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This Giant Danish is one of those recipes that sounds almost too simple — crescent roll dough, a cream cheese filling, canned pie filling — and then you taste it and suddenly everyone’s asking for the recipe. Any pie filling works, and it always comes out beautifully. My favorite is strawberry; apple is a close second.
Why You’ll Love It
- Endlessly versatile — use any pie filling you like: strawberry, apple, cherry, peach, lemon curd. It always works.
- Flaky, buttery crust — crescent roll dough bakes up golden and crisp in a way that feels way fancier than it is.
- Rich cream cheese layer — tangy, smooth, almost cheesecake-like in the middle.
- Feeds a crowd — bakes in a jelly roll pan and cuts into squares, perfect for brunch or dessert.
- Minimal effort — the whole thing comes together in under an hour with ingredients you can grab at any grocery store.
A Few Notes on the Ingredients
The cream cheese needs to be at room temperature. I know everyone says this and no one does it and then they wonder why their mixture has lumps. I have been guilty of this more times than I’ll admit. If you forget to take it out early, you can cut it into chunks and let it sit for twenty minutes or so, but honestly just — set it out when you wake up and forget about it. It makes a difference.
For the crescent rolls, I use whatever’s on sale. I’ve tried the store brand and the name brand and they’re essentially the same thing once they’re baked. The dough from one tube goes on the bottom, which you’re going to par-bake first — just four minutes, don’t skip this step — and then the second tube gets separated into triangles and laid over the top. It won’t cover everything completely and that’s fine, that’s actually the point. You get these little windows of filling showing through and it looks intentional and beautiful and took you no effort whatsoever.
Any pie filling from a can works. I’ve used homemade filling too, when I’ve had fresh peaches, and that’s wonderful, but the canned version is genuinely good and there’s no shame in it.
Ingredients
- 2 cans refrigerated crescent rolls (8 oz each)
- 16 oz cream cheese, room temperature — and I mean it, let it actually soften
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I probably do closer to a splash, but the recipe says 2 teaspoons)
- 1 can pie filling, any flavor — 21 oz is the standard size
- Powdered sugar for dusting, if you want (I usually want)
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Coat a jelly roll pan — that’s a rimmed baking sheet, roughly 10×15 — with nonstick spray. Don’t skip the spray. I skipped it once early on and lost a corner of the bottom crust to the pan. Learned my lesson.
Open the first tube of crescent rolls and unroll it onto the pan. Press it out to cover the whole bottom, pinching the perforations together as you go. It’ll resist a little. Be patient. Get it to the edges as best you can, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Pop it in the oven for four minutes — just to set it slightly, you’re not baking it through.
While that’s going, mix together the cream cheese, sugar, egg, and vanilla until smooth. I do this in a stand mixer but a hand mixer or even just aggressive stirring with a spoon works fine. You want it creamy with no lumps.
Pull the dough out and let it cool for a few minutes. Spread the cream cheese mixture over it all the way to the edges. Then open your pie filling and drop it in spoonfuls over the top — you don’t want to spread it completely flat, you want pockets of filling distributed across the cheese layer. Some cream cheese should still show. Some filling should pool a little. It’s fine. It all bakes together.
Now open the second tube of crescent rolls, separate the triangles, and arrange them across the top. They won’t — and shouldn’t — cover everything. Think of it like placing a loose lattice. Some filling will peek through, some cream cheese will show. It looks rustic and it looks good.
Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is golden and the filling is set. You’ll know it’s done when the top crust is deeply golden and nothing jiggles when you gently shake the pan.
The hard part: let it cool completely before you cut it. Completely. I have cut into this thing too early on multiple occasions and while it still tasted great it looked like a disaster. Room temperature or even slightly chilled is ideal. Then cut into squares and dust with powdered sugar.
Variations
I’ve already mentioned apple and strawberry. Cherry is excellent — it has that bold color that makes it look almost fancy. Peach is mellow and good for people who don’t like things too sweet. Lemon curd is honestly one of the best versions I’ve ever made — a little more tart, it cuts through the richness of the cream cheese perfectly.
If you want to get fancier, you can add a drizzle of glaze on top — just powdered sugar and milk stirred together, nothing complicated. Some people do a light almond extract in the cream cheese instead of vanilla, which I’ve tried and liked, so I don’t do it when he’s around.
Storage
It keeps in the fridge for a few days, covered. It’s actually quite good cold, which I didn’t expect the first time I ate a leftover square standing in front of the open refrigerator at 11pm. You can bring individual squares to room temperature before serving or just eat them cold — it’s not fragile, it won’t suffer.
I’ve never frozen it. I keep meaning to test this but there’s never any left.
This is one of those recipes that sounds simple enough that people are sometimes skeptical before they try it. And then forty minutes later they’re asking for the recipe. I think it’s because they rush the cooling step. Or maybe they use the wrong filling. Or maybe some recipes just taste better when someone else makes them for you.
Dust it with the powdered sugar. Don’t skip that part.
Giant Cream Cheese Danish
Ingredients
- 2 cans crescent roll dough 8 oz each
- 16 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg large
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 can pie filling 21 oz, any flavor
- powdered sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 10x15-inch jelly roll pan.
- Unroll one can of crescent dough and press into the bottom of the pan, sealing seams. Bake for 4 minutes to set.
- In a bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar, egg, and vanilla until smooth.
- Spread cream cheese mixture over the partially baked crust.
- Spoon pie filling over the cream cheese layer in small pockets rather than spreading evenly.
- Arrange the second can of crescent dough pieces loosely over the top like a lattice.
- Bake for about 30 minutes until golden brown and set.
- Cool completely before slicing, then dust with powdered sugar and serve.