Kouing Aman

Every other week my grandpa, great aunt, some aunts and uncles, and sometimes cousins get together for a standing Family Lunch appointment.  We take turns choosing where to eat – usually downtown since my uncle works downtown and has a limited time for lunch.  A few weeks ago it was my turn and I chose Les Madeleines so I could try their specialty.

For those who don’t know, Les Madeleines is a bakery.  I’d been there before and enjoyed their cupcakes and short breads but I hadn’t tried what they’re known for.  They have all sorts of delicious pastries as well as sandwiches available for breakfast and lunch and for Family Lunch I ordered a delicious caprese sandwich but what I really wanted was the dessert.  All the pastries I’ve had there have been awesome but the pastry they are most well-known for is called Kouing Aman.

Oh. Wow.

My mom told me when I posted this I should add a pronunciation guide so here it is.  Kouing Aman is also sometimes spelled Kouign Amann but is pronounced the same either way.  The first word sounds like a mix of “queen,” the name “Quinn,” and “cooing.”  The second word sounds like “ah-mon”.

It’s flaky, almost like a croissant, but has the addition of caramelized sugar that puts it over the top.  I’ve never seen it anywhere else and it’s on the pricy side but it’s so worth it.  Les Madeleines is closed for a few weeks this summer but are still selling their Kouing Aman at a farmer’s market on Saturday mornings if you’re interested.  I decided in their absence, however, to try making some Kouing Aman of my own.

I looked around for a recipe online and didn’t find much so after reading most of them through I settled on trying this one from Recipezaar even though nobody else had posted about actually trying it yet.

It took a little work to find some fresh yeast which is more of a European thing than an American thing, but I finally found some at a bakery in Taylorsville that would sell me some.  Fresh yeast is not the same as dry active yeast.  It comes in a block or cake and works pretty quickly.  It also goes bad quickly which is why it’s not really big in American stores.

I made my dough and let it raise, then chilled it.

I pounded my butter flat.  I wish I’d been able to find one of the big blocks instead of having the use the kind that comes in 4 sticks.  It would have made this job easier.

Then, like with croissants, I encased the butter in the dough and rolled it out folded it over several times, chilling in between turns.

Here’s where the big difference between regular puff pastry and Kouing Aman comes in and it’s the reason you can’t really short cut it with store-bought puff pastry; the last two turns don’t use flour as the duster.  Instead the dough and butter is sprinkled with sugar so it gets worked into all the layers and later, when it gets baked the sugar all caramelizes inside and out and dies and you are left in heaven.

Can you see all the yummy layers of dough and butter?  That’s what makes it so flaky once it’s baked.

The place I took a detour from the recipe was where it wanted me to use little pastry rings on a parchment lined baking sheet and I didn’t have any so I used muffin tins.  It worked fine for the most part but had a harder time baking evenly with that much pastry inside the tin.  Were I to do it again I’d probably just buckle down and buy a few little rings to make the baking part easier.  Also then it wouldn’t have splurped out all over my oven and burned to the bottom.  Live and learn.

In the end, though, TA DA!  Homemade Kouing Aman!  No, she’s not as pretty or evenly browned as Les Madeleines’ version (what can I say, I’m not a pastry chef) but she still tastes sticky and caramel-y and I’m pretty sure I’m gaining weight by the hour just by having all that deliciousness in my house.

While preparing to make this I talked to ODD about it a lot.  After a while he asked if it was really a big deal or something.  Yeah, it kind of is.  I had to basically set aside most of a day to work on it because of all the raising, chilling, and rolling, not to mention mess-making.  Doing it once was a lot of fun but it was so much work I’m not likely to do it again and am more than willing to pay Les Madeleines to make them for me.