Copycat Starbucks Baked Apple Croissant Recipe

Starbucks may have built its reputation on coffee drinks, but it added food items to the menu over 20 years ago and by now has built up quite a repertoire of pastries including cake pops in a wide range of flavors and seasonal treats like the cranberry bliss bar. Developer Jessica Morone is partial to the chain's popular baked apple croissants, but as this item tends to sell out pretty quickly despite having been added to Starbucks' permanent menu, she came up with a fun and easy copycat recipe that she assures us is practically identical to the original. "I don't see a lot of difference in the flavors at all and they are both really tasty," she tells us.

If you've never had a Starbucks baked apple croissant, Morone describes them as a kind of apple pie/croissant mashup with apple pie filling encased in flaky puff pastry. The tender crispy casing is the perfect complement to the warm spices in the buttery scratch-made filling of fresh tart apples. She also notes that since her croissants are baked in a muffin pan, "They have the portability of a muffin and they aren't messy, so you can eat them on the go."

The apple pie filling is made from apples, butter, lemon juice, brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla. For the croissant base, you'll be using frozen puff pastry, plus an egg to coat it with and coarse sugar for a garnish.

In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

Add the diced apples, lemon juice, brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla extract, and stir until the apples are coated.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the apples are slightly softened, about 10-12 minutes and then remove them from the heat.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Spray 8 of the wells of a standard muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray or line with paper liners.

Place your puff pastry on a lightly floured surface and cut it into 8 equal squares.

Press the puff pastry squares into the bottom and sides of the wells in the prepared pan.

Spoon the apple filling into each puff pastry, filling them almost to the top.

Fold the corners of the pastry down to close over most of the top, leaving the very center of the apple filling exposed.

Whisk together the egg with 1 tablespoon of water.

Brush the tops of the pastry with the egg wash.

Sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, until the croissants are golden brown and the filling is bubbly. Let cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

To make this apple pie filling, you're going to want to use the same kind of apples that you would use to make an apple pie or other apple-based baked goods. Firmer apples are better because apples that are too soft tend to fall apart and get mushy when you cook them. Tart apples like Granny Smiths (which are the ones pictured here) are a great choice, while Jonathans are also tart and firm. If you prefer a sweeter apple, Braeburn, Gala, Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp, and Jonagold all have great flavor and are all sturdy enough for baking purposes.

You can also combine several types of apples and even use softer ones like McIntosh or Cortland as long as you've included some firmer ones in the mix. (Soft apples alone will lead to an applesauce-like filling.) Of course, you can also resort to the time-saving trick of using canned apple pie filling, although in this case you'd skip the first three steps of the recipe and omit the butter, brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla.

This particular recipe will work with any variety of frozen puff pastry. The Pepperidge Farm version, which we used here, comes in a 17.3-ounce box containing two sheets and is one of the more ubiquitous brands. That said, plant-based puff pastry or puff pastry marked "all butter" will work just the same here. If you're feeling ambitious, you could even try making your own puff pastry — here are some expert tips to help you out.

If you're sticking with frozen puff pastry, though, the best way to keep it from cracking is to make sure that it's completely thawed before you start working with it. That being said, you don't want it to get too warm, either, because over-thawed pastry doesn't bake up quite as flaky. If you feel the dough warming up and starting to get mushy as you press it into the muffin cups, stick it back in the fridge until it stiffens up again.