Chocolate Croissants

The last couple of weekends, D has bought a chocolate croissant from a stall at the markets. He has enjoyed them, but they don't quite live up to the chocolate croissants he can buy at a cafe near his work.

He was eating one of these while I was watching Nigella Express, and Nigella started making her version of chocolate croissants. The particular croissant being eaten was a little light on its chocolate inside and D grumbled 'if we made our own there'd be chocolate inside'. I showed him the recipe and asked if he'd be interested. He was interested, particularly about the part where he could choose his own chocolate, so Sunday morning we visited our local Zone Fresh for the ingredients.


That's it. Well, and an egg, but otherwise all there is to it is a packet of puff pastry and some chocolate. We weren't sure whether to go with milk chocolate or dark chocolate so we decided to do half with milk and half with dark. The milk chocolate won the taste test as the dark is just a little too bitter and there's no sweetness coming from the pastry to offset it.


All you need to do is to cut your pastry into squares. Nigella said 6 squares, but 6 squares looked too big for me so I went for 9. Plus, the pastry's dimensions divided by 3 neatly. After you have squares, cut them in half diagonally.


Next, place your chocolate on the widest part of the triangle. My chocolates were a little too big, so I cut them in half. Then you roll them up, starting from the widest part and trying to make them look similar to a croissant. Place them on a lined baking tray and then brush with beaten egg. I sprinkled a little sugar over the top for a little extra sweetness.


Finally, bake them in a preheated 220 degree C oven for about 15 minutes (mine needed 20) until they are golden and puffy.


D's final word? These are better than the croissants at the markets and he would eat these over them any day, but they are not better than the croissant he can get from the place near his work. I liked them because they weren't too sweet and they didn't have the sticky danishy glaze that can sometimes overpower the chocolate inside. Actually, it probably overpowers the chocolate inside because the chocolate inside is nearly non-existent. These had a very good pastry to chocolate ratio.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.