Almond Pseudo-Croissants

I love almond croissants.  The best almond croissants I've ever had were at a coffee stand in the New Orleans Intercontinental.  Sheila and I were there for the ACS meeting, and I think we had almond croissants for breakfast every morning.  That was a fun meeting!  (Perhaps a bit too fun in some ways, but that's a story for my other blog.)
I've always wanted to make croissants, and had planned to do it while I still had a lot of time on my hands.  In the traditional recipe, you make a square of butter, put it on top of the dough that's been rolled out, fold it up like a letter, and chill it.  Ever so often, the dough is rolled out, refolded, and returned to the fridge.  This results in flaky layers.  At the end, the dough is rolled out, cut into triangles, and rolled into the traditional croissant shape.  It's a time consuming process.  Like making baguettes, it's probably best left to professionals.
I didn't do much cooking for a while.  By now, a lot of my kitchen is packed up already, and I'm improvising when it comes to ingredients.  I still wanted almond croissants, though.   I found the following recipe, which uses similar techniques as the no-knead breads that I've been making.
Yeast, water, milk, and egg yolks are combined.  Meanwhile, flour, butter, and sugar are combined. The butter is cut into the flour until the mix is crumbly.  The liquids are then mixed in, and the dough is allowed to chill in the fridge overnight.  Then you roll it out, cut it into triangles, and spread it with an almond paste mixture.  The wedges are rolled up and baked.
I had to grind up some rock sugar, since I was out of the regular stuff. There were still some larger chunks left in, but it wasn't noticeable in the final product.  I also used bread flour instead of regular flour. Sacre bleu!
Anyway, they certainly were easy.  The dough rolled out nicely and was easy to handle. It was somewhat slow to rise, though, but that's pretty typical for the refrigerator doughs.  The croissants were moist, buttery, and tasty.  They did not have the flaky croissant texture, but were quite good.  I ate one for breakfast and had another one for my picnic lunch at Point Reyes.  My parents finished off their batch already and raved about them.
I can see making these again, but shaping them and letting them rise in the evening, and then just baking them in the morning.  The dough would also be a great base for cinnamon rolls.
Someday, I'll find a real croissant recipe and make the traditional style ones.  I have a mental image of myself doing this in Ithaca, on a snowy weekend.  It's a nice image.  It's not quite as likely as me shoveling snow from my driveway, of course, but I'm going to hold onto my illusions as long as possible.

Almond Shortbread

I make stollen every year at Christmas.  I'll blog about it in a few days.  This year I decided to order my almond paste online since it was cheaper that way, although it meant I had to get 4 cans.  I love almond paste so this is not a problem.
Tonight I'm making almond paste shortbread.  I had never seen any recipes so I invented one in my head, then decided to check the internet to see if there was anything similar out here.  Sure enough, one of the almond paste companies had a recipe that was virtually identical to the one I created in my head.  When that happens, it makes me happy since it means I know my stuff as a baker and a recipe geek.  It's the same when I decide to do a synthesis in lab and it works way better than the literature procedures  (As a baker, it's ok to make stuff up, but as a chemist it does help to see what other people have done, even if I opt not to follow it). Anyway, in my own recipe I would've added two whole eggs instead of just the yolks, and 3 cups of flour instead of 2 1/2, but it's close enough.
So anyway, it's pretty easy.  The sugar, butter, and almond paste are whipped together until fluffy, and then two egg yolks are added.  After a few minutes of mixing, the flour + baking powder are added and then the dough is pressed into a greased pyrex pan.  I added a bit of almond extract and vanilla to the butter/sugar mix, but other than that I followed the recipe.   The dough was very tasty.
I baked them for about a half hour.  The house smelled amazing.  Once they had cooled completely, I cut them and sampled.  MMMMM. Buttery almondy goodness.  This recipe is a keeper.  Most of them are going out with the cookie packages tomorrow, but I may make more since this is both tasty and easy.  They would be even better dipped in chocolate, but that's not going to happen for this batch.