Photo: Blaine Moats
Bring the aromas of your favorite bakery home with our pastry recipes. If you’re a beginner, don’t be intimidated. Pastry dishes always start with a dough consisting of flour, water, and solid fat (which can be shortening, butter, or lard). Some common examples include pies, tarts, donuts, croissants, Danishes, and scones. Here’s a handful of our favorite recipes, including some easy shortcuts, such as frozen puff pastry or refrigerated piecrust.
Blueberry-Cream Cheese Pastries
Attention blueberry-lovers: These flaky breakfast pastries are full of your favorite bite-size berries. Give them a spread made with cream cheese, vanilla, and lemon juice for a sweet-tart kickoff to the day.
Potato Cinnamon Rolls
We’re letting you in on the secret ingredient to the most fluffy, delicious cinnamon rolls you’ll ever taste—potatoes. That’s right, this top-rated recipe from our Test Kitchen uses mashed potatoes to achieve the ultimate soft, pillowy rolls you know and love.
Buy It: OXO Potato Masher ($16 Target)
Layers of light and flaky puff pastry sheets, spiced apple slices, and cream cheese fill this Danish pastry recipe. Save yourself some prep time and skip a step by substituting canned apple pie filling for the spiced apples.
Almond and Vanilla Bean Scones
These rich, moist scones get their incredible flavor from almond extract and vanilla-bean paste. To ease cutting the pastry dough, cover it with plastic wrap and freeze for 20 minutes before slicing. You can also freeze the dough up to two months for delicious homemade pastries at a moment’s notice.
Buy It: Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Paste ($37, Williams Sonoma)
Cream Cheese Danishes
The key to creating a flaky pastry, like this classic Danish, is all about the puff pastry. Luckily, the frozen version at your grocery store is delicious, and definitely worth buying as a shortcut. Top this easy breakfast recipe with your favorite fruit preserves.
Lavender-Honey Lemon Tart
This delicious pastry recipe is a showstopping brunch treat or dessert that only looks complicated. It takes a mere 10 minutes of hands-on time to get this sweet and tangy tart together. The candied lemons are also easy to make and are an impressive topper.
Make easy work of these sweet pastries—a plastic bag quickly pipes a homemade chocolate filling into purchased cannoli shells. Look for the shells at Italian grocery stores and larger supermarkets.
Buy It: Wilton Decorating Bags with Tips ($12, Walmart)
Here our homemade strawberry jam is infused with cardamom for a zesty take. Stuffed inside a flaky pastry and drizzled with powdered sugar icing, this is a breakfast recipe that’s sweet enough for dessert.
Rustic Blood Orange Tart with Salted Pecan Crust
Add some nutty flavor to your dough with toasted pecans. Blood oranges make a tangy filling and beautiful presentation. Just remove the white pith from the citrus, as it tends to have a bitter taste.
Buy It: Beech Wood Rolling Pin ($9, Target)
Stuffed Churro Puffs
Some flavors were just meant to be paired, such as the dulce de leche that stuffs these churro-inspired cream puffs. If you’ve never made choux pastry, watch our video to show you how easy it is to make from scratch.
Danish Pastry Apple Bars
Serve these delicious apple pastry bars to really win over the breakfast guests. You’ll love that the recipe can make 32 bars, and they’ll love the crunch of the hidden layer of cornflakes.
This classic pastry recipe from the 1953 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book is our favorite. We’ve updated the donuts to use butter (and more of it) instead of shortening, but kept its classic cinnamon-nutmeg spice.
Buy It: Hamilton Beach Deep Fryer ($45, Walmart)
French Market Beignets
Originally developed in New Orleans, these elegant, fried French pastries are dusted with a generous coating of powdered sugar. Fun fact: The word “beignet” is actually French for “fritter.”
Start with purchased crescent roll dough to make these tender, rich pastries in just 35 minutes. A dark filling of almond paste and chocolate makes these treats bakery-worthy.