Chokoladesnegle (Chocolate Snails with Danish Pastry Dough)
These delicious pastries are swirled up with a sweet chocolate filling. They are crispy, flaky, chocolatey, and simply unbeatable!
Ingredients
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.