I Tasted & Reviewed Martha Stewart’s Goldbelly Pastries—This Is the Best One

The goodies come frozen and unbaked in elegant Martha Stewart packaging. They’ll keep in the freezer for about five months. Once you unwrap them, the baking process is mostly the same for each pastry, save for different bake times. The croissants are thawed for ten minutes, then baked at 350°F for about half an hour. The Danishes are the same, except for only 22 to 24 minutes. For the kouign-amann, you’ll need to butter a muffin tin, roll the partially thawed pastries in granulated sugar, then nestle them in the pan before baking for 26 minutes.

My one bone to pick here (besides the fact that the Danish filling spilled out into the bag, meaning they likely thawed some before I could bring them inside) is that there are no baking instructions included in the shipment itself. However, they’re easily accessible online.

These fruity beauties are only available as part of the pastry assortment, so you’ll have to buy some of each to try them. They’re crowned with a simple cherry filling. They looked a bit small and unevenly filled when I took them out of the package to thaw, but I hoped baking would puff them up to size and distribute the cherries. Unfortunately, they turned out very small compared to the croissants, and the filling was noticeably uneven from pastry to pastry. The flavor, however, was on point with a sweet-tart fruity center and an eggy, buttery dough.

Kouign-amann is hands-down one of my favorite pastries of all time. If you’ve never had the pleasure, it’s a buttery, heavily layered pastry both adorned and laced with caramelized sugar, which gives it an indulgent, caramel-y crust. Sold in both this pastry assortment and its own eight-pack, Martha’s turned out less brown and caramelized than I’d hoped. That said, they smelled heavenly and supremely buttery. In terms of taste, it was buttery, sweet and indulgent with a crunchy exterior and a very moist inside that was perhaps a bit underdone.

Next time, I may turn the heat up for the second half of the bake or broil it for the last few minutes for a golden-brown finish. But the main con here is that you’ll need a very large muffin tin (as in one with jumbo-size cups) to fit the kouign-amann fold side-up as the instructions recommend. (Mine proved small for the pastries, so maybe that’s why they weren’t able to fully brown.) Since they’re still frozen in the center when they go in, the dough isn’t fully pliable so you can only finesse it so much if it doesn’t fit.

Available in the pastry assortment and as a separate dozen, these are an easy win for a fancy brunch or holiday breakfast. Made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, salt and…not much else, these prove that simplicity can be scrumptious. But did they taste like they were baked by Martha herself? Well, at the very least, they looked like they were, with a stunning, glossy exterior crust that was beautifully brittle and flaky and a doughy, buttery inside that was soft as clouds. They far surpass any grocery store croissant I’ve ever tasted both in texture and its rich-yet-minimalist flavor.

I also got to try Martha’s chocolate croissants, which are part of the Croissant Assortment, a mix of all-butter, chocolate and raisin swirl croissants. They come rolled with a wide, flat strip of chocolate nestled in the middle. Once baked, the chocolate turns melty and rich, imparting its bittersweet splendor to the center of each pastry. The surrounding pastry puffs up with gusto and browns to a bakery-caliber gold. Two of them puffed up a bit too much, resulting in a warped shape. I wished the chocolate was more evenly distributed, but the pastry itself was delicious, and arguably the butteriest of the lot.