Raspberry Danish

This easy Raspberry Danish recipe combines fresh raspberries, sweetened cream cheese, and flaky puff pastry for a delicious breakfast or dessert. 

Danishes made with puff pastry need only 6 ingredients to achieve crispy, buttery, creamy, fruity deliciousness. Once you’ve tried your hand at these raspberry danishes, be sure to check out my Apricot Danish and Cherry Danish with Puff Pastry recipes too. 

Jump to:

• Why Make This Recipe
• 🥗 Ingredients
• 🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions
• 🧐 Recipe FAQs for Raspberry Danishes
• 👩‍🍳 Expert Tips
• Other Puff Pastry Recipes
• 📖 Recipe
• More About Molly

Why Make This Recipe

• So easy: 6 ingredients including store-bought puff pastry, and the prep will only take you 15 minutes. 
• Flaky perfection: Using puff pastry gives you bakery-quality danishes, with layers of buttery pastry to surround your filling. 
• Seasonal: These cream cheese danishes are the perfect way to use in-season raspberries (or whatever other fruits or berries might be in season). 

🥗 Ingredients

• Raspberries: Fresh raspberries are lovely with this recipe, but you could replace these with frozen raspberries. Just defrost and pat dry with a paper towel to try to remove some of the moisture. You could also replace with a dollop of raspberry jam.
• Cream Cheese: We usually use Philadelphia brand cream cheese, but you can use whatever brand you like. 
• Puff pastry: Homemade puff pastry dough is quite delicious. I highly recommend Cathy Barrow’s quick puff pastry recipe if you have the time to make it. If not though, store-bought puff pastry dough works just fine! 
• Powdered Sugar: Did you know that if you don’t have powdered sugar, you can add regular granulated sugar to a blender and blend until you get that powdered texture? It works!

🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions

Defrost puff pastry dough and keep in the refrigerator until you are ready to use. Add 4 ounces cream cheese, 1.5 ounces powdered sugar, and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract to a medium bowl. Use a mixer to blend until smooth.

Note: taste your raspberries to see how sweet they are. If your raspberries are quite tart, you may want to add more powdered sugar to your cream cheese mixture. In a small bowl, whisk together one egg with a tablespoon of cold water and a pinch of salt. 

Remove puff pastry dough from the refrigerator. Sprinkle a little bit of flour over your counter or a large cutting board. Roll out pastry dough into a square, 10.5 inches on all sides and about ⅛-inch thick. As you roll, flip the dough over and add more flour to the board if the dough sticks.

Cut into 9 squares of 3.5 inches x 3.5 inches in size. Place a dollop of cheese mixture (a little less than 1 tablespoon) into the center of each pastry square. This is easy to do with a small cookie scoop.

Top with a few raspberries (about 4), then paint a small amount of egg wash on one corner of the pastry square as you bring it up over the opposite corner and squeeze together to seal.

Put egg wash in the refrigerator for later. 

Next, chill the pastries before baking. If you have a sheet pan that will fit in your freezer, line it with parchment paper and carefully place the pastries on it before moving it into the freezer.

If a sheet pan won’t fit, line a plate with parchment paper, and place the pastries on that. Freeze pastries for at least 30 minutes, until they are quite firm. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

After at least 30 minutes in the freezer, place pastries a couple of inches apart on a parchment-paper lined sheet pan (if they are not already on one). Then paint all exposed pastry with egg wash using a pastry brush.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until pastries are cooked through and golden brown. Sprinkle with powdered sugar to serve, if you like. 

🧐 Recipe FAQs for Raspberry Danishes

👩‍🍳 Expert Tips

Working with puff pastry dough is the hardest part of this recipe. First, you need to defrost it. Defrosting the dough in the refrigerator is recommended, but if you need to defrost puff pastry dough in a hurry, you can leave it out at room temperature. Turn it over at least once, and check every 5-10 minutes to see whether it is ready. The dough should still be cold, but pliable. Next, you need to work quickly because once the dough warms up, it is difficult to work with and won’t keep its shape. If the dough becomes too soft, put it back into the refrigerator to firm up. 

Don’t worry if the edges of your puff pastry apricot turnovers become unsealed during baking—the point is just to make sure the filling stays inside as the pastries bake. Raspberries can burst a little as well. If they come out of the filling, just pop them back over the cream cheese before serving. 

Ready to try more flavor combinations? Raspberries work so well with other ingredients, and you can add lots of different flavors to your puff pastry raspberry turnovers. Add blueberries, blackberries, or apple chunks to the filling or try adding lemon zest and a little juice to the cream cheese to make a lemon raspberry danish. 

Looking for more ideas for fresh raspberries? We love to use them to top Greek yogurt along with our Almond, Pecan, and Pumpkin Seed Granola. Raspberries also make a delicious parfait filling—just replace the strawberries in this Strawberry Parfait with Mascarpone Cream recipe or the mangoes in this Mango Coconut Yogurt Parfait. You can also freeze them to use later in a smoothie. Finally, try them in a baked crumble or crisp recipe, either by themselves or mixed with another fruit or berry—see this Peach Blueberry Crisp recipe for inspiration. 

Other Puff Pastry Recipes

Got an extra sheet of puff pastry from the box you used for this raspberry cheese danish recipe? Puff pastry is fantastic for both sweet and savory recipes. Why not use it to make another one of our favorite puff pastry recipes:

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