Marzipan cruffins: Here's how to easily bake this trendy crispy pastry yourself
Often, after a big baking spree, leftover ingredients like marzipan are left over in the pantry. Instead of waiting until the next festive season, you can easily transform these leftovers into a modern pastry.
- 100 ml orange juice
- 40 g sugar
- 1 organic orange zest
- 75 g Marzipanrohmasse
- 75 g ground almonds 🛒
- some softened butter for the muffin tin
- 2 packages of refrigerated croissant dough, each enough for 6 croissants
- 80 g sugar
- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom 🛒
- Heat the orange juice together with the sugar and the grated orange zest in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a brief boil and then remove the pan from the heat.
- Coarsely grate the marzipan or tear it into small pieces. Add it to the hot orange juice along with the ground almonds and stir everything together until you have a spreadable mixture. Cover the filling and let it soak for about 10 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C (390°F) using conventional oven settings (top and bottom heat). Lightly grease the twelve cups of a muffin tin with softened butter. Tip: It's best to use a muffin tin like this one 🛒.
- Carefully open the first package of croissant dough and roll out the dough completely. Press the existing perforations together with your fingers to create a smooth, closed sheet of dough.
- Cut the dough into three equal rectangles. Spread one-sixth of the marzipan filling on each rectangle and roll it up tightly from the long side.
- Halve each roll of dough lengthwise so that the visible layers of dough and filling are facing upwards. Loosely roll each strand into a spiral and place it into a muffin cup.
- Process the second package of croissant dough and the remaining filling in the same way.
- Bake the cruffins on the middle rack for 17–20 minutes, until they are a deep golden brown and crispy at the edges.
- Meanwhile, mix the sugar with the ground cardamom in a shallow bowl.
- Carefully remove the still-warm cruffins from the muffin tin and roll them in cardamom sugar. They are best served fresh and slightly warm.
Simply twisted, heavenly filled: Cruffins with marzipan filling
The word cruffin is a combination of croissant and muffin, and it perfectly describes what you can expect. You get the flaky and crispy texture of a croissant in the convenient form of a small cake. For the marzipan-filled cruffins, you roll out the dough flat and spread it evenly with the filling. Then you cut it into rectangles, roll these into long strands, and finally cut them lengthwise with a sharp knife.
If you now roll these halved strands up like a snail and place them in the wells of a muffin tin, the layers can unfold upwards during baking.
Inside the cruffins is a marzipan filling. Since marzipan is naturally very sweet and dense, it needs a fresh contrast. A little orange juice loosens the mixture and makes it spreadable. Finely grated orange zest adds essential oils to the filling, which fill the kitchen with a wonderful aroma while baking.
Once you take the marzipan-filled cruffins out of the oven, one last step is needed. Roll the hot cruffins directly in a mixture of sugar and ground cardamom. The sugar adheres particularly well to the still-warm and slightly buttery surface. Cardamom adds a warm and subtly spicy note that goes perfectly with the almonds and orange. Afterward, let the pastries cool briefly on a wire rack so that the outer layers of dough can develop their full crispness.
These little works of art elevate any brunch and are perfect for afternoon coffee. They taste best when still slightly warm. Also delicious: crispy mini croissant muesli from the oven and croissant casserole with blackberries.
