Exciting New Recipe!
Today’s recipe is exciting to share. We won’t claim to have invented these, since they are a somewhat basic concept and I’m pretty sure others have made them before us. But, we can’t find an equivalent recipe anywhere online, so we will claim that they are a fun new recipe for you try out! Plus, they are a new favorite of ours! We are really happy with how the recipe turned out; and we can practically imagine them filling up the display window of a Danish bakery. We can also picture ourselves wanting to eat one every single day for the rest of our lives. For us, that is truly the mark of a recipe we can be proud of 😂
What are Cremehorn?
The name that we have given these, cremehorn, directly translates to “cream horns.” However, if you look this up in English, you will find a completely different baked good. Cream horns are made with puff pastry and filled with a bit of jam and whipped cream. They are also delicious, but just not the same as these crescent pastries. The “creme” in these is kagecreme, or vanilla pastry cream, or vanilla custard – whichever name you prefer. The pastry is an enriched dough, basically a yeasted dough with added egg, butter, and milk to make it lovely and soft and slightly sweet. They are shaped into “horn” or crescents, explaining the name we have given them: “cremehorn.”
Making Cremehorn
These are a reasonably simple pastry, in the sense that they use a yeasted dough as opposed to Danish pastry dough. You can start these in the morning and finish them by the afternoon, which makes them great for a Saturday or Sunday project. Alternatively, you could let the dough rise in the fridge overnight, which slows down the yeast and means it can proof for longer. Then, you can shape your pastries in the morning, let them rise for a second time, then bake for a delicious addition to your breakfast or brunch table! We would also recommend making the pastry cream a day or so ahead of time to make the entire process a bit easier. These turn out so fluffy and yummy, especially if you are a sucker for vanilla pastry cream like we are – we hope you try them out!
Cremehorn (Crescent Pastries with Vanilla Pastry Cream)
Ingredients
DOUGH
- 150 ml (2/3 cup) milk
- 2 tsp instant yeast (2.25 tsp active dry yeast, 17.5g fresh yeast)
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 50 grams (1/4 cup) sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (or vaniljesukker, if you happen to have it!)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 375 grams (3 cups) all-purpose flour
- 57 grams (4 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
FILLING
- 1 portion kagecreme (danish pastry cream)
TOPPING
- 1 egg (for egg wash)
- Chopped almonds (optional)
- Pearl sugar (optional)
Instructions
- Prepare danish pastry cream (kagecreme) at least one hour in advance of preparing the dough; you can also make this up to one day before!
- To prepare the dough: heat up the milk, either in the microwave or in a saucepan, until it is "fingervarm" (finger warm), meaning it should feel warm to the touch but not hot. You don’t want to kill the yeast! Add the yeast and stir to dissolve. Let it rest 5-10 minutes until it begins to froth and bubble a little bit. You can also add a few teaspoons of sugar to help it along; just add some from the total amount of sugar for the dough! (If your yeast doesn’t do anything, it may be expired. Check the expiration date on the package and start over with new yeast!)
- Combine the egg, egg yolk, sugar, vanilla extract, and salt in a large bowl. Mix well.
- Add the milk and yeast mixture to the egg mixture and whisk to combine.
- Slowly add the flour, stirring with a wooden spoon. Once the dough starts to come together, you can start kneading.
- Add the softened butter and knead until smooth and elastic, probably around 5-10 minutes. If you prefer not to get your hands messy and covered in butter, feel free to use a stand mixer for this step!
- Add a bit of flour if the dough sticks to your hands or the surface, or the sides of the stand mixer bowl. The texture of your dough before its first rise should be soft and smooth, not sticky and not too dry.
- Cover and let your dough rise for about 45 minutes, or until doubled in size. You can also use the "poke test" to determine whether the dough is ready (when you poke the dough, it creates an indentation without springing back immediately).
- Once the dough has doubled in size, turn out the dough onto a clean work surface. Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces.
- Roll each piece into a circle, about 1/4" in thickness.
- Cut the circle into 6 equal triangles (like a pizza).
- To shape the "horns" or rolls, start by rolling out each triangle with a rolling pin to get more surface area.
- Place 1-2 tablespoons of pastry cream filling on the widest end of the triangle.
- Roll up the triangle towards the point. Start with less pastry cream until you get the hang of it – you want the pastry cream to be fully enclosed so there is no leakage!
- Place on a baking sheet prepared with parchment paper, making sure the point is tucked underneath so it doesn't unroll!
- You can also tuck the ends under to form more of that moon shape. Once all rolls have been shaped (you will likely need two baking sheets, with 9 pastries on each), leave to rise for another 45 minutes or until doubled in size.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Prepare the rolls by egg washing the tops and adding some chopped almonds and pearl sugar (optional).
- Bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Make sure to adjust the oven racks if baking both batches at the same time, otherwise bake the sheets one at a time in the middle rack of the oven. Enjoy!
I only managed 16 rolls with 1 measured Tbsp of filling in each. Rolling the dough was a guess as it doesn’t state how big the initial circle diameter should be or how long the triangles are. When rolled, it’s also guess for stopping filling leaking out or how to seal it. These taste great but are not consistent in shape at all. Can you please add more details or a video?
Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate it! We will work to update this with more specific measurements – we often tend to go by thickness instead of diameter, but we want to make it more helpful for our users! As far as stopping filling from leaking or sealing it: when starting to roll, when the widest part of the dough covers the pastry cream, it helps to press inwards on the pastry cream and the edges of the dough lightly so that it is fully encased (not visible at all) and once the triangle is fully rolled up, you can tuck the ends inwards to create a crescent shape – when it is rising, making sure the point of the triangle is under the pastry! Here’s a video from social media that will hopefully help a bit, although we can make a full length video going into more detail for this in the future: https://youtube.com/shorts/fo61_3e4fZ0?feature=share
The pastry is excellent, so light and fluffy! The custard from your receipt too, yet when I tried to roll the crescents with the cream in it they looked very “rustic”. I with there was a video that would show the steps between sectioning of the circle until the final product.
Thank you – I’m glad they turned out well, even if they looked a bit rustic! To be honest, it can be challenging to make anything with custard in it look neat. Thank you for your suggestion 🙂 We are working on creating videos for as many of our recipes as possible so we will add this one to the list!
Hi! I’ve tried one of your recipes and loved it so I’m going to try this next week. My only question is: when allowing the pastries to rise, do they need to be in a cold or warm environment? I worried if it’s too warm the custard may leak out?
I’m excited to try this recipe!
They should be in a warm environment, but not too warm! Inside your oven with the light on is always a good place to put them. I put mine near my heater which I set to about 24 C (75 F), so that heats up the room to that temperature. You can also proof them at a cooler temperature, it will just take a bit longer. Hopefully that answers your question!