lol, Gold. The Dr. has okayed me eating a few sweets. My numbers have been excellent. Except if I get sick they go up. Rose, here's a simple from scratch recipe for them which I'll try eventually. Have you never had one before? They are excellent! We get them for dessert at our favorite Mexican restaurant. The recipe below is c&p. Apparently it's the Baking Powder in them which makes them fluff up and be hollow in the center. "Sopaipillas are pretty quick and easy to make: for 20 to 30, depending on the size, sift together 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt. Cut in 2 tablespoons shortening until mealy, work in 3/4 cup cold water to form a dough. Turn out onto a floured surface, knead until smooth. Roll out as thin as possible and cut int 2- or 3-inch squares. Drop one at a time into hot (370 degree F) deep oil. Cook until brown on one side, turn over. Drain on paper towels."

I love that look. Rustic charm!

Baklava. Ingredients 18 sheets ready-made filo pastry (unwrap and keep under a damp tea-towel until you are ready to use) 225g/8oz unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing 225g/8oz mixed pistachios and walnuts, roughly chopped 2 tbsp granulated sugar 1 tsp ground cardamom For the syrup 350g/12oz granulated sugar 300ml/10ýfl oz water 1 tbsp lemon juice 2 tbsp orange blossom water Preparation method Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 17cm x 28cm (11in x 7in) baking tray with butter. Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan over low heat or in a microwave. Lay 10 sheets of filo pastry, one at a time, into the tray, brushing each sheet with butter before adding the next. In a clean bowl, mix together the nuts, sugar and cardamom and spread the mixture over the pastry in the tray. Layer up the remaining sheets on top of the nut mixture, brushing each sheet with butter, as before. Using a sharp knife, cut a criss-cross pattern into the top layers of the pastry. Place baklava in the preheated oven for approximately 20 minutes, then decrease the oven temperature to 150C/300F/Gas 2 and cook for an additional half hour to 40 minutes, or until the pastry is slightly puffed and golden on top. Do not allow the top to burn. Remove and allow to cool slightly. For the syrup, heat the sugar, water, lemon juice and orange blossom water in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook over a medium heat until the sugar has melted and a syrup is formed. (This will take about 20 minutes or so.) Pour the syrup into the slits in the baklava and leave to cool. Cut into small diamond-shaped pieces and serve.

That is practically what I did. Panera's chocolate pastry is made with croissant dough giving it a good chew. Using puff pastry, I used the egg wash over the final assembly. Next time will be before rolling. I did use milk, as I do with apple pie crust, to seal it though. I also experimented with a small rectangle of baked puff pastry dough under the chocolate before the final wrappingand it worked very well. A second trick was to cook the pastries on a cooling rack and not directly on the parchment/cookie-sheet. There is no telling which new idea did the trick. I did not get any pics as they evaporated before I could power up my phone.... It is very interesting the puff pastry dough package did not explain what size the dough would be. After cutting the pieces to what I wanted, I rolled them out to double the length for better rolling and sealing.