Costco Almond Croissant Recipe

Costco's almond croissant pastry is croissant dough folded over an almond filling, baked in a muffin tin and finished with sliced almonds and powdered sugar. This home version presses squares of butter puff pastry into a muffin tin, fills them with almond cream, folds the corners shut and bakes them at 400°F for about 25 minutes. It makes eight.

What the Costco almond croissant pastry is

Costco's bakery sells it as Almond Croissant Pastry in a box of six. Taste of Home described it in January 2025 as croissant dough folded over a marzipan-flavoured centre and baked in a muffin tin, with sliced almonds and powdered sugar on top, at $11.99 a box.

The label, recorded with photographs on Open Food Facts, lists enriched flour, butter, sugar, water, almond flour, eggs and yeast among the ingredients. It counts half a pastry, 85 grams, as a serving with 360 calories, so a whole pastry is two servings. The pastries in this recipe are smaller and come to about 545 calories each by USDA figures.

The recipe below is a reconstruction from those descriptions, not Costco's recipe, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Costco.

Recipe

Almond Croissant Pastries

A reconstruction of Costco's almond croissant pastry — puff pastry folded over almond cream in a muffin tin, with sliced almonds and powdered sugar. Eight pastries.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

25 min

Cook

26 min

Total

1 hr 20 min

Serves

8

Cuisine

French

Ingredients

• For the almond cream:
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 ounces almond flour (about 3/4 cup)
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• For the pastries:
• 1 teaspoon unsalted butter, for the tin
• 17.3 ounces frozen puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed
• 1 large egg, beaten, for brushing
• 1 ounce sliced almonds (about 1/3 cup)
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar, for dusting

Instructions

1. For the almond cream, beat 6 tablespoons of butter with the sugar until pale. Beat in one egg, the almond extract and the salt, then stir in the almond flour and the flour. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
2. Heat the oven to 400°F. Grease 8 cups of a standard muffin tin with the teaspoon of butter.
3. Roll each pastry sheet to a 10-inch square and cut it into four 5-inch squares.
4. Press each square into a muffin cup with the four corners standing up. Spoon 2 tablespoons of almond cream into each.
5. Fold the four corners over the filling towards the middle and press them down lightly. Brush the tops with the beaten egg and scatter the sliced almonds over them.
6. Bake for 24 to 28 minutes, until the pastry is deep golden brown. Leave the pastries in the tin for 5 minutes, lift them onto a rack and dust them with the powdered sugar once they have cooled.

Nutrition

Calories:

545

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Puff pastry in place of croissant dough

A croissant is made from a laminated yeast dough that Wikipedia places between a bread and a puff pastry. Puff pastry is rolled and folded with butter in the same way but has no yeast, and it rises on steam alone. The pastries in the card are therefore crisper and less bready than a croissant.

Choose a puff pastry made with butter; the ingredient list on the box says which fat was used.

With unbaked croissant dough the method is the same, with one more step. After filling and folding, leave the tin at room temperature for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the dough is puffy, then brush it and bake at 375°F for about 25 minutes.

Cold pastry, chilled filling, foil at the end

• Keep the pastry cold until it is rolled. Butter that has gone soft runs out of the dough before the layers set.
• Chill the almond cream. Firm cream stays where it is put; warm cream runs under the pastry and sticks it to the tin.
• Check the base. Lift one pastry with a knife after 24 minutes. The base should be brown, not pale.
• Foil for the almonds. If they brown before the pastry does, lay a sheet of foil loosely over the tin for the last minutes.

Almond croissants from a box of Costco croissants

The same almond cream turns plain butter croissants, a day or two old, into twice-baked almond croissants. One batch covers six large croissants.

1. Stir 1/4 cup of sugar into 1/4 cup of hot water until it has dissolved. In place of this syrup, 1/3 cup of vanilla syrup does the same job.
2. Split each croissant like a sandwich roll, brush the cut sides with syrup and spread 1 1/2 tablespoons of almond cream inside.
3. Close it, spread 1 tablespoon of almond cream on top and press sliced almonds into it.
4. Bake at 350°F for 15 to 18 minutes, until the cream on top has set and browned. Dust with powdered sugar.

Croissants that have dried out a little take up the syrup without falling apart, which is why this is a recipe for the ones left in the box.

Two days, or the freezer

The pastry is crispest on the day of baking. The pastries keep two days in a closed container at room temperature and crisp up again in a 350°F oven in 5 to 8 minutes. Frozen, they keep a month; reheat them from frozen at 350°F for 12 to 15 minutes.

Other Costco copies on this site are the tiramisu cheesecake, the chicken bake and the pistachio cream.