Saturday, January 9, 2016 – So if you’ve been following along at home, you’ll remember I was really unhappy with the previous version of this challenge. Long story short, the 3-layer parfait got all mushy and turned into a 1-layer soggy parfait. Not good.
And I said I still wouldn’t be making baklava, but rather rolling stuff up into puff pastry and calling it a croissant variant. And that’s exactly what I did. The challenge was chocolate, nuts, rose water, honey, and cinnamon. The chocolate and nuts is rolled up in the puff pastry. The pastry is baked and soaked in rose water, glazed with honey, and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.
And it was good.
Ingredients
3 oz chocolate (about 8 Ghirardelli squares), finely chopped or crumbled
2 oz finely chopped nuts
1 8.5oz sheet Puff Pastry
all-purpose flour (to roll puff pastry)
1 egg
water
1/2 cup rose water
honey, as needed
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
Instructions
1. Mix the chocolate and nuts.
2. Roll out puff pastry to a 10 in by 12 in rectangle. Cut into 8 3″x5″ rectangles.
3. Put a line of chocolate along one edge of the puff pastry. Roll the edge over the chocolate-nut mixture and seal with water.
4. Line more chocolate in the middle of the pastry, and roll the other end over the pastry. Seal the flap and optionally the edges with water.
5. Chill the rolled pastries in the freezer for 30 min.
6. Preheat oven to 425 F.
7. Mix egg with 2 Tbsp water to make an egg wash. Brush over top of croissants.
8. Put pastries in oven, then immediately lower temperature to 375 F. Bake until golden brown, about 18 min. Let cool for about 10 min.
9. Soak pastries in a small dish full of rose water, about 1 min each side. Liberally drizzle honey over the pastries. Mix powdered sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then sprinkle on pastries through a sieve.
A few notes:
I used walnuts, but feel free to use whatever kind of nuts you like.
Why 8.5 oz of puff pastry? Because I used Pepperidge Farm, and one sheet of Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry is 8.5 oz. You can use other brands and other sizes, but you may need to tweak baking times and stuff.
As a reminder, you rose water and rose water extract are different things. You want rose water, which you can get at Whole Foods.
As for the actual pastries, they came out much better than the previous version of the challenge. The chocolate flavor comes through. The nuts provide a nice texture. I didn’t soak the pastries in rose water long enough the first time, so I increased the soaking time to 1 min. And of course, the honey drizzle and cinnamon sprinkle add that extra something.
Keep in mind that, like most croissants and puff-pastry-style pastries, these are best when fresh out of the oven. After a day, they’re noticeably stale, even if you seal them in airtight plastic bags.