Cream Cheese Croissants, Sweetened with Monk Fruit
Sweets and drinksBaked GoodsEurope and North AmericaAbout 5 hours including the chilling rests
Cream cheese croissants spend more time resting in the fridge than in your hands. The shell is layered and crisp, and inside there is rich cream cheese and mozzarella that pulls into strings. The hardest part is keeping the butter cold, because melted butter fuses the sheets of dough and the croissant loses its layers.
Dough and butter have to be equally soft when rolling, since a mismatch shatters the butter inside the dough. The moment the butter starts to melt, the whole block goes into the fridge before the work continues.
This batch weighs about 1.5kg, at roughly 298 calories per 100g.
Method
Mix 500g all purpose flour, 10g salt and 49.5g kOBE Monk Fruit Blend in a large bowl.
Dissolve 10g dry yeast in 150ml warm water at about 35 degrees C and leave it 5 to 10 minutes until it foams.
Add the yeast mixture and 150ml unsweetened oat milk to the dry ingredients, mix, then knead for 5 to 7 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Wrap it and rest it in the fridge for 1 hour.
Put 250g cold unsalted butter between two sheets of baking paper, beat and roll it into a rectangle of about 20x15cm and chill it for 15 minutes.
Roll the dough into a rectangle of about 40x20cm, lay the butter over 2/3 of it, fold the bare third over and then fold the last third across like a letter.
Turn the dough 90 degrees, roll it back to 40x20cm and fold it in thirds. Wrap it and chill for 30 minutes, then repeat twice more with a 30 minute chill each time.
For the filling, beat 200g room temperature cream cheese with 45g kOBE Monk Fruit Blend until smooth, add 1 egg yolk and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, beat it through, then transfer it to a piping bag and chill it.
Roll the dough 4 to 5mm thick and cut it into triangles with a base of about 12cm, with a small slit in the middle of each base.
Lay a baton of mozzarella from the 100g at the base of each triangle, pipe a line of cream cheese over it, roll from the base to the tip and curve the ends.
Space the croissants 5 to 7cm apart, proof them at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours until nearly doubled, then brush them with 1 beaten egg.
Heat the oven to 200 degrees C, bake for the first 5 minutes at 200 degrees C, then lower it to 180 degrees C for another 15 to 18 minutes.
Cool the croissants on a rack for about 10 minutes.
Tips
The moment the butter starts to melt, the dough goes into the fridge before any more rolling.
A filled croissant needs a little longer in the oven than a plain one, so the middle is fully baked.
kOBE Monk Fruit Blend dissolves slowly, so mix it thoroughly through the dry flour and beat the filling an extra minute for a smooth texture.
Proof the croissants somewhere below 26 degrees C, since a warm spot melts butter onto the tray and collapses the layers.
Eaten warm, the cheese is still soft and pulls into strings.
Need kOBE Monk Fruit Blend?
The recipe above is sweetened with kOBE Monk Fruit Blend, measured 1:1 like sugar. See the product page or send us a message.