Puff pastry is a versatile and fast cooking ingredient that is perfect for those who are starting to learn, or experiment with, cooking. They should try out recipes using this before venturing to more difficult baking recipes. Though this is not easily available in all stores or bakeries, some bakeries do get it for you if you order in advance or you can look for it in good supermarkets. It can be made at home but the process is rather long, so leave that for adults and professional chefs.

What I like best about puff pastry is that you can roll, fold and play with it in any way; stuff, fill or top with any ingredient and come up with a sweet or savoury dish that everyone enjoys. Today I am sharing the method of making a puff pastry chocolate star. I am not calling it a recipe because there really is no recipe — it has just two store-bought ingredients and all I had to do was roll, cut and fold!

It was the first time I tried this shape and was a bit nervous that I won’t be able to get it right or it will rise in an unpredictable way in the oven and spoil the shape. But, thankfully it was so easy to handle and moulded perfectly like I had seen in pictures. And it baked to perfection, well, maybe I grilled it a minute or so longer and it should not have been so dark from the top. But the taste was perfect and it is best served hot.

It takes about 20 minutes to bake and maybe five-10 minutes to roll and fold, depending on how swift you are, so it is something you can make when someone is coming over and you want to impress them with a nice homemade treat. I used a chocolate spread as the filling between the two pastry layers, you can substitute it with cheese, jam, grated chocolate, cooked chicken and so on.

Ingredients

• Chocolate spread

• 250g puff pastry

Method

Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C.

Make two equal-sized balls of the pastry dough, roll one into a round shape. You can trim the edges with a knife to get the shape right if needed. I folded it to form a triangle and then trimmed it for a smooth effect. Now line a baking tray with a baking sheet and put the first rolled dough sheet there. Spread chocolate on it equally, almost till the edge. Cover this with the other rolled sheet, pulling gently at those ends that are not equal.

Take a glass or bottle cap and gently make a light circle mark in the centre. Now with a sharp knife, make cuts from the circle mark. The circle I made was large so I started cutting up from a bit inside the mark. Now make eight or 12 parts, in even numbers.

To get this flower shape, pick up one edge, twist twice then make a half twist to fold one end under the other side to form a small triangle underneath. For the next one, twist in the opposite direction in the same way.

When you have twisted them all into shape, make sure that two tips of adjacent strips are meeting at the top to form a kind of flower petal. It’s very easy and you can always try making any other shape by looking it up on cooking websites or Google it.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, and if you need it a little browned from the top, use the top grill to give it a little colour, and its timing depends on your oven.

Just break off a piece and enjoy it hot.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 14th, 2020