Petit Pain au Chocolate (and Peanut Butter!)
August 19, 2008
So after my last sadly tragic attempt at making chocolate peanut butter croissants, you’d think I’d veer away from trying them again for a while. But I had a sheet of frozen puff pastry leftover from last time and tired of it mocking me every time I opened the freezer, I decided to give it another go… with a new recipe of course.
My friend and fellow sweets lover, Carla sent me the Nestle Toll House Best Loved Recipes CookBook for my birthday (along with some more Misha’s Cupcakes!! YUM!). After flipping through it for a couple of minutes, I came across the recipe for Petit Pain au Chocolate and knowing I had all of the ingredients, immediately got to work in the kitchen.
But you know I can’t make a chocolate recipe of any kind without trying to sneak some peanut butter in. So I spread 1 Tbsp of smooth peanut butter in the center of each square, topped that with 1 1/2 Tbsp of a mix of milk and semi-sweet chips. When they came out of the oven I opted not to drizzle chocolate on top because I made these for breakfast, not dessert and didn’t think they needed the extra sweetness. If you are serving them for dessert, they would also look impressive with a healthy dusting of powdered sugar.
Of the four pastries I made, only two had peanut butter and two were plain chocolate. After my last chocolate peanut butter croissant catastrophe, I opted to make a control group to find out if it was the presence of peanut butter that screwed the process up last time. I was happy to find out that it wasn’t since these came out picture perfect. And both Taste Tester and I agree that the ones with peanut butter are superior to the plain chocolate pastries. The peanut butter meshed really well with the super buttery crust.
You don’t have to eat these right away because they’re good cold, but if you want to heat them, I’d recommend wrapping them in tin foil and popping them in the toaster oven just for a minute or two to loosen up the chocolate on the inside. Mmm.
Now that is the breakfast of champions!
Get the recipe in Nestle’s cute book, Nestle Toll House Best Loved Recipes or on their website, Very Best Baking. And don’t forget the peanut butter!
