Easy Cheese Danish

Originally from The Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients:
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
2 extra-large egg yolks, at room temperature Ashley-cita says: 2 large egg yolks are fine
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest: about 2 lemons Ashley-cita says: I did one large lemon and one small mandarin orange
2 sheets (1 box) frozen puff pastry, defrosted
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

(not pictured: the salt. Oh well.)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

Place the cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and cream them together on low speed until smooth.
With the mixer still on low, add the egg yolks, ricotta, vanilla, salt, and lemon zest and mix until just combined. Don't whip!

Unfold 1 sheet of puff pastry onto a lightly floured board and roll it slightly with a floured rolling pin until it's a 10 by 10-inch square. Cut the sheet into quarters with a sharp knife. Ashley-cita says: After making ginormous danishes this way, I tried cutting the sheet into nine even squares. This worked much better, in my opinion... Sorry, Ina!

Place a heaping tablespoon of cheese filling into the middle of each of the four nine squares.

Brush the border of each pastry with egg wash and fold 2 opposite corners to the center, brushing and overlapping the corners of each pastry so they firmly stick together.

Brush the top of the pastries with egg wash.

Place the pastries on the prepared sheet pan. Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry and refrigerate the filled Danish for 15 minutes. Ashley-cita says: Uh, yeah, I totally skipped the refrigeration part. Didn't seem to harm them at all.

Bake the pastries for about 20 minutes, rotating the pan once during baking, until puffed and brown. Ashley-cita says: Rotate... uh... right. Didn't do that either.

Serve warm.
Ashley-cita says: Yuummmmmm!