Chokoladesnegle (Chocolate Snails with Danish Pastry Dough)

In our hearts, there’s almost nothing that can come close to beating a good kanelsnegl (cinnamon snail). But these chokoladesnegle (chocolate snails) are the reason for that “almost.” They are just unreal. The flaky and buttery pastry combined with the rich, sweet, chocolate filling results in the closest to a perfect pastry we think we’ll ever get!

If you’ve ever been to Denmark, you may have been to a bakery chain called Lagkagehuset. Outside of Denmark, it’s called Ole & Steen, with locations in NYC, London, and Paris. And potentially more cities, but I didn’t really do all that much research into this (lol). Anyway, they have this pastry called a direktørsnegl, or a director’s/boss’s snail, which is basically a chocolate swirl pastry. They are super delicious, and so we were inspired to create our own! We decided to call ours chokoladesnegle, though – a more versatile and open-ended name for a delicious pastry. And ours are slightly different from a direktørsnegl, so we thought we would just keep the name simple.

Tips and Tricks

(copied from our spandauer recipe)

Many things can go wrong in this recipe, so don’t worry if your final product doesn’t turn out perfect. It’ll still be delicious! The biggest problem we face when making these pastries is the butter leaking out when we bake them. This is not great because it results in large gaps in the pastry where the butter has leaked out. The pastries also sit in a pool of butter and often come out fried on the bottom and far too greasy.

So, a few tips to avoid this! First, we would recommend using European butter with a higher fat percentage. European butter contains less water and will be easier to work with, and more elastic than American butter. However, if this is too expensive, regular old American butter will be fine too. Either way, you want to make sure that your butter is not too cold when you enclose it in the dough. This could cause leakage problems later on because when you roll it out, the butter may break up and you won’t have smooth sheets of butter between your layers of dough. So, carefully follow the butter folding step (step 6) in our recipe below to avoid this.

Finally, proofing is super important in the process of avoiding butter leakage. Under-proofed or over-proofed pastries will leak butter, so you need to get it as close to perfect as possible. We like to go by look instead of timing, but you should give them at least 2 hours. The pastries should double in size and be almost wobbly when you touch them. Pay close attention to our danish pastry dough recipe if you want the perfect Danish pastry!

We now have two pastry dough recipe on our website: the 6 hour faster version and the original, overnight proofing version! Either one is delicious, and while laminating dough is a bit of a project, it’s a great activity for the weekend!

Chokoladesnegle (Chocolate Snails with Danish Pastry Dough)

5 from 2 votes

These delicious pastries are swirled up with a sweet chocolate filling. They are crispy, flaky, chocolatey, and simply unbeatable!

Servings 12 servings

Prep Time 12 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 12 hours hrs 45 minutes mins

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

We always bake using a digital scale and the metric system (grams and milliliters). We can’t promise that our cup measurements will be as accurate! Additionally, we bake and develop our recipes in a convection (fan) oven.

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

PASTRY DOUGH

• 1 portion wienerbrødsdej *or you can use the easier recipe below! You only need one portion, so choose one to use!!
• OR 1 portion "easier" wienerbrødsdej (danish pastry dough)

FILLING

• 113 grams (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 75 grams (a little over 1/4 cup) brown sugar
• 75 grams (a little over 1/4 cup) white sugar
• 20 grams (3 tbsp) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt
• Chocolate chips

TOPPING

• Pearl sugar (optional)

Instructions

 

• The night before baking, begin preparing the pastry dough by following the steps in our wienerbrødsdej recipe.
• The next day, follow the lamination instructions in the danish pastry dough recipe.
• While the dough is resting between folds, mix the butter, sugars, cocoa powder, salt, and vanilla extract for your chocolate filling. Mix together really well, until you have a smooth paste.
  
• Once you have completed all laminations for the danish pastry dough up to the shaping part and the dough has rested, roll out your dough into a flat rectangle that is about 1/8-1/4 inch thick.
  
• Spread the chocolate filling over the dough in an even layer.
  
• Cover this with chocolate chips.
  
• Roll it up into a log, starting from the shorter end of the rectangle. This will give your rolls more of a swirl.
  
• Then, cut into either 12 or 16 pastries, depending on how thick you want them to be (it really doesn’t matter!). Place your pastries on two parchment lined baking sheets and cover them to begin the second rise.
  
• Leave your shaped pastries to rise for at least 2 hours, perhaps longer. This is a very important step, because under-proofing these means major butter leakage (we are speaking from experience!) You’ll know the pastries are ready when they feel super light and airy (almost wobbly when you touch them) and have doubled in size. Another test is to poke the dough, and if it leaves an impression and doesn’t spring back immediately, it should be ready. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 375 degrees F (190 C).
  
• Once your pastries have risen, egg wash them. You can either sprinkle them with some turbinado/pearl sugar or leave them with just the egg wash.
• Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. You can either bake both baking sheets at the same time if you adjust the oven racks, or bake one sheet at a time on a rack in the center of the oven.

Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: Danish

Keyword: advanced techniques, butter, buttery, chocolate, classic, danish pastry, decadent, flaky, rich

Difficulty: Advanced