halfway homemade cinnamon sugar cruffins (made with puff pastry)
It’s time for another halfway homemade recipe! I teamed up with my dear friend Kristie from The Sweet and Simple Kitchen to bring you another fun, super easy recipe that we think you’ll love. It is always such a different experience for me when I get to bake with a friend and fellow blogger. Food blogging is such a funny, and sometimes isolating thing, so it’s always so fun when you get to bounce ideas off of someone face to face! I’m pretty sure I would have thrown in the towel on these if Kristie hadn’t been there offering encouragement and ideas! Ha!
Anyway, if you’re unfamiliar with what a cruffin is…it’s a croissant-muffin hybrid. Where you bake laminated dough in a muffin pan! Now we are using pre-made puff pastry for our cruffins, which is the simplest form of laminated dough that there is. It’s not quite the same as croissant dough (which has yeast and milk in it to make it richer and more bread-like), but we loved how it turned out.
So, if you’re a pro and make your own laminated dough, feel free to use that. Otherwise, grab some puff pastry from the grocery store (it’s in the frozen section!), and let’s bake!
I’ve included step by step photos below, so hopefully that makes things easier for you to follow. AND….I’ve even posted a video tutorial on my instagram here, so hop on over if you’d like me to walk you through the entire process with verbal and written instructions within the video.
I just have to say….that this project was a labour of love, and a lesson in patience. We went through several trials of disasters and undercooked cruffins before we figured everything out! Which made it even more satisfying when we nailed it. The key to getting these exactly right is by making sure you bake them for a LONG time. Seriously, you want the top to be completely golden brown. You can’t really overbake these, and nothing is more disappointing than a gummy center. As always, we recommend that you try a test cruffin in your oven and make sure that you get the right baking time for you, before baking the rest of them!
Now, go forth and make cruffins!
cinnamon sugar cruffins (made with puff pastry)
yields: 8 cruffins
recipe: Kelsey & Kristie - The Sweet and Simple Kitchen
ingredients
2 sheets of 10x10 inch frozen puff pastry, thawed (each weighed about 230 grams)
2-4 tablespoons butter, softened & divided
Cinnamon Sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
Egg Wash
1 large egg beaten
1 tsp milk
directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, and lightly grease 8 spots in a muffin tin.
Roll out one sheet of thawed puff pastry (you want it to be easy to work with, but still cool to the touch), into an 11x15 inch rectangle. The dough will be pretty thin, but you don’t want to be able to see through it at all. Simply roll backwards and forwards to lengthen the sheet until you reach 15 inches, it will naturally widen as you do that! (See photos below to see what I mean)
Spread 1-2 tablespoons of softened butter onto the sheet of pastry, you want it pretty thin, but enough so that the cinnamon sugar filling will stick. Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar mixture until evenly coated.
Working from the long edge, carefully roll it up as tight as you can. Slice the roll in half length-wise, and then cut each strip in half again. You should have 4 equal strips of layered dough. Roll up each piece like a snail and place into the muffin tin. You can also play around with the shape here, and try different twisting and tucking techniques.
Repeat with remaining puff pastry sheet.
Brush the tops of each cruffin with the egg wash, and bake for 40-50 minutes until they’re a very deep golden brown. Don’t be afraid of overcooking these, as they are better overdone vs having a doughy center. As always, I recommend doing a test cruffin to see how it reacts in your pan (we used a dark one) and in your oven.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan. Roll each cruffin in the remaining cinnamon sugar mixture until completely coated.
Serve on it’s own, or with ice cream, jam, lemon curd, etc.
Best enjoyed the first day!
