Cheat's Vegan Kougin Amann Recipe

These cheat's vegan kougin amann are made with a fantastically 'accidentally vegan' product, and are super quick and easy to whip up as half of the work's already been done for you.

Kougin amann are my second favourite French pastry ever (right after canelés). Crunchy, salty-sweet and caramelised on the outside, fluffy on the inside and SUPER buttery, they're a real treat.

But if you want to make them the traditional way, you're going to have to put about three days' worth of work in: because they're made with croissant dough, which needs to be properly laminated. This is the process of folding butter into the dough so you get layer upon layer of flaky goodness.

But because I'm using ready-made croissant dough here, you'll just need about 45 minutes. And because the Jus-Roll dough I'm using happens to be vegan, you can just use vegan spread to grease the tin and then you have a super easy vegan treat.

You can also check out my recipe video on YouTube:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes 12.)

Ingredients:

130g caster sugar
3/4 tsp sea or pink Himalayan salt
2 tbsp vegan butter/margarine, softened
1 roll of Jus-Rol croissant dough

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C, and in a medium-sized bowl stir the sugar and salt together.

2. Generously grease the insides of a 12-cup muffin pan with the margarine, and spoon over some of the sugar, tilting and tapping the tin so the insides are evenly coated with butter and sugar.

3. Tip the excess sugar mixture out onto a clean work surface, and tip out the rest of the sugar in the bowl too. Lay the roll of croissant dough on top, roll it around a bit to coat in sugar, and then roll out to form a rectangle roughly the same size as the muffin tin. Flip the dough every so often while you're rolling to make sure it keeps picking up more sugar.

4. Once the dough's the right size and most of the sugar's been incorporated into it, roll it into a log from its widest side, so you have a log the same length as the muffin tin (don't throw away the leftover sugar just yet).

5. Slice the log into 12 equal discs, and place them spiral side up into the muffin tin. Sprinkle over a bit more of the leftover sugar, and bake for about 25 minutes or until risen and golden.

6. Immediately tip your kougin amann onto a cooling rack as soon as you take them out of the oven, before the caramel hardens (if you leave them in the tin to cool, you'll never get them out in one piece). Then leave to cool for a couple of minutes until not burning hot, and enjoy warm.

Enjoy, and have fun.