Chocolate Croissants (Pains Au Chocolat) (a step-by-step guide with .gifs)

 Croissants-53

Okay, so I’m continuing on from last week’s tutorial on croissant dough and shaping croissants to bring you two alternative uses for it!

This is a guide for shaping chocolate croissants, and of course, I had to bring cinnamon into this whole thing somewhere so I’ve also got a guide on shaping Cinnamon-Raisin Danish Swirls here.

The croissant dough is cut into four pieces, the instructions for this recipe only uses one of those pieces ( i.e. one quarter of the entire recipe), meaning you can make loads of different things from making just one batch of dough, yay!

 

Croissants-55

 

Croissants-58

 

Croissants-62

 

You will need:

 

To shape the Chocolate Croissants (aka pains au chocolat)

  1. Remove 1 piece of dough from the fridge, unwrap it and roll out on a lightly floured surface into a 18″ x 5″ rectangle
  2. Cut the dough horizontally in half. Then cut the dough vertically into fourths, making 8 rectangles.cutpainauxs
  3. Sprinkle 1 tbsp of semisweet chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate) in a line down a short edge of each rectangle.sprinklechoc
  4. Starting at the short edge, roll up into logs.rolluppain
  5. Place seam side down onto a lined cookie tray, 2″ apart.

Bake:

Cover loosely with cling film and leave to rise in a cool place for around 2-3 hours ( if you’re making these the night before, you can actually shape them and leave them to rise in the fridge overnight instead).

Once ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (22o degrees C) . Brush the chocolate croissants with beaten egg using a pastry brush and put into the oven. Immediately lower the temperature to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C), and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and bake for a further 8-10 minutes until well browned and puffy.

Let cool on a wire rack. Enjoy your 2 to I-literally-don’t-know-how-long-these-took-to-make-any-more day labour of love.

34 thoughts on “Chocolate Croissants (Pains Au Chocolat) (a step-by-step guide with .gifs)”

  1. My craving for sweets 24/7 seemed to vanish with the holidays (and possibly also with the realization that I ate too many sweets…), but between this and the danishes, it’s returning!

    Chocolate croissants always bring back memories of being in France when I was 16. It was a high school trip to France and Spain, so we weren’t there for too long — just enough time to reinforce the obnoxious teenage American tourist stereotype! But that was the first time I ever tried croissants and crepes, and I always made sure to grab a chocolate croissant from the bakery near our hotel for the five or so days we were there. (:

    • AHAHA, I got that too! I think it was all the cookies and tiramisu I ate that gave me a sugar overload!

      Oooh, that sounds awesome! I think France is deffo a memory-creator: I’ve actually only been there twice I think, but I remember how I ended up eating croissants dipped in a bowl (they have bowls of it, not just mugs) of hot chocolate for breakfast once 😛

  2. These look so amazing! Also, this is the first time I’ve seen GIFs used for a recipe O: super cool
    I’ll definitely be making these sometime soon~

  3. Wow, this recipe is great… I’ve always had a little bit of trouble with croissant pastry (partly through lack of practice) but I will definitely give your tutorial/recipe a go! Thanks for sharing.

  4. Oh my gosh do these look good! Great tutorial too. I ate a couple of these in France and haven’t stopped thinking about them since!

  5. Pain au chocolat is my favourite pastry! Will try the croissant dough making as soon as I’m home for holidays – thank you so much and again, LOVE YOUR GIFS!!!

  6. These are amazing and so simple to make (apart from being really time consuming!) My whole family loved them, I will make these again and again. Thanks so much for sharing.

    Paige

    PS I loved the GIFs they really made this recipe so simple to follow.

  7. These are the most delicious-looking croissants I have EVER SEEN!! I need these in my life, as soon as possible.

  8. Hi these are so cute! I’m really excited to make them! Just a few questions: Can you freeze them (and when would be the better time before or after they’re cooked)? and How many does a batch make?
    thanks

  9. How many croissants does this recipe make? I’m making them for a French food culture project. Please answer ASAP 🙂

  10. Hi! I tried your croissant recipe and tried to make the chocolate ones. The dough came out great but when it was time to make the chocolate ones, they wouldn’t expand. They stayed like fat logs 🙁 Any idea on how to avoid that? But they tasted yummy lol

    Thank you!

    • It may have been the yeast or the temperature of the dough. If it’s too cold it takes a bajillion years to rise. If the yeast is inactive, it won’t work!

  11. Hi! Thank you for the recipe, I followed it exactly and they came out great! Thank you so much for sharing this recipe.

  12. Amazing recipe! It was so helpful to have the gifs when doing the turns for the dough. I kinda thought i was somewhat intelligent until i tried to make croissant dough following reading recipes only. You saved me…i mean, you saved my croissants!

  13. My dough is in the fridge for the last step. I’ll be shaping and baking them tomorrow. Sooo thrilled!

Comments are closed.