Bake 2.21x2: Almond Croissants

To continue to challenge myself I did a second round of laminated dough to see if I could get it through without any cracking. You may remember that my mixer died but thankfully the new one came in the mail and it is ... so clean! You thought I was going to say something else, I know, but it is hard to keep a mixer clean and it will likely never be this clean again! 

So round two for laminated dough. Followed the same recipe, you can see it here. 

For the filling I used a frangipane, an almond cream that is just right for croissants, or a tart, so many options. 

Ingredients
3 tablespoons soft butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup ground almond meal
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract 
1 tablespoon flour 

This is an easy one, cream the butter and sugar, add the almond meal and mix, add the egg and extracts and mix, add the flour and mix. Done. Put that in a pastry bag for ease of assembly. 

You can make your own almond meal if you have almonds and a good processor. We keep almond meal on hand because we use it for recipes often enough. If you have Costco in your neck of the woods that is usually where we buy it and we store it in the freezer so it doesn't spoil before we get through the whole bag. 

Now, we used 1/2 of the puff pastry (laminated dough) recipe for these croissants. 

When it is ready to be rolled into final shape roll out into a 11x 14 rectangle and cut that into 8 smaller rectangles that measure about 5 1/2 x 3 1/2. I definitely measured ... with my eyes. 

Now lay out one of the rectangles. Pipe a line of almond cream near one of the short sides, fold that side over, pipe another length of cream and fold over again. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet with the fold on the under side. Cover with plastic wrap 

Allow to rest on the counter for 1 hour. Then rest in the fridge for 1 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Brush the croissants with a beaten egg + a little milk. Pipe a thin line of almond cream along the top, and press sliced almonds into the cream so they stick. They will toast up nicely in the oven. I used 1/3 cup almonds across all the tops. 

Bake 18-20 minutes, rotating halfway, until golden and delicious! 

Look at those little nuggets before they rested and baked!