Classic Cheese Danish

• A classic cheese Danish is simply puff pastry filled with sweetened cream cheese that tastes delicious topped with blackberries. The filling can be made by combining cream cheese, lemon zest and sugar. Use about 4 1/2 parts cream cheese to sugar and the zest of a lemon for each package of cream cheese. Assemble the pastries: Roll out the defrosted dough, cut each sheet into quarters, fill each square with the cheese mixture and fold in the corners. They take about 20 minutes to bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Blackberry Sauce

• Drizzle a cheese danish with warm blackberry sauce. For a fruit sauce, mix, heat and reduce a combination of blackberries, sugar and water. For each part water, use two parts sugar and four parts blackberries. After bringing the mixture to a boil, let it simmer for about 4 minutes. To brighten the flavor, add some orange zest. Pour some of the mixture over the cheese danish, and allow a bit of it to cool before adding a few spoonfuls into your cream cheese batter.

Blackberry Cream Cheese Napoleons

• Napoleons are pretty, stacked desserts made with layers of pastry, cream and fruit. A deconstructed cheese danish is essentially a napoleon. Instead of filling them, bake plain squares of puff pastry at 375 F for about 12 minutes. Before baking, poke each square with holes and dust them with powered sugar. For the cream, make a cheese danish filling but use powdered sugar and add a dollop of whipped cream. Use a simple blackberry sauce for the fruit. The rest is assembly: Layer the puff pastry, cheese mixture, blackberry sauce, puff pastry, and top with fresh blackberries.

Palmiers With Blackberry Cream Cheese

• Palmiers, also called elephant ears, are folded puff pastry. Blackberry-flavored cream cheese makes an easy filling; just add cooled blackberry sauce to the filling for a cheese danish. The rest is assembly: Sprinkle chunks of the blackberry cream cheese across a sheet of rolled-out puff pastry. Fold each end halfway toward the center, fold toward the center again, then fold one side over the other and cut the log into pieces. They bake for about 14 minutes in a 400 F oven.