Braided Almond Pastry

I don't very often think about making dessert, or sweet things, because that just isn't my jam, Making jam is, actually, my jam; perfecting a gorgeous batch of garlic frites is even more my jam. I'm just not drawn to sweet things, I'm a salt all the way. I do still like to try new things, or make old favorites, but I really have to make an effort to find tempting sugar delicacies. One of the things the kid and I can both agree on is anything with almond flavoring; we both adore the taste and pretty much everything it's in. I made some sort of cherry dessert recently for my mom that had almond extract, and the kid raved on and on about it, but it was solely because of the almond.


I've had this Almond Braid pinned to make for some time now. I am a coward about phyllo dough and puff pastry, and they're such great shortcut tools that I really need to get better about handling them. I love baklava and have made that successfully a few times, and I made from-scratch croissants this summer that just about killed me, so at least I was planning to cheat and buy store-bought dough. Now, the croissants were three different kinds; butter (plain), chocolate (pain au chocolat), and almond. The almond... omg the almond. The center is basically marzipan, a homemade almond paste that is just to die for (unless of course you hate marzipan, in which case - GO READ SOMETHING ELSE). My daughter of course loved the chocolate and wants me to make those every weekend (and suggested I make the almond braid but with chocolate immediately).

My braiding technique definitely would've had me kicked off a competitive cooking show, mostly because in looking at it I don't think I even cut it the right way. I've left-handed, and often have issues with 99% of visual instructions because that is the life of a lefty. And I had made a ton of almond paste and didn't want it to go to waste, so instead of adding the other stuff I just used that, but it was a mistake; it was wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much almond paste. Do you see those little bits of leftover dough, rolled up with butter and cinnamon and sugar? That was my favorite part.


The color here is weird because the 'enhance' feature apparently sucked the life out of it, and I'm not rich and famous like The Pioneer Woman or Bakerella so I don't have a nice camera and a light box and studio hands and whatever magic they use to make their food photos look so enticing and not-made-in-a-dirty-kitchen. Which is not to say it didn't TASTE good - it was just kind of so-so. I totally took it out of the oven too soon because the almonds were getting frighteningly brown, and I will absolutely err on the side of under cooked rather than overcooked with baking, whereas with cooking (for example, poultry), I'm going to overcook that noise until it's basically a powdered version of itself. Because salmonella.

My daughter's friend group (three other girls her age who live in the neighborhood) have been my test kitchen lately; they raved about this, but I think just because it was SO. SWEET. When warm it was, ahh, really really gooey.



When cold, it was better, but still should have cooked longer. I went back and forth between this recipe http://willowbirdbaking.com/2015/01/26/buttery-almond-pastry-braid-managed-crazy-cheap-wedding-1000/  and this one https://thenovicechefblog.com/2016/01/sweet-almond-pastry/. I need to work things out a little better (and try a chocolate version), so look forward to a future update.