If You Have Cinnamon Rolls, Cream Cheese, And Pie Filling, You Have The Start Of An Easy, Bakery-Worthy Breakfast

Cinnamon rolls are downright decadent. Danishes are the perfect sweet, creamy, flaky breakfast. We've got a way for you to put the two of them together — and once you give it a try, you won't want to go back to either start-of-the-day sweet delight on its own. All you'll need to get started are some cinnamon rolls (you can certainly go with a homemade version, but it's perfectly fine to use good canned cinnamon rolls as well), cream cheese, and the pièce de résistance — a can of your favorite type of pie filling.

To make your cinnamon roll-Danish hybrid, you'll just make an indentation in the middle of the roll (it's tough to believe that the center of a cinnamon roll could be any better than it already is, but you'll be a believer at first bite). Fill up the depression in the roll with your cream cheese (jazz it up with powdered sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, or whatever strikes your fancy), then spoon some pie filling on top and bake according to package instructions. You can certainly stop there, but you might as well keep loading up on the goodness — and we've got some ideas on how you can use some different flavor combinations to take this idea to the next level.

Let's be real — you can't go wrong with pie filling and cream cheese (especially Tillamook cream cheese, just FYI). That being said, there are some combinations of flavored cream cheese and fruit that are just heavenly. You can certainly go with any fruit-flavored cream cheese and its pie filling twin (for example, use strawberry cream cheese and strawberry pie filling), but you can get a little more creative. For example, try a brown sugar and cinnamon cream cheese with pumpkin pie filling, a blueberry cream cheese with strawberry pie filling, or a salted caramel cream cheese with apple pie filling.

Want to take your recipe a step further and add a textural contrast to your cinnamon roll Danishes? Try topping them off with something crunchy. For example, if you're going with an apple pie version of the treat, try topping off your just-baked cinnamon rolls with some crushed-up Cinnamon Toast Crunch — it'll play well with the cinnamon in the apple pie filling. If you're going with a blueberry pie filling, try topping your cinnamon roll Danishes off with the same type of streusel crumble you'd normally put on top of a blueberry muffin (try a mix of cold butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and flour) before they hit the oven — it'll form delightful little crumbs that'll be fantastic alongside your juicy blueberries. Whether you dress them up or just stick with the pie filling topping, you'll come back to this upgraded sweet breakfast time and again.