After helping my family with some standard-issue pandemic purging, I took a large stack of food magazines home with me for recycling. A few were rescued: summer meal ideas (from 2016, but can't have changed that much) and a Food Network issue featuring a pullout booklet of 50 puff-pastry recipes. I was enticed by the semi-homemade Chocolate-Berry Napoleons featured on the cover, and proceeded to whip up a small batch using the quasi-adequate ingredients I had at home.
Milk chocolate chips were substituted for chopped semisweet chocolate, and strawberries replaced raspberries. I used frozen Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets for that hours-spent-laminating look.
The proper recipe with the proper ingredients is here, if you'd like to try it yourself. It comes together pretty quickly, 20 minutes or less if the pastry is thawed. It's important to note that you shouldn't actually bake pre-made puff pastry for 30 minutes as the recipe suggests, let alone between two baking trays. I checked mine at 25 minutes and found a smashed, overly dark brown mess. Following the package instructions of regular baking for 15 minutes yielded much better results, even if they didn't have that nice flat top for assembling. I'll continue experimenting with this.
Since I was just making these to snack on at home, I was far less worried about aesthetics or even, say, using the right type of chocolate. Thankfully my sous-chef Mini has much higher standards, and helped me select the ripest berries for topping my ultra-casual dessert.
I tasted a sample and it was delicious! Thank you, Laura 😋