Crispy Crunchy Chocolate Croissants

Lately I have become a little obsessed with "faking baking" with puff pastry.

This time it's Crispy crunchy chocolate croissants. I got inspired to make this from two things:

1. I LOVE chocolate. Who doesn't?

and

2. I had to bring something sweet to the lab's holiday party (which was in the middle of the week, so had to be easy and quick)

If I can just pick up a puff pastry on my way home and bake delicious croissants in an hour on a weeknight, I would prefer that than make puff pastry from scratch. But, not everyone wants to "fake bake" like me, so if you are into baking and would love to learn how to make croissants from scratch, here is Farrukh's wonderful post to help you through each and every step.

I have used puff pastry here (Am I saying puff pastry over and over again? Now you know I am obsessed!) but you can do this same recipe with Pillbury crescent rolls. The difference between the two is yeast. Puff pastry has no yeast. If you use crescent rolls for this recipe, it will turn out great too. It will be soft and flaky compared to crispy and crunchy with puff pastry.

There is actually not much of a recipe here. But here it goes:

You need:

1 sheet of pepperidge farm puff pastry, thawed at room temperature for 40 min. [If by any chance, you have thawed it for a longer time and the sheet is too soft and sticky to work with, pop it back into the freezer for 5-10 min and chill it. Source of information- My mistakes]

6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips [Use dark or milk chocolate whichever you like]

1 egg

1 tbsp water

¼ cup All purpose flour

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Spread the All purpose flour on your workspace. Place you puff pastry sheet on it and roll it to a 16 by 14 inches rectangle. [It is very important to have flour below your puff pastry or it will be difficult to roll the croissants later.]

Cut the sheet in half lengthwise and then make 8 rectangles. Cut along the diagonals to make 16 triangles as shown in picture. 

Put about half tablespoon of chocolate chips in each triangle. 

With the wider side of the triangle towards yourself, start rolling the pastry. [If you find it difficult to keep the chocolate chips inside, don't worry. In some of my pictures, you will find some chips peeking out through the folds of the pastry, and I think I like them that way. Then you know there chocolatey goodness inside!]

Whisk 1 egg with 1 tablespoon of water and brush each croissant with the egg wash. 

Put it in the oven for 30 mins.

Enjoy warm croissants, crispy and crunchy outside with gooey melted chocolate inside!

Little Hearts

Valentine's day is still a couple of months away but why wait till then? Christmas is almost here. Enjoy the festive season with these Little Hearts.

I am no baker, in fact I know nothing about baking. I can not even count how many times I have failed in baking a cake or even brownies. But this, my friends, I must say is the easiest baking. And if I can get it right, anyone can.


Palmiers are pastry that have the shape of a butterfly but I like to think of them as the shape of a heart.

It was quite by accident that I bought this pastry some years ago and got hooked on to them ever since. They are sweet, buttery and crispy goodies and surprisingly simple to make!

Palmiers are made of puff pastry. You can make puff pastry from scratch if you want but why take the pain when you can get such nice puff pastry right in the freezer section of your grocery store. I made cinnamon palmiers.

Ingredients:

1 puff pastry sheet [I used pepperidge farm]

½ cup granulated sugar

½ tbsp ground cinnamon

1 egg

1 tbsp water

Method:

Thaw the puff pastry following the instructions on the package.

Heat the oven to 400°.

Roll it out with a a rolling pin to approximately 16 in  by 10 in in size. [For easy clean up, tape a sheet of parchment paper on my kitchen table/ whatever work space you chose 2.5 feet in length. Put half of the sugar on the workspace, put the pastry on it and then roll the pastry. This will prevent it from sticking, and also there will be sugar on the outer surface.]

Mix the cinnamon powder with the rest of the sugar and spread uniformly on the pastry sheet.

Since I made little hearts (half in size compared to palmiers), I cut the pastry in half length wise and worked separately with each half.

Now fold long side of the rectangle such the the edge meets halfway till the middle. DO it on both sides and then fold again such that they meet in the middle. Look at the pic below to help you. It will look like a log.

Add 1 tbsp of water to the egg in a bowl and whisk it with a fork. Brush both sides of the log with the egg wash [This will give a nice golden brown color on baking].

Then cut the long roll in pieces ~half an inch in width. I made ~60 hearts from 1 puff pastry sheet.

The key to a nice heart shape is that you fan out the ends of the pieces when you lay them cut side up on a parchment paper lined baking tray.

Place them on the lower rack in your oven.

Bake them for 10 min on one side. Then turn them over and bake the other side for another 5-6 min till golden brown in color. 

Cool them down on a rack. Enjoy!

These looked golden brown and so tempting out of the oven!

Enjoy them anytime of the day. You can store the extras away in an air-tight container to relish for the next few days. But they hardly ever stay that long, at least for me!!

Next time will be simple sugar palmiers dipped in chocolate! I already can't wait to finish these and make another batch.