Quite often our village boulangerie has croissants left over from the day before. These are set out on the counter top in bags of 10 and customers are invited to buy viennoiserie de la veille for €4.50. They are ideal for making almond croissants (and in fact, this is what the almond croissants at the boulangerie will be too) and easy to make at home, fresh for breakfast.
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| Fresh croissants at our local boulangerie. |
Ingredients
8 day old croissants
1 cup flaked almonds
1/2 cup sugar (for frangipane filling) + 2 tbsp sugar (for syrup)
1 cup almond meal
100 g salted butter
2 eggs
Method
- Turn on the oven to 190C.
- Line an oven tray with a silicone baking sheet.
- Make a syrup with the 2 tbsp sugar and a cup of water -- combine and bring to the boil for 1 minute, then set aside to cool in a shallow bowl that is big enough to fit a croissant.
- Beat together the half cup of sugar, almond meal and butter in a stand mixer.
- Add the eggs one at a time and beat well to make frangipane.
- Cut the croissants almost all the way through horizontally and open them up.
- Dip them in the syrup so they are coated all over but not saturated.
- Spread a good dollop of frangipane on the bottom half of each croissant's cut surface, close them up and put them on the baking tray.
- Smear some more frangipane on top of each croissant and sprinkle them with flaked almonds.
- Bake for 15 - 20 minutes.
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| Homemade almond croissants. |
You can prepare the syrup and the frangipane the day before and keep in the fridge until you want to use it. That way you can just bake however many almond croissants you need for breakfast and have them fresh for several days in a row.
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| Supermarket croissants, freshly made from frozen butter dough. |
You can also add a heaped tablespoon of cocoa powder to the frangipane and make chocolate almond croissants.
8 comments:
I love almond croissants. The first week we're in France I have to get my fill of the plain croissants. then I'm ready to switch to almond croissants. Maybe I should buy supermarket croissants here in the US and improve them with your recipe.
You may be familiar with Guardian food columnist Felicity Cloake. Her book One More Croissant for the Road is about her biking and eating trip to France. It's a hoot.
Some croissants are no longer crescent, but they’re still very good.
Those look delicious.
Carolyn: definitely get supermarket croissants and pimp them. I have certainly been known to do so, both here and when we lived in London. I like Felicity Cloake. Simon and I often cook her recipes. The 'How to Make the Perfect...' series is very good.
chm: proper croissants are no longer crescent shaped. The convention these days is that croissants made with butter are straight, and ones made with margarine are crescent shaped.
That looks perfect.... but I'll pass on the cocoa powder version!
Does anybody make croissants ordinaires (with margarine instead of butter) any more. A few years ago I asked about them at our village bakery, just out of curiosity. They told me they didn't make them any longer. Only the butter version.
Ken: I've seen them sometimes in supermarkets.
Come to think of it, I've also seen croissants made with sunflower oil in the supermarkets too.
Ken: Really!? Blimey, I wonder how that works?
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