This Pumpkin Cheese Danish Braid is easy but impressive, and perfect for your fall brunch! Crescent roll dough stuffed with spiced pumpkin and sweet cream cheese bakes up perfectly and so prettily!
I recently posted this Lemon Cream Cheese Danish Braid, which is the prettiest breakfast, brunch or snack ever! Well, it’s fall now, so naturally I needed to pumpkin-ify it! I figured swapping out the lemon curd with a sweet, spiced pumpkin filling would be just perfect for the season. And so the Pumpkin Cheese Danish Braid was born.
If you missed the lemon version, this braid is super easy to make! It uses a little shortcut– refrigerated crescent roll dough– which bakes up perfectly and SO prettily! The braid looks really impressive, but it’s pretty much foolproof.
I need easy recipes lately since we have a little baby drama going on. Molly started going to daycare a few mornings a week so that I could go back to work one day a week and get some blog/life things done on the other days. It was kind of amazing. You can actually get a LOT done in 3 hours when you really get to it! BUT. Turns out, my baby hates daycare. And after just 2 weeks she got kicked out!
OK, technically they can’t really kick you out. But every time she went she never, ever, ever stopped crying for them. And she hardly ever cries for me, so her little lungs were getting quite the workout. The first week they said “She’ll get used to it! Just keep bringing her!” Fast forward six traumatic visits, and the last day I took her they called me after just 45 minutes to come pick her up.
When I got there they told me, “Daycare just isn’t for some babies.” Which I took to mean, “We don’t want to listen to your screaming child anymore.” But really, I don’t want her to scream for 3-4 hours straight anyways. And soooo, I decided to stop torturing the little one and gave up some of my precious free time again.
I should note that one particularly great military benefit is $4/hour daycare. So this hatred is particularly tragic. I basically need to open a whole extra savings account for a babysitter, but I thought maybe having someone one-on-one in her own space might work better. Mom free time is priceless, right?
Luckily, a short trial stint this morning with a blonde babysitter who wears glasses similar to mom’s went pretty well. So maybe there is hope! Maybe just maybe I’ll start getting more than one recipe a week up here. Molly’s not making any promises, though.
For now, let’s enjoy fall, all things pumpkin, and make this delicious easy danish!
- 1 can refrigerated crescent roll dough
- 4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
- ¼ cup + 2 tbsp sugar, divided
- 1½ tbsp flour
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup pumpkin puree
- 1 egg
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp ginger
- Pinch nutmeg
- For the glaze:
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- 1 - 2 tbsp milk
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Using an electric mixer, cream together cream cheese, ¼ cup sugar, flour and vanilla extract.
- In a small bowl, combine pumpkin, egg, 2 tbsp sugar, and spices. Mix thoroughly.
- Roll the crescent roll dough out onto a parchment or silpat-lined baking sheet. Pinch the seams together as much as possible to make one solid piece of dough.
- Spread the cream cheese mixture and the pumpkin mixture long-ways down the center of the dough (see photo below).
- Using a sharp knife, cut ½-inch strips from the filling to the edge of the dough on both sides (see photo below).
- Starting at one end, fold the strips into the center, overlapping them over the middle of the filling.
- Once you get to the middle, start at the other end and fold remaining strips towards the middle in the same manner.
- Bake 25-30 minutes until dough is golden. Let cool completely on the baking sheet.
- To make the glaze, whisk the powdered sugar with 1 tbsp milk juice. Add additional milk until the glaze is runny enough to drizzle.
- Carefully move the braid to a wire rack and drizzle with glaze. Once the glaze sets, move the braid to a cutting board, slice and serve.
If you love this danish, don’t forget to check out the lemon version!
This is so beautiful, Jess, and I remember that lemon version! This would be such a delicious fall breakfast or brunch!
I just made this strudel and it was amazing! I substituted the spices for 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice and it still came out pretty good. The cream cheese was the best part, I’m going to use that part of the recipe alone for cinnamon rolls and other pastries.