What are we having for breakfast? Spirit Bear Claws. We’re busy, so we’re opting for the easy way, using store-bought frozen pastry as our base. If you would like an absolutely Fantastic Danish Pastry Dough Recipe and for a tutorial for How to Laminate the Dough have a look at the Fabulous Joe Pastry website. Joe even has a visual tutorial for how to make the perfect Almond-Filled Bear Claw. My kids don’t like almonds, and, as I say, we have little time to devote to proper pastry-making today, so here’s an easy-peasy cheater’s version with chocolate filling. If you wanted to go crazy, I suppose you could use some sort of chopped up candy bar of your own choosing as opposed to plain chocolate. Sky’s the limit. This is mean tot be a flexible, quick recipe. You can use as much or as little of the dough you like, which means we can make just enough for your crew of Spirit Bear Campers!

Print Recipe

Quick & Easy Chocolate-Filled Spirit Bear Claws

makes 9

Author: Roseanne Carrara, The Lunchbox Season

Ingredients

1 Sheet of Frozen Puff Pastry
A good chocolate bar cut into smaller cubes or squares
1 egg
1 tbs of milk or water
[Optional: Sliced nuts such as pecans almonds or peanut halves]

Instructions

Unroll your sheet of defrosted pastry and cut it into squares.
Fill the Paw: Towards the top third of each square, lay out a thin (but not stingy!) horizontal line of chocolate chunks.
Fatten the Paw: Moisten the small area of dough just above that horizontal line of chocolate with water.
Seal the Paw: Bring that moistened dough down over the top of the horizontal line of chocolate and stick it to the pastry below the line of chocolate.
There should now be a nice horizontal rolled pastry shape (full of chocolate) above a similarly sized flat bit of pastry.
Separate the Toes: make four evenly placed vertical slices in the empty/bottom part of the pastry.
Make the Paw into a Crescent Shape: Bend the Pastry in a slight U-shape by bringing the top (fat) corners of the pastry towards one another slightly.
Whisk the egg and the milk or water.
Use a pastry brush to apply a small bit of egg wash to the top of the bear claw.
[Optional] Press nuts slices or halves into the "toes" to represent the claws. We didn't depict this step, but it livens up the chocolate-free half of the pastry quite a bit!
Bake according to package directions.
We baked ours at 375 for 10 minutes