Recipe Tuesday :: Strawberry Cream Cheese Crossovers

I think I've declared my love for the strawberry cream cheese pies that McDonald's sells around this time of year and they've come back!  Whenever we go I pick up four so Mom and I can have one immediately and then another later.  I often have to wait for the second set so they can cook more and the last time the girl asked if I'd wait a few minutes for them to cook.  I said that I wait all year, I will definitely wait a few more minutes.  With all that why wouldn't I try to cook something like them at home?  We recently had all the necessary ingredients in the fridge, so I gave these Strawberry Crossovers a try.

There were of course some tweaks because when I'm hungry in the morning I want something that goes together a bit quicker than the pastry cream called for in the original recipe.  I used half a brick of cream cheese warmed to room temperature added 1/2 a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla and beat it with a hand mixer until it was creamy.  I think I might have added a bit more sugar to taste and then used that in place of the pastry cream.

Mom liked the idea of slicing the edges and braiding them so we kept that and then brushed the tops with some milk and sprinkled with coarse sugar.

They were excellent!  Not too sweet but flavorful and kept well between eating the first and the last one (which honestly wasn't all that long!)

Do you have a favorite treat you want to try making at home?