Buttery and flaky croissant dough gets twisted up with a generous dose of cinnamon-sugar and baked in a muffin pan, combining two tasty treats into one: croissants + muffins = cruffins. If you’re looking for a new one-day baking challenge, this unique pastry is a fun one to try. And absolutely delicious to eat! This is an egg-free baking recipe.
Cruffins are a delightful hybrid of two beloved bakery treats: croissant dough baked into a beautifully spiraled muffin shape. When I decided to make a homemade version, I wanted to learn more about their origin. It turns out cruffins were first created in Melbourne, Australia, by Lune Croissanterie and later made their way to the U.S., thanks to Australian pastry chef Ry Stephen.
And we can all agree—this buttery masterpiece was a creation worth selling!
If you have ever taken the time to make flaky, buttery croissants from scratch, you’ll know that homemade pastry requires time, precision, and patience, but is a very rewarding baking project. I know it can seem intimidating, but I thoroughly break down the process for you, step by step, in the tutorial below.
*Bakery cruffins are usually taller than today’s homemade version because they’re baked in deeper pans, such as popover pans. Since many home bakers don’t have popover pans, this recipe is designed for a standard muffin pan.
Homemade cruffins do not require any special ingredients, but they do require 4 rounds of 20-minute refrigerations, 3 rounds of rolling-and-folding (laminations), and 2 rises. For these reasons, I categorize this as an advanced baking recipe. But I’m here to walk you through each step.
You can absolutely do this!
The base dough for these cruffins is the same yeasted dough we use to make this croissant bread loaf, which is a scaled-down version of my recipe for homemade croissants.
You need very basic ingredients: whole milk, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, and all-purpose flour. I recommend European-style butter here. It has a higher fat content than American-style butter, giving it a richer flavor. While the difference is subtle in many baked goods, it becomes more noticeable in recipes where the butter is the main ingredient… like cruffins!
Not only did my team and I notice better flavor, the dough was easier to roll out when laminated with European-style butter. It’s softer, which made the dough more pliable… and the process easier! 😉
If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, you can use that to make and knead the dough, but it’s not required..
When the dough is ready to rise, cover it and let it rise for around 2 hours, until it’s nearly doubled in size. Gently punch down the risen dough to deflate it:
Roll the dough into a 10×14-inch rectangle on a lightly floured silicone baking mat or piece of parchment paper.
Place the baking mat on a baking sheet, cover, and refrigerate for 20 minutes. During this first refrigeration, prepare for the lamination.
Laminating dough is the process of folding butter into dough many times, which creates multiple alternating layers of butter and dough. When the laminated dough bakes, the butter melts and creates steam. This steam lifts the layers apart, leaving us with dozens of flaky airy buttery layers. We achieve something similar in rough puff pastry, pie crust, and biscuits.
The butter you use for laminating this cruffin dough should be slightly softened but still cool—about 60–64°F (15–18°C) is ideal. You want it to be about the same temperature as the refrigerated dough. If you have an instant-read thermometer, you can insert it in both the butter and the dough to check.
With a mixer, beat the butter with a Tablespoon of flour. I learned this from Zoe at Zoe Bakes. (Please go follow Zoe, she is the absolute best!) Start with softened butter and beat it with flour so it has some stability, which makes laminating easier.
1st lamination: Remove the dough from the refrigerator and spread the beaten butter down the middle third of the dough with a sturdy knife, leaving a ½-inch border at the top and bottom:
Fold the sides of the dough over the butter, like you’re folding a letter into thirds:
Pinch the top and bottom ends to seal the butter inside. Turn the dough 90 degrees, so the longer side is horizontal in front of you. Sprinkle with flour. Roll out to 9×12 inches.
Fold in thirds again:
Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
2nd lamination: Turn the dough horizontally in front of you, and roll it out to 9×12 inches again. Fold in thirds. Turn 90 degrees. Roll out to 9×12 inches again. Fold in thirds. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
3rd lamination: Repeat the same steps as the 2nd lamination. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Cut the chilled dough into 3 roughly equal portions. They should each weigh around 300–340g, give or take. Take one dough portion and roll it out to 8×12 inches; it will keep shrinking back and not reach these dimensions yet. Set it aside to rest while you roll out the next piece. Set that one aside. Roll out the last piece and set it aside.
Take the first piece you rolled out and roll it out again. After its short rest, it should be much easier now to roll it out to be 8×12 inches. Re-flour and flip the dough over as needed to keep it from sticking to the surface or rolling pin:
Sprinkle the surface with cinnamon-sugar.
With a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut 1-inch strips of dough.
Working with 3 strips at a time, layer them on top of one another. Roll them up together in a spiral cinnamon-roll shape:
Place in one well of a greased muffin pan. Repeat with the remaining strips to get 4 cruffins.
. That’s OK! Because of the way we’re shaping them, each cruffin bakes up a little differently. Once you roll the baked cruffins in sparkly cinnamon-sugar at the end, they somehow all look uniquely beautiful, no matter how they looked in the muffin pan.
Now repeat this shaping process with the remaining 2 portions of dough—you’ll end up with 12 cruffins. Lightly cover the cruffins and let them rise for 1 hour.
The cruffins take about 25–28 minutes to bake. If you check one with an instant-read thermometer, they’re done when the internal temperature reaches 200°F (93°C).
Let the cruffins cool slightly in the pan, just about 10 minutes. Once they are cool enough to handle but still warm, roll them in the remaining cinnamon-sugar. (Feel free to make some extra cinnamon-sugar if you want to be generous with your coating!)
These cruffins are perfect as is, but if you want to take them one step further, you can fill them. These cinnamon-sugar cruffins taste utterly fabulous with Nutella; and other fillings such as jam, lemon curd, or pastry cream are equally delicious.
Like when we fill cupcakes, a long thin piping tip is great for this task. I use Wilton #230 to fill cruffins. Poke a hole in the center of a cruffin with a skewer, insert the piping tip into the hole, and squeeze the piping bag until the filling reaches the top of the cruffin.
Check out these layers:
I hope you enjoy diving into this wonderful layered, laminated, and spiraled world of buttery pastry!
Buttery and flaky croissant dough gets twisted up with a generous dose of cinnamon-sugar and baked in a muffin pan, combining two tasty treats into one incredible hybrid: croissants + muffins = cruffins. Bakery cruffins are usually taller than this homemade version because they’re baked in deeper pans, such as popover pans. Since many home bakers don’t have popover pans, this recipe is designed for a standard muffin pan.
