Chocolate Pastries

Chocolate Pastries are SO easy to make.  They are pretty much like Pain-Au-Chocolats.  All you need is roll-out puff pastry and some good quality chocolate.  I made these with Jus-Roll "all butter" puff pastry and a bar of Lindt dark 70% chocolate, which is the darkest I can go and it goes perfectly with the pastry.  Don't forget to have icing sugar handy to dust, and some milk and a pastry brush handy.

First off, put your oven on at Gas 7 / 220C/ 425F.  Our oven can only acommodate one tray per shelf, so I baked one tray at the top and one tray in the middle of the oven, so be sure to adjust your shelves like so.  Next, get two baking trays and line them with greaseproof paper.

Okay, so roll out your puff pastry.  We used leftovers from making the Bakewell Pudding (see blog contents) so this was handy.  Don't roll it out too thin or the pastry won't puff up as much.  Cut your pastry into 3.5" or 9cm squares and set aside.  Take your bar of chocolate and break it up into small pieces.  You don't need to chop it up tiny with a knife, but its handy to have small squareish pieces!

Fold one of your pastry squares in half and open up tp see the crease.  Place some chocolate pieces in the centre of one half, leaving about 1cm around the outer edges.  Brush these outer edges with a little milk, fold over the other half of the square and press down the edges of the pastry with a fork to seal it.  It doesn't matter if you poke a hole in the top of the pastry by accident! :o)

Place all your little pastries onto the baking trays giving plenty of room for the pastry to puff out.  I managed to fit in around 4 per tray.  Brush the top of each one with a little milk, then pop them in the oven for 15 - 18 minutes until golden and puffed.  I usually take out the top tray, and move the tray from the middle shelf onto the top for another 3 minutes to brown them off.

Put them onto a cooling tray and dust with icing sugar.  Leave to cool a little bit before eating - the chocolate inside will be quite hot so you don't want to burn your tongue :o)  Enjoy!