Croissant Party of Four

My friend Heather has many goals in life. Over 40 goals in fact. She has written them all down in a list she calls 40x40: Forty things she wants to get done before she turns 40.

In early February, I, along with about ten other girls, received an invitation to Heather's apartment in Brooklyn Heights to help her accomplish goal #36: make homemade croissants. I love croissants, I love baking and I love Heather so I was definitely in. But when Heather sent a second email invitation three weeks later, where she spoke of "serious baking" and "mimosas" in the same sentence, I started to have some doubts about how successful we would be. I mean, wasn't croissant-baking a complicated endeavor?

Heather figured this out a week later because we all got a nervously written email about how she found out it takes two days to prepare the dough. She attached a Julia Child video we were supposed to watch as homework. I was too overwhelmed to watch it seriously. Despite everything, her fourth email sounded vaguely optimistic, she would start the dough-making process the day before, she had it all figured out, but who knew what would really happen on croissant day.

This is what happened:

First of all, only four people showed up, including Heather. Everyone dropped off like flies at the last minute which is lame to me simply because I knew how excited Heather was about this day (hello, we had like two months notice and four emails about it!!) There was some St Patrick's Day fall-out.

Second, it seemed that the real party happened the day before, when Heather and her friend Malissa spent hours preparing the dough. While they created all kinds of layers of dough, having to chill it for an hour between every step of the process, they got very intoxicated. The day of the real croissant party, the host and her buddy were a little tired and no one was in the mood for a mimosa.

But still, the party was not a complete bust. Together we rolled the dough very flat, cut it into triangles, rolled it up into little croissants and after an hour of rising, baked them in the oven. The apartment not only smelled heavenly, but the croissants tasted pretty damned good. With less people to share, there was more for us to eat. We ate way too much (yeah, I was off the Madness for those few hours in Heather's apartment). We played Wii Fit and watched bad TV and looked at photo albums. It was a perfect way to spend a Sunday, really.


Here's Heather rolling the dough. Nice apron!


Cutting the dough into triangles.



The croissants rising.


The croissants right out of the oven. See all that grease? Yeah, that's BUTTER oozing out. Yum!


The croissants were very moist and buttery but Malissa felt the need for more butter.

Perhaps for Heather's next themed party, we should work together to accomplish #21 Make your own wine. I may have been skeptical about croissants and homemade wine made seems even more suspect, but after today's success, I have faith that Heather can accomplish all of her goals.