SUNDAY DESSERT #54: Almond Croissant
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France 🇫🇷
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: Advanced or Easy (depending on the method)
INSPIRATION: In the winter, I crave comfort foods. Almond croissants are a staple comfort food for our family and today seemed like a good day to have some.
RECEPTION/COMMENTARY: I'm going to tell you right now that these are a 10/10. I mean, it's a butter croissant that has been split open, filled with almond cream, topped with sliced almond flakes, baked, and then touched up with powdered sugar. How could you not love that?! Warm, crisp, buttery, sweet, almond-flavored joy. The French have done it again!
There are two ways to make these:
The first and advanced way is to make the butter croissants from scratch. It's a whole two-day process that requires a lot of patience and elbow grease. Laminating several layers of butter into chilled dough is tough work! Once the croissants are made, you then have to exert an insane amount of will-power to resist eating them. . . at least long enough so that they can get stale overnight. This is followed by filling and baking the following morning for a warm, fresh almond croissant for breakfast. It's a long, but seriously satisfying process. I highly recommend doing it at least once in your life.
The easier, semi-cheating way is to pick up some fresh butter croissants (preferably from a highly rated French bakery), let them sit out overnight, then cut, fill, bake, and enjoy!
I've made these both the advanced and easy way before dozens of times, and I have to be honest... there really isn't a whole lot of difference between the two in terms of taste or texture. There IS, however, a difference in your feeling of accomplishment. So if you have a ton of time to kill and/or need a confidence boost, do it the fun, long way. If you just want a quick and easy treat, then the shortcut will give you great results too. Your pick!
(If you're curious, I did it the quick way this time because it's a little harder to be meticulous about advanced baking with two little kids running around everywhere).
WOULD I MAKE IT AGAIN? Absolutely! And maybe as our kids get older we can do it together the long way!
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