Croissants and cronuts Made from Chocolate Puff Pastry

Preparation of flour butter:

1. Cut the 250 g cold butter into cubes and knead with the 25 g flour in a bowl. When everything has joined together well and is smooth and without lumps of butter, roll out this mixture between 2 layers of parchment paper 19 x 19 cm square. Then place this plate including baking paper in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Preparation of the dough:

1. While the butter platter is cooling, mix the flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl. First work in the egg with the dough hook of the hand mixer and then the liquid (cooled) butter. Then quickly but gradually knead in the ice-cold water in small amounts. This until everything has connected well. Finally, briefly place the dough on the work surface again, rework a little with your hands, shape it into a ball, wrap it in foil and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Making puff pastry:

1. Roll out the cooled dough on the lightly floured work surface into a rectangle of 20 x 40 cm. Remove the paper from the flour butter plate and place it on one half of the rectangle. Leave a small margin free. Then fold the other half over and press the edges well. Now roll out this smaller rectangle carefully, but still apply light pressure to a size of 25 x 35 cm. Then fold one of the narrow sides together so that 1/3 of the plate still protrudes. Then place this third over the already folded part, and you get 3 layers of dough. This folding is a so-called “easy tour”. Repeat this process again, wrap the 3-layer dough block in foil and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. When rolling out, always make sure that the dough is not damaged and that no butter can leak out.
2. After the 30 minutes of cooling, repeat the process again and cool again for 30 minutes.

Further processing:

1. If you only want to make CROISSANTS, roll out the dough block – again carefully – about 3 mm thin and as rectangular as possible. Then cut the rectangle lengthways into 18 cm wide strips and these into pointed triangles. The dimensions for this: The narrow, lower side should be 13 cm and the two sloping sides should be 18.5 cm. If you want to prepare smaller croissants, you have to calculate the dimensions yourself. It is only important that the two sloping sides must always be a little more than 1/3 longer than the lower narrow side.
2. Now roll up the pointed triangle from this narrow side and let the point be on top at the end. Then place it on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and then bend the still straight roll into a horseshoe shape.
3. Preheat the oven to 180 ° O / bottom heat. Whisk an egg yolk with 1 tablespoon of water (I only used cream, however), brush the blanks with it and sprinkle some sugar on top. The baking time on the second rack from the bottom is 30 minutes. When baking, a lot of butter comes out at first and you have the feeling that they are just floating in the fat. But this is inevitable and normal with puff pastry. When the baking time is over, let them cool down on the baking sheet.
4. If you like the croissants a little sweeter, you can fill them with marzipan, nougat, chocolate or whatever you like before rolling them up. This filling must then be placed on the lower narrow side or spread out a little. If only croissants are made from the dough, the result should be around 10-12 larger ones. For the processing of any leftover dough, see Preparation of Cronuts.
5. For CRONUTS (a combination of croissant and donut, which are fried in fat in the original, but was too big for me) now roll out the dough to about 4 mm thin and cut out the typical rings with a donut cutter (8 cm dm) . If you don’t have it, you can use two rounds. A large one with a diameter of 8 cm and a small one 2 cm for the hole in the middle.
6. The dough then results in 20 rings. Place 10 of them on the baking sheet lined with baking paper. Then shape 5 g of the raw marzipan into a thin roll, place it in a circle on a ring and press down a little. Put a second ring on top and also press lightly. Place the tray in the oven at 180 ° O / bottom heat on the 2nd rail from the bottom. The baking time here is around 30 – 35 minutes.
7. For the topping, melt the chocolate over the water bath and mix with 1 teaspoon of sunflower oil. Place the cooled cronuts on a grid and coat their surface with the chocolate.
8. Since the dough remains are created when cutting out and making the croissants, it is a bit tricky to use them after all. But you can simply put them all on top of each other, shape them into a block, wrap them up again and cool them again. Then they can be rolled out again, you can shape a small pastry out of them and nothing has been thrown away ……..
9. When using the dough for cronuts, the amount was 10 pieces (the processing of the leftover dough is not taken into account).