Croissants For Afternoon Tea?

Serving croissants for afternoon tea can be a delightful twist on tradition! While traditional afternoon tea includes items like finger sandwiches, scones, and pastries, croissants offer a French-inspired variation that adds a light, flaky element to the spread. Here’s how you can incorporate croissants into afternoon tea:

1. Mini Croissants

• Serve mini croissants for easy handling. You can offer plain croissants or fill them with different ingredients to align with the traditional savory and sweet balance of afternoon tea.

2. Savory Fillings

• Ham & Cheese: Classic croissant sandwiches with ham and cheese.
• Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese: A sophisticated option that pairs well with afternoon tea.
• Herbed Chicken Salad: Light and flavorful for a savory bite.

3. Sweet Fillings

• Chocolate Croissants: Add a hint of decadence with pain au chocolat.
• Almond Croissants: These sweet treats bring richness and a crunchy texture to the spread.
• Fruit & Cream: Serve croissants with jam, clotted cream, or fresh fruit fillings like strawberries.

4. Accompaniments

• Offer a variety of teas that pair well with croissants, such as Earl Grey, Darjeeling, or Chamomile.
• Add side elements like fresh fruit, macarons, or mini éclairs to elevate the tea experience.

5. Presentation

• Serve on tiered trays, mixing croissants with other traditional items like scones and pastries for a visually appealing presentation.
• Cut the croissants into halves or quarters if serving larger ones, making them easier to manage with tea.

This blend of French pastry with traditional British tea will give a modern, elegant touch to your afternoon tea!

Here is an article, along with illustrated instructions on how to make croissants in Fanny Cradock’s cooking magazine from the 1970s. There’s also a few vintage recipe cards from the 1960s.

Contrary to the general conception, at any rate in this island, croissants are not French. They were created in 1686 by the bakers of Budapest. The story is such a pretty one that we take time off to tell it to you and hope you will enjoy it as much as we do.

During the siege of Budapest by the Turks and when their forces surrounded the city walls, the guards on the parapets fell asleep one night, leaving only the bakers of the town awake and at work as usual. These bakers heard strange sounds so they immediately awoke the sleeping guards. Then, straightaway, they sounded the alarm and roused the soldiery. They were therefore directly responsible for the driving back of the Turks, who were tun­nelling under the walls. The following morning the City Fathers collected the Town Crier, formed a procession and marched through the beleaguered city with their leader, who declared that by the intervention of the bakers the city had been saved from her attackers and that, as a reward and in honour of the occasion, they were to create a new bread to be a per­petuation of the event.

Those bakers took their inspiration from the crescents on the sleeves of the Turks’ ottomans! Hence croissants which eventu­ally found their way to France.

how to make cold yeast dough

In Part no. 13 we showed you how to make Emergency Croissants — substitute ones — from bought frozen puff paste. In this Part we give you something very special—real croissants. These used to take 8 hours to make—through the night; but we shall have to share something which puts an end to that nonsense! As a matter of fact we discovered, many years ago, that the statement that everything must always be warm for yeast work to be suc­cessful can be fallacious for croissants and many other items we hope to share with you later on. There is much use of cold yeast dough in Scandinavia, notably in Denmark, where the pastry cooks are superb and too little appreciated. As a re­sult of what we tasted and saw in some of the greatest pastry Cooks’ kitchens, we are able to offer you now a cold croissant dough for which nothing needs warming and if there is a draught in the kitchen and the door is left open it makes not a halfpenny of difference! Moreover this dough—as hostess Fanny and host Johnnie have found to their delight—can be made up, refrigerated and drawn on at will for up to 7 days and indeed we have kept the dough for 10 days successfully! Then, when you require fresh croissants to be served piping hot to your guests and it is you who get up and prepare the tray-load, you can whip the dough from the refriger­ator, cut off the required piece, cut and roll the croissants and slip them into the oven for 13-14 minutes without any prov­ing, while you make the tea or coffee and do the rest of the guest-breakfast chores.

There is, however, one thing about which you must be extremely careful. You can only make highly successful croissants with this dough from, the first rolling.

Once the croissants are cut from the rolled out dough, the trimmings cannot be re-rolled for croissants’, but they can be used for very puffy pastry paste dough as if you were using real puff paste. As if that were not enough, if you roll scraps of these trimmings out very thinly and stamp them out into fancy shapes, you can toss them into slightly smoking hot fat and let them blow up like little Bleriot balloons for sifting with icing sugar and serving as a quick pudding. Like this you can also make twists for vanilla sticks.

Butter Dough Mixture

• 1 lb. butter
• 1 1/2 oz. flour

Yeast Dough Mixture:

• 1 1/2 oz. bakers’ yeast
• 1 oz. castor sugar
• 1 egg
• 8 fl. oz. water
• 15 oz. sifted flour

HOW TO CUT AND ROLL CROISSANTS

Now your croissants are ready. Brush all over with raw beaten egg and bake, one shelf above centre, Gas Mark 6 or 400°F., until richly brown

© Copyright text and images: Fanny and Johnnie Cradock 1971

Here are some variations on the basic recipe, taken from vintage recipe cards from the 1970s. If you don’t want to try the basic recipe above, then buy the croissants from your local supermarket and follow the recipes below.

© Copyright My Favourite Recipes