Simple 45-Minute Pain-Au-Chocolat

Easy chocolatey buttery goodness! Hell yes!

Chocolate + Puff Pastry + Quick = ❤️
The form may not be traditional, but the flavor is real.
What’s more tasty than a quick treat?

Ingredients

• 1 sheet of puff pastry
• 1 bar of bittersweet chocolate (or 2 cups of bittersweet chocolate chips)
• 1 whole egg
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp sugar of choice (in this case I used granulated sugar)
• 1 tbsp baking powder

Instructions

1. Roll out the sheet of puff pastry into a rectangle, to a thickness of 1 inch.
2. Sift baking powder and sugar on the surface of the sheet.
3. Fold into thirds like a letter.
4. Wrap the puff pastry in plastic.
5. Pop into the freezer for 5 minutes (alternatively, refrigerate for 20 minutes). Preheat the oven to 180ºC during this time.
6. Pound the dough onto the working surface until soft enough to roll out, to a thickness of half an inch
7. Punch out with a 3 to 5-inch diameter cookie cutter, mason jar ring or glass. In my case I used a mason jar ring and they turned out fine, but avoid pinching the seams too much.
8. Beat whole egg. With half of your resulting circles, brush their edges with the beaten egg.
9. Place the chocolate in the center of the circle, avoiding the brushed edges.
10. With the other half of the resulting circles, place them over the circles with filling and (very) gently press the edges so the two circles are sticked together.
11. Brush the top of the resulting pairs with beaten egg. Sprinkle sugar.
12. Place pastries in a baking sheet with parchment paper and bake for 40 minutes.
13. Once golden brown, remove and quickly sprinkle them again with sugar (that’s why we chose bittersweet chocolate!)
14. Let cool for 10 to 20 minutes.
15. Voila!

Notes:

• While we sprinkled sugar onto the pastries for the topping, go wild: some good alternatives include chocolate ganache, powdered sugar, even butter before the last 5 minutes of baking time. If using brown sugar, I would use dark chocolate to pair with the molasses-y flavor
• The baking powder boosts the rise of the pastries to produce a tender, incredibly flakey result. This is optional and you can remove it in a pinch.
• You can add texture to the filling by mixing in some toasted nuts with the chocolate to provide some variation to every bite.
• You can make your own puff pastry, if you’d like. Try repeating the sprinkling for each fold, and check the results!
• Just go wild! Be creative! ✨