa, gave it to me. I'm posting it here mainly so I won't lose it. They're that good.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of cheese danishes and/or pastries. My honey on the other hand LOVES them so when Lisa posted a picture I asked for the recipe. And they are incredibly easy to make.

It was so hard waiting for them to cool! Starting from the back: Plain, Blackberry Peach Jam, Orange Spice Marmalade and Elderberry Jelly

 

The blackberry peach was my favorite. The orange spice was my honey's favorite though all of them are so good. You can use any type of jam or jelly on them really. We just used what I had in my fridge. Too bad we had already finished off Lisa's Marionberry Jam than she had sent us for Yule. That would have been amazing on it. And they are even better the next day. At least to me they were. The cream cheese and the jam had more time to get happy together and soak into the puff pastry. With a cup of coffee or a strong breakfast tea....HEAVEN! 

The best thing it was really easy to make.

Cheese Puff Pastries

• 1 sheet of puff pastry, thawed
• 1 8 oz block of softened cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Jam/Jelly/Marmalade optional

Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla together. It's important to make sure the cream cheese is room temperature. This helps making sure it's a smooth creamy texture. 

Take the sheet of puff pastry and cut into squares. You can use a regular muffin tin and make 12 smaller pastries. As you can see I used the jumbo muffin tins for 6. (I made a double batch). Put a heaping tablespoon (if you are using a regular muffin tin, start with a heaping teaspoon, you can always add more) of the cream cheese mixture in the middle of a square and fold it up and place into a muffin tin that has been sprayed with Pam or equivalent. Place a teaspoon of topping if desired on top.

Bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 30 mins. Note: it only took about 22 minutes in my oven as it runs hot so keep an eye on it.

Note:  I suggest if you are putting any jam on top to decrease the amount of cream cheese filling slightly, maybe just a tablespoon instead of a heaping tablespoon. As you can tell from my pictures, they did overflow a little bit, which led to some slight darker color around some of the sides. It's the jam's sugars carmelizing. You could also add the jam during the cooling process but we wanted a more integrated flavor. 

Hope you enjoy and THANK YOU LISA for sharing the recipe!

Lemon Scones

My husband and I love scones. It is not something I make often though, I don’t want us to get tired of them. I promised that I would make him some this weekend and he requested that I make Lemon Scones. This recipe turned out so yummy. The scones was tender and flaky. They were dense but not heavy as some scones can be. They were soooooo good.

Lemon Scones
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter (one stick cut into pieces)
1 cup heavy cream
zest of one lemon
2 tablespoon lemon juice
Additional sugar

Mix all the dry ingredients together with a fork. Add the butter pieces and mix until it resembles coarse crumbs. Add zest, lemon juice and cream and mix until incorporated. It is easiest to mix with your hands at this point to get it mixed. Trust me. Place dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times. Pat the dough into a circle about 1/2 inch thick. Cut into pieces – you can get anywhere from 4 to 8 pieces depending on how big you cut them.
Lightly brush the flour off the dough before placing on a greased cookie sheet. Make sure you have at least an inch of space in between the scones on the baking sheet. Sprinkle some sugar over the tops. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. I normally start checking them at 10 minutes. You want them to turn to just a light golden brown. Let scones cool for about 10 minutes before glazing and serve.

Glaze
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar – shifted
1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Shifting the sugar helps eliminates the clumps. Slowly mix the lemon juice until smooth. If you want the glaze to be thinner you can add a little milk to it but do so a teaspoon at a time.

Enjoy!