Bear Claws: non-successful #thepastrychallenge

When I was little very occasionally we’d go to a bakery and get doughnuts and other breakfast pastries for breakfast. I would always choose a bear claw. I was and still am that kid/adult who likes a good gimmick. I like the fact that it looked like a bears paw and it made it taste all the better for it. 

Bear Claws are something that I have wanted to attempt to make for a long time. However, until we started this pastry challenge, pastries have always been something I didn’t want to try in fear of failure. It’s not the failure that gets me, it’s the waste. I hate waste. I hate throwing out a bunch of no good flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. It just makes me sad and a bit annoyed. 

The theme this month, breakfast pastries, came out my want to make these Bear Claws. Leaving it to, literally, the last minute I finally got around to making said Bear Claws yesterday and today. The hottest weekend so far this summer! I love it! I made the dough the night before and left in the fridge overnight. Then I rolled the dough out and while that was resting made the filling. 

Everything was going well and then I went to bake them. They didn’t seem to want to rise much even due to the nice warm weather we had this weekend. Then when I baked them the timing seemed to be a little off. I keep a thermometer in my oven to check it, however that could be wrong too. 

Needless to say half of these weren’t so good and the second batch was a little better. If I have said it once I’ve said it twice and still I don’t listen to myself. Recently I have been really struggling with American based recipes. I am convinced it’s the butter. I used Sprinkle Bakes recipe that can be found here. I noticed that her dough, in her pictures, looked very pale to my very yellow pastry. I could be eggs though too. 

If I hadn’t been such a procrastinator perhaps I would have had time to re-due them before the end of the challenge and to show you that they do work! But as I recently wrote I am not happy to leave things, so I already have plans to make these again making adjustments where needed! 

I am not happy with only about 6 coming out okay, I want all of them to come out amazing! This is why I agreed to start the pastry challenge with Jen, because I don't just want to be getting by when it comes to pastry. It is a way to challenge my pastry making skills. 

As I pretty much followed the recipe from Sprinkle Bakes, well I did change the filling, but as I am not 100% happy with the way they turned out I won’t be sharing a recipe for these on here. But please check out the website linked above! 

What has been your biggest pastry fail? I don’t like saying fail, but it’s easier then saying non-successful pastry bake? Either works I suppose? 

challenges: The Pastry Challenge