How to: Making Cruffins!
The cruffin. Half croissant, half muffin, all good. I discovered cruffins when my husband and I traveled to North Carolina to visit his twin brother who was undergoing a major surgery. We spent a lot of time at the hospital, and hospitals are boring. Lucky for me I had my laptop with me to pass the time. As I was surfing one afternoon looking for a fun recipe to try, I ran across the C-R-U-F-F-I-N!!!
I found the cruffin on YouTube. This was new, at least to me and they were so pretty I couldn’t wait to get home to try them. But man, did it look like a lot of work and I was a little intimidated, but turns out, it was well worth it.
The cruffin is so pretty you wouldn’t want to eat it, at least for a minute. They are layer upon layer of soft, melt in your mouth buttery goodness. This particular recipe is adapted from Bold Bread with a few tweaks. I cut out a bit of the sugar because it just seemed too sweet for my taste and I also made a couple cruffins with a thin filling of cinnamon and sugar more like a schmear, actually. I amped up the vanilla and switched out ⅓ of the all-purpose flour with bread flour, because it just makes a finer crumb.
Next Time I’ll Try Tangzhong!
What resulted was a slightly sweet, delicate muffin/croissant hybrid. The outside is a little crusty and the inside has layers and layers that are soft and chewy. Although it is a bit of work, if you have a little free time it’s a wonderful addition to a special menu for Easter dinner or Christmas breakfast.
The next time I make cruffins, I will try it with the tangzhong method of bread making. What the heck is that you ask? It’s an easy Japanese bread making method that I’ll go more into when I post my piece on milk bread. This will make the cruffin even more light and airy.
With my next batch, I’ll also include a blueberry filling for some and a cinnamon/sugar filling again. I’ll add a little more of the filling and a cream cheese icing drizzle. I hope you try this recipe and if you do, please post pictures in the comments section below!
Ingredients
Method
- Preheat oven to 350°
- Grease muffin pan with butter and set aside.
- In a large bowl, stir together warm milk, granulated sugar and yeast. Set aside for about 15 minutes to rise to a foam. Once the foamy yeast mixture has risen, sift the flour into the yeast mixture. Add melted butter, salt and vanilla. Mix until well combined.
- Turn mixture onto a lightly floured pan. Knead dough for 8 – 10 minutes. Form into a ball. Press finger down into dough ball. If it springs back, set dough in well oiled bowl.
- Cover bowl with cling wrap and set in a warm place to double in size (about 1 to 1-1/2 hours) minutes.
- Once the dough has risen, turn out onto floured surface, knead for a few turns and then form a ball. Cut the ball into 4 equal pieces. and shape into smaller balls. (If you want smaller cruffins cut into 8 equal pieces. )
- With a rolling pin, roll out each piece of dough. Roll dough as thinly and evenly as possible. The longer the dough is rolled, the more layers the cruffin will have.
- Once each ball of dough is rolled out, generously brush on butter. Carefully hand roll each piece of dough into a "log". Roll away from you and roll as tightly as possible without distorting the roll.
- After each piece of dough have been rolled into a log shape, cut each log length-wise. Roll sliced piece into a tight circle being careful to tuck the ends under the bottom of the roll and put in muffin tin.
- Let rolls rise for about 1/2 hour. Brush each roll with an egg wash.
- Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Take out of oven and sprinkle with confectioners' sugar. Let cool for about 5 minutes in pan then transfer to a cooling rack.
I will upload an instructional video soon.
They seemed like a lot of work, but were well worth the effort! Very Very Very Taste and Pretty!