Cruffins with creme pat & compote

I have been wanting to try making croissants for some time and having followed  @danthebaker  and seeing the pics his posts of his vanilla bean/raspberry cruffins, I had all the motivation I needed.

I really didn't know what made a croissant recipe different from a brioche and, I guess I still don't know since I found multiple recipes that had the same ingredients. The most common difference I found though was that it seemed croissants didn't have eggs while brioche dough did.  Having made brioche dough before (see my morning bun blog which was also inspired by Dan's cruffins), I decided to go with a croissant recipe that did not have eggs.

I settled on this croissant recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction.

I decided the recipe would be too much dough for me -- and that I wanted something more in line with the morning bun recipe -- to make 12 cruffins for Mother's Day, so I  halved the recipe -- 250g of flour and so on.  I figured the biggest change after that would be the size of the roll out -- 1/2 the dough seemed to require 1/2 of the dimensions that are described in Sally's recipe.  Having made the morning bun recipe from King Arthur's Cinnamon Cardamon Brioche recipe,  I decided to go with these instructions for the size of the lamination but with Sally's time line (it saved me a day). But I did not go with her soft butter technique.

I started about 3pm on a Saturday -- made the dough, refrigerated for 30 minutes, rolled out the dough and put it back in the refrigerator for 4-5 hours.  Around 7:30pm, I took out about a stick and a half of butter (170g) and placed between two pieces of parchment paper and pounded into a 6"x6" square and then returned to the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

I followed the King Arthur instructions for lamination and did 2 turns.  Returned it to the refrig for 45 minutes and did 2 more turns. At this point, I could have stopped by I was still awake so I decided to refrig for another 45-60 minutes, did two more turns and then folded it up and covered for an overnight in the frig.

While I was doing this, my daughter made some creme pat.

At 6:30am the following morning, I rolled out to 8"x24" rectangle, rolled along one long edge (putting a little egg wash on the far end) to create a 24" log which I then cut into 12 pieces and placed each (cut side up/down) in muffin tins.  I covered with tea cloth and let rise for 90-120 minutes.  Brushed with egg wash and put in preheated 400F oven for 15 minutes, checked and let them cook another 3 minutes or so.

 While the dough was rising, I made a simple mixed berry compote. Simply putting around 2 cups of chopped berries (I had about 1 cup of strawberries and 1 cup of blueberries) in a sauce pan with a few tablespoons of orange juice -- heated on medium+ heat until it started to boil and then lowered heat and let simmer for 10-15 minutes -- stirring and smashing berries as I went.  That's it. super simple.

  After the cruffins had cooled sufficiently,  I used a very small pastry bag tip into the center of each cruffin and my daughter followed it up with the pastry bag filled with the creme pat.  In hindsight, the creme pat recipe we had used, while delicious, wasn't as firm as we would have liked (and the noticed the recipe notes said as much).  The next time we make these, we'll stiffen up the creme pat a little bit so that we get more of a "frosting" like mound on the top that will hold it's shape.  We drizzled compote on as we ate them.

   I have to say that we were very happy with the quality of lamination!!  Will definitely make again! :)