McDonald's is testing mini fresh-baked pastries they're calling
"Petite Pastries" out in San Diego County. They come in two varieties:
Raspberry and Cinnamon Cream Cheese.
I got a box of
two pastries for $1.99 (one of each variety).
The pastries are about half the size of a McDonald's baked pie. The dough is flaky and layered like a croissant. I warmed them up in the toaster oven since they came to me after a one-and-a-half our trip from San Diego.
They toast up pretty nicely forming a thin, crispy shell, while remaining moist and slightly buttery inside. Both pastries were surprisingly measured in their sweetness. I think the idea is to have them with your morning coffee so they're not so sweet as to make you miss out on the sweetness of the coffee.
The raspberry filling was pretty flavorful but not tart enough for my liking.
The cinnamon cream cheese filling was my favorite of the two. It had a good amount of cinnamon that paired well with the sweet creaminess of the cream cheese. The balance between filling and pastry was pretty fair. It's not markedly better than what you'd find at a decent local bakery though (although cinnamon cream cheese isn't common).
I'm not too sure about the price. I guess it's a decent deal if you get it with coffee (discounted to $1.29 for two pastries with a coffee purchase), or if you don't have any local bakeries with similar items. There's a local join here in the LA area called Portos that offers a superior product (called
"cheese rolls") that also happens to be bigger while costing less (about 70 cents or so each).
McDonald's Petite Pastries also don't keep very well, I kept a second box to try after a day and the dough had already started to dry a fair bit.
Overall, McDonald's Petite Pastries are nice enough, especially the Cinnamon Cream Cheese one, but I'm not sure they're worth the price premium (even compared to their own baked pies, which are two for $1).
