Holiday Fun

Does this ever happen to you? You get it in your head to try something and you just can't relax until you finally do try it. Am I the only one who obsesses over such things as homemade pain au chocolat? Ever since I saw Isa's post on Homemade Chocolatines, I've been dying to try making some. But then it's the Holidays and there are so many things to do, presents to buy and wrap, cookies to bake, cards to send... Now is not the time to try pâte feuilletée for the first time.

Since the Holidays wouldn't be the same without a little added stress, on December 23rd, I made the brioche dough for the chocolatines and did a little research on how to properly fold the butter into the dough to make it flaky. I read so many posts and techniques on how to make pâte feuilletée it was enough to make my head spin!

It's a wonder really that the chocolatines turned out as well as they did because, seriously, I have no idea what I did. I rolled out the dough, spread the softened butter onto it, folded the dough over, refrigerated it a while and then, things got fun. I had no idea which way to roll the dough again, how to re-fold and roll again, I was all mixed up! It was in no way the recipe's/instruction's fault, I think I just wanted to do everything a little too quickly. Again, the Holidays were probably not the best time to try my hand at pâte feuilletée. But, be it beginner's luck or a small Christmas miracle, we had a delicious Christmas Eve breakfast. :)

The recipe I used for the dough was from Les gourmandises d'Isa and can be found here (it's in French but can be translated through Google); I found this post from Susan at Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy very helpful for the folding technique (though I should, and will, read it again, more carefully); and also, Fanny over at Foodbeam has a great tutorial for pâte feuilletée.

Whether you're having fun in the sun or knee deep in snow, I hope you all had as fun and relaxed a Christmas as I had, filled with family, friends and good food.