Raspberry Cream Cheese Pastries

I’m switching it up for my latest recipe!  If you have been following me for a while (and thank you for those that have!) I usually stick to really healthy dishes made with simple ingredients.  While I think this dessert still follows those rules (everything is healthy in moderation) I usually don’t do a lot of baking!  These raspberry cream cheese pastries are super easy to make, use great ingredients, and are perfect for a cheat day snack!  Puff pastry is so versatile, especially when you buy it from the store!

Have you ever tried to make puff pastry before?  Making it requires a lot of time, a lot of rolling pin action, and a lot of butter.  The classic version uses a simple dough recipe, cold butter, and a lot of rolling.  To make the fluffy layers you need to roll out the dough and add in the cold butter in 6 stages, called turns.  Each time you add butter to a layer you fold over the dough and roll it out again.  To see a full description of how to make puff pastry from scratch head over to TheKitchn’s recipe.

If you don’t have all the time in the world, tasty store bought puff pastry will do the trick.  I wanted these raspberry cream cheese pastries to be as simple and easy as possible.  They only have 5 ingredients in them, but look fancy enough that you can tell your friends you spent all day making them!

To make the filling I took some frozen raspberries, added a touch of water, and coconut palm sugar.  Cream cheese is added to the berry compote and mixed.  Thinly spread it over some thawed puff pastry and roll it up.  The key to making these raspberry cream cheese pastries look all pretty is lightly freezing the roll.  If not the puff pastry gets all squished and they don’t turn out nice and fluffy when they bake.

 

Also, don’t open up the oven multiple times to check on the pastries.  Puff pastry needs a good amount of high heat to rise properly.  Opening up the oven will release a lot of that heat and your puff pastry won’t puff up as much.  Trust me, I have made and eaten enough to know!  When you have an old Bavarian patry chef yelling at you in culinary school when the puff pastry doesn’t puff, you learn to get it right!

Drizzling hot dark chocolate over these tasty pastries adds a touch of class.  (Also a way you could charge more if you sell them at a bakery!)  Simply melt some dark chocolate using a double boiler and using a spoon, just drizzle little zig zags over the pastries.  These delicious raspberry cream cheese pastries take under a half hour to make but will look like you worked on them all day!  On to the recipe!

If you’re looking for another delicious baking recipe that you can wow all your friends with, check out my chocolate banana quinoa brownies.  They are healthy, and packed with protein!