Whole Wheat "Pain Au Chocolat" (Chocolate Rolls)

These slightly sweet chocolate rolls are eaten in France as a breakfast treat or an after school snack. Typically the dough is a puff-pastry style dough but I recently found a recipe for a softer, dinner roll type dough and thought I'd give it my own spin. The result is a pillowy soft roll with melted chocolate inside that has become quite a hit in this house. The chocolate provides just enough sweetness to make it feel like a treat but the dough is actually 100% whole wheat so it's a treat you can feel good about.


Whole Wheat Chocolate Rolls (adapted from this King Arthur Recipe)


1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
3 Tbsp. sugar
4 Tbsp. butter, softened (or Earth Balance)
2 tsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour or regular whole wheat flour
1/3 cup dried potato flakes
2 Tbsp. ground flax meal (opt.)
1 Tbsp. vital wheat gluten
1 1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. or one envelope of yeast

~1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips



In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix together all ingredients except the chocolate chips. The dough should come together resembling the texture of play-doh. Use the dough hooks to knead the dough for about 4-5 minutes. This dough stays sticky so it's hard to knead by hand. If you don't have a stand mixer with dough hooks, lightly oil your counter top and hands before you try to knead it. You don't want to add more flour to keep it from sticking.

Cover the dough and let it rise for about 90 minutes or until almost doubled.



Divide dough in half. Roll half of the dough into a rectangle 9"x8". Cut the dough into 6 even rectangles.

Place some chocolate chips about 1/3 of the way down on the small rectangle. The amount of chocolate is up to you but you'll need to be able to close the dough.

Fold the top of the dough to cover the chips....

and press the seam closed.

Lay more chocolate chips in the seam....

and fold the bottom of the dough up, sealing in the chocolate chips.

It's okay if the chips show from the ends. They won't melt out during baking.

Repeat with the rest of the small rectangles and with the other half of the dough. Lay the rolls seam side down on a parchment lined baking sheet. Cover lightly with a piece of greased plastic wrap. Let them rise for about an hour.

They'll look slightly puffy but shouldn't be huge.

Preheat oven to 350*

Bake at 350* for about 20 minutes. You want the edges to be just barely golden brown. Move them to a cooling rack to cool completely if you don't plan on eating them right away.

Dust with powdered sugar if you like. These are best eaten slightly warm. They reheat nicely in the microwave for about 10 seconds.

Melted chocolate inside a soft, flavorful roll... doesn't get much better then that!

Inspired Crafts Sneak Peaks

Here are few sneak peaks of some of my Design Team work for Inspired Crafts - had lots of fun with an off the page project and some yummy Websters papers. To see all of the pages, the cards and the off the pages project you are just going to have to pop into the store or to wait for Christine or Russell to post some more photos on facebook.






I also wanted to share some photos of Bronte, my little girl started Kindy this year!! Where has the time gone? She looks so small in her uniform. She was so brave....too brave in fact.... I took one step inside the classroom door, she turned around and said bye. I had to explain that I was staying a little bit to hear the teacher talk, in the five minutes I was there she came up to me and said "bye" about three times.....anyone would think that she wanted to get rid of me!!



Orange ... what a colour to work with. Not a colour I use much and boy did I struggle. These are some of the photos I took of Bronte before her Dace Concert last year - they did a dance to Bob the Builder and their costume was this
bright orange....which I cringed at when I saw it and thought to myself "how on earth am I going to scrap that" well here is how it turned out.....

Just had to share.

I am so excited I got an e-mail yesterday to tell me that I had made the Design Team for the Australian Scrapbooking Ideas Magazine.My first magazine design team!!! WAHOO!!! I ran around the house screaming like an excited kid .... lucky it was only me and the girls home.
And today I got a hold of issue 5 which I have my DT application layouts and article in....not sure if I am allowed?? But here is a sneak peak.

The front cover .... see my page up in the top righthand corner.



Now I have a deadline to meet so I am off to do some scrapping.

Warm hands on cold days.

   When you live in the cold (currently -9 degrees and dropping) northland like we do having good mittens or gloves is pretty essential.

  I have been wanting to have a mitten making spree here at our house using some of the old wool clothes that were given to me. Last night I went searching for the kind of pattern that I wanted- I wanted one with a set in thumb. I finally found one here with a pattern, instructions and a video. I tried the pattern out today and made a pair for Mara. I think I want to do some adjusting of the pattern as they turned out a bit smaller that I had anticipated (they barely fit Mara and don't fit me- they are better sized for the boys) and there are some other improvements that I would like to make but overall I like the pattern.

  Mittens are very satisfactory to make as they are so quick and pretty easy. I am hoping to whip out some more pairs tomorrow!
 

What have you been making lately?

W.I.P. (Work In Progress)

ARRGGGH! I have tons to do . . . . This is what happens when I do things I'm not suppose to do and don't do the things that I'm suppose to be doing.

Double Hour Glass pattern in blues & greens.

Just 1 more blue block to go.

Lovely Care Bear panel . . . . already thinking of how colourful I'm going to make this :-)