California Dreaming Style Salad + Honey Butter Croissant
Relive your fancy high school date night with a big California Dreaming style salad, piled tall with lettuce and a mountain of toppings that seems to never grow smaller, plus a honey butter croissant on the side (this croissant is a cheater's puff pastry croissant that's done in 20 minutes!).
Servings: 2 servings
Ingredients
Honey Butter Easy Croissants
- 1 sheet frozen puff pastry thawed on counter for 30 minutes
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons honey
Salad
- romaine lettuce
- dash salt
- 1 cup grape tomatoes halved
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- ½ cup sliced almonds
- ¼ cup scallions diced
- 3 hardboiled eggs sliced
Hot Bacon Mustard Dressing
- 4 strips uncooked bacon
- 1 cup honey-Dijon mustard
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 3 tablespoons non-pulp orange juice
- ½ tablespoon red wine vinegar
- ⅛ teaspoon ground mustard
- 1 ½ tablespoons reserved bacon drippings
Instructions
Croissants
- Let the puff pastry thaw at room temperature for about 30 minutes or until pliable.
- Preheat oven to 375 F.
- Open the puff pastry on a cutting board. Use a knife or pizza cutter to cut the dough into long triangles.
- Roll up each triangle from the short flat side to the pointy end and place each croissant on a baking sheet.
- Bake for 20 minutes or until golden on top. While these are baking, move on to making the dressing.
- Heat up 4 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
- Once melted, remove from heat and add in 2 tablespoons of honey. Mix until well combined.
- Pour honey butter mixture over croissants right before serving.
Dressing
- Cut the bacon into 1" segments and place into a cold frying pan. Turn the heat up to medium and use long tongs to move the bacon around to evenly brown it, about 7-10 minutes.
- While the bacon is cooking, mix the other dressing ingredients together.
- Turn the heat off from the pan. Set the bacon pieces aside on a paper towel covered plate to drain.
- Pour the mixed dressing ingredients into the bacon grease in the pan and stir quickly to emulsify. Set aside, off the heat.
Salad
- Pile torn romaine leaves in a large bowl. Lightly salt the leaves and toss. Use your hands to shape the lettuce into a tall pile with the apex in the middle.
- Add cheese, tomatoes, eggs, and almonds, trying to keep the middle part the tallest (if you care).
- Dress with the still-warm dressing (reheat to lukewarm as needed), and finish topping with bacon pieces and scallions.
- Add a honey butter croissant to the side and serve immediately.
Notes
You can be as liberal as you want with the salad additions, putting more cheese, or less almonds at your preference. The original California Dreamin' salad also includes shredded turkey meat and ham, but I find deli meat on a salad weird, but you can add it back in if you prefer.