Croissants. Love them, adore them.
I hear the word and think about tiny French bakeries and cobbled streets. They remind me of a very cold week spent in Dijon and the waft of fresh croissants drifting into our ancient hotel room from the boulangerie below. They were the reason we crawled out of bed and braved the snowy streets before heading off to the orchid show.
I have always wanted to bake some at home but somehow never got around to it.
As it happened I woke up last saturday craving some warm croissants. There are no coffee shops or bakeries close to us and so I decided to make good on my promise to bake some. I baked eight and then sixteen and barely had enough time to photograph them before they disappeared.
We've spend the rest of our weekend around the house and in the garden and had friends over for dinner and some more popped in for tea. The children had a friend over as well and the house was full of happy laughs and noises.
It was a busy baking weekend too. Cupcakes for the children, a fig cake, chocolate fondant cakes for dessert and eclairs for tea. The fig cake however, was left on the counter to cool and the puppy sneaked in and ate it all. I guess we have a lot of training left to do before we can leave hot cakes on the kitchen table.
To be honest, the recipe required far less work than what I initially anticipated. It does take time, because the dough has to rest, but the rolling and folding is really more therapeutic than exhausting. You can find the recipe on Joe Pastry's very helpful blog here.
