This Lemon Cream Cheese Danish Braid is easy but impressive, and perfect for your next brunch! Crescent roll dough stuffed with lemon curd and sweetened cream cheese bakes up perfectly and so prettily!
Back in the spring, I spent a day with Nick’s aunt learning how to can things! I’m not sure why it’s called “canning” when you’re actually using jars. Shouldn’t it be “jarring”?
Anyways, we were at it the whole day and canned several different things, including pickled green beans, pickled asparagus, pickled carrots, pickled onions, homemade grapefruit marmalade, and– my favorite– homemade lemon curd! She’d gotten a boat load of grapefruit and lemons from her brother’s trees so we thought we’d try out a couple new recipes.
The grapefruit marmalade was definitely interesting. A little more bitter than the traditional orange. I like it, but it definitely wasn’t a crowd favorite. Nick loves it, though not on toast– he uses it in his favorite cocktail, an old fashioned! This bitter and citrus is the perfect combination for the drink. We broke out all the pickled veggies for a Bloody Mary bar one weekend. The dilly green beans were my favorite!
The lemon curd was by far the best of all of our creations. I might be biased since I love lemon desserts, but it seemed to be a huge hit with everyone else as well. We had a brunch for Easter and I used the first of the lemon curd in this yummy Lemon Cream Cheese Danish Braid. Everyone went crazy over it.
Considering the response, I’m not sure why it’s taken this long to recreate this treat! I was cleaning out my pantry the other day and found a few jars of our lemon curd, so I decided to make it again. With all my energy going towards feeding the baby, I’ve been craving sweets like crazy. This definitely hit the spot.
Besides how delicious it is, the thing I love most about this Lemon Cream Cheese Danish Braid is how pretty it is. I’m always a little nervous when I’m putting it together that it’s not going to come out perfectly, but that dough really does its thing in the oven and the braid comes out looking beautiful!
It’s pretty easy to make since I use crescent roll dough from a can. One thing I’ve definitely learned as a mom– take shortcuts when you can! If you can find the non-perforated crescent roll dough (I can only find it at certain stores, and sometimes only at the holidays), use that. But if not, the regular kind will work just fine. Just pinch the perforations together. Though we made our lemon curd from scratch, if you don’t want to you can definitely use a jar from the store.
- 1 can refrigerated crescent roll dough
- 4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1½ tbsp flour
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 8 oz jar lemon curd
- For the glaze:
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- 1 - 2 tbsp lemon juice
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Using an electric mixer, cream together cream cheese, sugar, flour and vanilla extract.
- 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 lemon curd 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 lemon juice. Add additional lemon juice 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.
Enjoy!
I would love to start canning (or jarring!) — it’s so much work I would need help! Having jars of homemade lemon curd in the pantry would be trouble for me — I love it so much. This braid looks fantastic and adding cream cheese was a great idea!
Lemon curd is the best but I’ve never canned it. Didn’t occur to me that you could for some reason! I will definitely have to do that now. And then make this danish!