You'll be surprised how easy these delicious almond croissants (or cruasáns, or croissants filled with almond cream) are to make. These are croissants we'll make with puff pastry and fill with an almond cream that will blow your mind, frangipane cream: the delicacy of each bite and its gentle almond flavor, together with the tenderness of the dough, make this an essential croissant recipe at home.
As we will use a griddle of refrigerated puff pastry, the only thing you'll have to make is the filling cream, the frangipane cream (the typical almond cream of French pastry), so if you have it prepared beforehand the making of these croissants is really quick and easy.
The filling cream is the classic frangipane cream, an almond cream that results from the mixture of almond cream and pastry cream. A true delight!
In the step-by-step you'll see photos showing how to make croissants with puff pastry, so this recipe works to make all kinds of filled croissants at home — fill them another day with cocoa cream, pastry cream, white chocolate, dulce de leche...
Nordic Ware Naturals baking sheet
How to make almond croissants
Ingredients (for 12 croissants)
- 2 sheets of puff pastry (good quality)
- 250 g of frangipane cream*
- 1 egg
- Sliced almonds
- Icing sugar
*If you want to make them different, you can also fill them with salted caramel or dulce de leche, and place a good amount of almonds on top of the croissants. Both salted caramel and dulce de leche go very well with almonds, and you'll have a great alternative if you have those preserves at home and want to make express croissants at any time.
You can also try filling them with the almond cream used to make frangipane (that is, make only half of the proposed frangipane cream).
Preparation
- Prepare the frangipane cream, here you'll see the step-by-step recipe for making the almond cream.
- Roll out the puff pastry on a baking sheet.
- With the pastry rolled horizontally, divide the dough into 3 equal parts from top to bottom (as you'll see in the photo).
- Cut each resulting rectangle into triangles, and make a small cut at the base of each one.
Enjoy them still slightly hot — they are absolutely delicious croissants!
Notes
- For baking, I recommend using a perforated tray or the Nordic Ware Naturels tray, since they allow quick air penetration into the dough and the result is great, effective and fast.
- Besides the icing sugar, these almond croissants are also delicious if you drizzle a little salted caramel on top in a zig-zag. It adds contrast to the softness of the inner cream. Melted white chocolate also suits them very well (you can dip the croissant tips if you prefer them presented that way).
- Don't stray from the oven! once they've risen and start to brown, they take very little time to finish and could burn easily if you get distracted.
- If instead of small croissants you want to make them large, you just have to cut the puff pastry in half instead of into three parts. That way, the triangles you'll generate in the next cut will be larger, and the final result will be larger too.
