Chocolate Christmas Tree
From an off-hand comment about Christmas being based on a Pagen festival; we ended up celebrating the sun rising on the shortest day of the year with a Chocolate Christmas tree. The winter equinox marked by pastry and candelight, what could be better?
Chocolate Christmas trees are quite popular at the moment but likely to contain milk if not deliberately avoided. This is the most basic recipe using just two rolls of JusRol puff pastry, Pip n Nut chocolate orange almond butter and egg wash. In order to have ours for breakfast without the inevitable meltdown that would have accompanied waiting for a broken oven to heat up; we cooked ours last night and just heated it back up this morning. We intend to make a bigger version for Christmas Day morning.
This would probably make enough for six, although possibly fewer if fully appreciated:
- Pre-heat the oven to 180oC and get the Jus Rol puff pastry sheets out of the oven to get to room temperature
- Line a large baking tray with parchment paper
- Lay one of the JusRol puff pastry sheets down and spoon on the orange chocolate spread generously and spread out across the pastry
- Lay the other piece of pastry over the top and cut off the corners to make the shape of a tree.
- Either side of 3cm wide trunk down the middle of the triangle, cut horizontal lines out from the middle every 3cm from the bottom up to the top
- Take each horizontal ‘branch’ and twist gently to create a spiral, repeat until all branches are twisted.
- Break an egg into a small bowl and mix with a fork
- Take a pastry brush and lightly coat the entire ‘tree’ with egg wash
- Pop into the hot oven for 20 minutes until golden and crispy
- Eat once slightly cooled or allow to cool completely and reheat for 5 minutes in a hot oven when needed.
- Perfect with coffee and fruit for a treat breakfast
If you want to use up the excess pastry in a similar manner you can make rolled up ‘croisants’ in a the same way by spreading chocolate spread on a single triangle and rolling up and egg washing. You could use nature’s valley hazelnut spread for a slightly sweeter filling if you wish.
