All Puffed Up: Best Puff Pastry Recipes In Under 10 Minutes

These delicious puff pastry sweets and savouries are oven-ready in less than 10 minutes. (RECIPES)

EASY & DELISH | Making authentic French puff pastry is no small accomplishment, even for the likes of Martha Stewart who confessed in her cookbook Martha Stewart Pies & Tarts that producing a classic puff takes time, “skill and practice,” and that she’s had her share of difficulties making one “because there are so many variables.”

While “quick-from-scratch puff pastry” is definitely easier and less time-consuming to make than the true classic version, it can still be a disaster as I learned not long ago when I tried to replicate THIS AWESOME RECIPE from the Los Angeles Times.

Puffed & Proud

All I can say is un grand merci to French cuisine wizard Dorie Greenspan, who inspired me to let go of past baking failures and embrace purchased puff pastry the way she did when she used it to make the incredible cinnamon pinwheels pictured above (CLICK HERE for the recipe on Greenspan’s blog), and to produce their savory cousin, mustard batons, pictured below as interpreted by Lynne Daley on her blog, blog.photographybylulu.com (CLICK HERE for Lynne’s instructions).

Twist & Shout

Puffed pastry twists are not the absolute no-brainer puffed batons are, but very easy to make nevertheless. I’ve cranked out dozens of cinnamon twists using Puff Pastry Queen Martha Holmberg’s recipe on the Durfour puffed pastry site. (In the U.S., Durfour puffed pastry products are considered akin to made-in-Paris-from-scratch). Holmberg’s recipe can also be used to make Parmesan cheese twists (CLICK HERE for her instructions).

Dough Show

Puffed pastry is best when butter is the shortening ingredient. In Vancouver, Gourmet Warehouse sells house brand all-butter puff ($5.99 for 450g). Whole Foods has a butter version ($7.99 for 460g) that contains both whole wheat and soy flour.

I use Presidents Choice Butter Puff Pastry ($4.39 for 450g) and so do a lot of serious cooks I know. It comes rolled out and wrapped in parchment paper, which can be used to line your baking sheet. While PC butter puff contains both butter and vegetable oils it turns out super flaky pastry and is way better priced that the supermarket staple Tenderflake, which contains only vegetable fat and is priced higher at $5.49 for 397g.—C. Rule

Photos, top to bottom: shiny pinwheels via Dorie Greenspan; mustard batons courtesy Lynne Daley, blog.photographybylulu.com