13 recipes
Crisp, deeply caramelized French palmiers made from a quick homemade rough puff pastry rolled in sugar. They look like fancy bakery work but come down to two real ingredients: butter-laminated dough and sugar that turns to glass in the oven.
Crisp spirals of buttery rough puff pastry baked around conical molds, then piped full of barely-sweet whipped cream cheese. They look like a bakery case and shatter like one too.
Thin, bubbled, shatteringly crisp fried shells with a whisper of Marsala, cocoa and cinnamon. Make them a day ahead and fill them at the very last minute.
Shatteringly crisp little logs of buttered phyllo wrapped around spiced pistachios and walnuts, then drenched in honey-lemon syrup. All the pleasure of baklava, with far less fussing over layers.
Hand-stretched dough pulled so thin you can read a newspaper through it, wrapped around spiced apples, rum-plumped raisins, and buttery toasted breadcrumbs. It's a weekend project, and worth every minute.
Shatteringly crisp layers of puff pastry sandwiched with cool vanilla diplomat cream, finished with a glossy feathered glaze. It looks like a patisserie window display but comes together with one package of store-bought puff pastry.
Crisp, hollow rings of choux pastry baked until deeply golden, then split and piled with softly whipped vanilla cream. They look like patisserie-window work but come together from flour, butter, water, and eggs.
Crisp, hollow choux shells that shatter when you bite them, packed with cool vanilla pastry cream. Five pantry ingredients turn into the most impressive dessert on the table.
Crisp, hollow choux shells piped long and slender, filled with cold vanilla pastry cream and capped with a glossy chocolate glaze. It's a three-part project, but every part is simple on its own.
Shatteringly flaky laminated dough wrapped around two batons of dark chocolate, with a honeycomb crumb that pulls apart in buttery sheets. It takes two days, but almost all of that is the fridge doing the work.
Real laminated Danish dough — yeasted, cardamom-scented, and folded around a block of cold butter — pleated around a tangy cream cheese filling. It's a weekend project that pays you back in shattering, buttery layers.
Shatteringly crisp on the outside, honeycombed and buttery within — real laminated croissants made over two unhurried days. The work is mostly waiting, and the payoff is a pastry no bakery box can beat.
Shatteringly crisp on the outside, honeycombed and tender within — real laminated croissants made over two days in a home kitchen. The work is mostly waiting, and the payoff is a pastry no bakery box can beat.