If you really want to indulge in the early hours of the morning, it’s hard to go wrong with chocolate for breakfast. No, we don’t mean just eating a chunk of chocolate; we’re referring to breakfast treats that have chocolate as an ingredient. One example is the pack of Trader Joe’s Chocolate Croissants, which we’ve decided to review today.
Before you cook these you’ll want to let them thaw and rise overnight. That means you’ll need to have a little bit of foresight so you can plan ahead and have these ready for the oven right away in the morning.
Oh, and you’ll definitely want to take them out of the box before you let them proof. They may start off pretty small, but they end up growing way bigger than you might expect. In fact, each croissant ends up almost as big as the entire box, and there are four inside! We didn’t think you would believe us (we do exaggerate sometimes) so we took a picture.
But this largeness doesn’t necessarily last. We deflated them substantially when we moved them from the plate where they were proofing to the pan on which we cooked them. This caused them to end up looking a little sunken in and wrinkly instead of gigantic and puffy by the time we got them onto the pan. We think you could probably avoid this deflation problem by proofing them right on the pan you’ll use to cook them, but we didn’t get to try that. It doesn’t matter too much, though since even the deflated croissants end up coming out just fine.
As you can see in the image above, we might have overcooked these a little bit. The instructions say to bake them for 20-25 minutes, and we took them out before the 20-minute mark, so we’re not sure why ours ended up so dark in color. Still, ours weren’t burned or overly hard or anything — the golden brown color was just a little darker than it should have been.
Now, after all that, we should point out that these are actually not complex treats at all. They’re really just croissants with chocolate bars in the center that melt in the oven.
The chocolate portion is actually pretty generous, and this stuff is rich and sweet. It’s definitely better to eat these while they’re warm and the chocolate is still melty. If you end up letting them cool, you might want to reheat the croissant just enough to get the filling to be melty again.
The pastry portion, which makes up the bulk of these croissants, is lovely and flakey, with a really great flavor. Just like the chocolate portion, this is better when it’s a little bit warm in the middle.
One croissant is considered a serving, and we think that’s reasonable because these are pretty rich. A single croissant contains 320 calories and 250 mg of sodium. That’s not too bad on its own, but we think you’ll probably want to pair these with a breakfast fruit of some sort and a tall glass of milk, so keep that in mind if you want to expand your breakfast beyond just the croissant.
The Trader Joe’s 4 Chocolate Croissants are a great way to start the morning if you wake up with a sweet tooth. Obviously, you won’t want to eat these every day, but as an occasional treat for mornings when you really want to indulge, these are pretty much a perfect option as long as you remember to take them out of the freezer the previous night.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen croissants, check out our package scan below.
It’s important to proof these on the pan you’re going to bake them on! Also set them apart so that they can proof and not touch each other. And per package instructions make sure the seam is facing down.