Fig & Brie Croissants

I love a good croissant, especially a good almond croissant. Now, I don’t think I would ever attempt to make croissants from scratch since they do seem a bit labor intensive and it’s possible (and easier) to buy them. I did make these Almond Croissants that were easy and delish, but I used plain croissants as the base and doctored them up a bit. I did attempt to make almond croissants using puff pastry once and it was a fail. They never even made it into the oven! Something was off with the puff pastry, and it never thawed properly.  Recently on Instagram I saw a video of someone making Ham & Cheese Croissants using puff pastry. Which gave me the idea to make Fig & Brie Croissants. Thankfully this time the puff pastry thawed properly, and the croissants actually made it into the oven. 

To thaw the puff pastry I removed it from the packaging and let it sit at room temperature for about 40 minutes. When it was ready, I was able to easily unfold it, but it was still a bit cold/frozen. I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper and unfolded one of the sheets on top of it and brushed it with an egg wash, reserving the rest of it. Each column of the puff pastry makes three croissants, so next I dropped a teaspoon of fig jam in the center of each croissant and then topped it with brie cheese.

The day I made these I was trying to do too many things at once, so I completely forgot to snap a picture of what they looked like before going in the oven. Basically, I topped it with the second pastry sheet and gently pressed the two sheets together removing any air from each square. I then sliced the croissants and separated them on the parchment paper about 2 inches apart. While the oven heated to 400 F I placed them in the refrigerator to ensure that the pastry would be flaky. Since I did handle the puff pastry a bit it could have warmed, and this would definitely affect texture of it. Puff Pastry is made with butter and the cold butter in the pastry is what gives you the flaky layers.  After baking for about 25 minutes, I had golden flaky fig & brie croissants to eat.

I let them cool for about 10 minutes before slicing into one to enjoy and it was delish!

And yes, I did try making the Ham & Cheese one’s I saw as well with a few tweaks. I opted to use spicy mustard and Swiss cheese in lieu of whole grain mustard and gruyere cheese and they were just as good as the Fig & Brie ones.