Pesto Chicken Pastry Flowers are light and buttery, but filled with healthful ingredients – shredded chicken, low-fat spinach-walnut pesto, and nutritional yeast. A pretty and pretty delicious way to satisfy your pastry cravings.
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Breakfast pastries are some of the most beautiful creations ever. They’re flaky, buttery, airy and almost everything you need first thing in the morning. Everything, except the magnitude of calories, most of which come from the fat.
You probably saw this coming a mile away at this point, but I stay away from that section of the spread.
But this afternoon I just couldn’t resist those cravings any longer.
Solution: Made my own ‘lite’ pastry dough, and used them to make these little pastry flowers packed with chicken and pesto. They were less flaky compared to regular pastry (less fat, so….), but still had that rich and perfect buttery taste that just went oh so well with the filling!
Lightened Up Pesto Chicken Pastry Flowers
Ingredients
- 3-4 oz Pastry Dough, Recipe below, or use store brought
- ½ cup Chicken Breast, 67.5 g
- 2½ Tbsp Nutritional Yeast, or 5 Tbsp Grated Parmesan
- 1½ Tbsp Pesto, Recipe below, or use store brought
- 3 Tbsp Almond Milk, or 1 Egg whisked, for brushing
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Make pastry dough according to recipe in notes or use store brought puff pastry (more calories!).
- Make pesto according to recipe in notes while dough chills.
- Roll out pastry dough into a 9 x 9” sheet about ⅛” thick.
- Cut into 6 equal-width strips of 1½” each.
- Divide and spread pesto down the middle of each strip, leaving ¼” from the ends. Top with shredded chicken and nutritional yeast or parmesan.
- Starting from the short end, carefully roll up the pastry strips into spiral logs.
- Slice into half to make 2 rounds.
- Brush with egg wash and place on prepared baking sheet with the tighter end (the one that was cut) as the base. Spread out the ¼” open end of the pastry to make a flower shape.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes or until pastry is golden-brown.
Notes
- Lite Buttery Whole Wheat Pastry recipe.
- Skinny Vegan Spinach and Walnut Pesto recipe.
- Nutritional information is calculated using the pastry and pesto recipes recommended.
- Servings: 12 2” pastries | Serving size: 1
- Calories: 51kcal
- Fat: 2.6g | Saturated fat: 1.4g
- Carbohydrates: 4.3g | Fiber: 0.9g | Sugar: 0g
- Protein: 2.9g
Hey! I'm Haylee
Google Software Engineer
I use my passion for baking (and eating) to create healthy, high-protein, good-for-you and diet-friendly desserts and sweet treats that are actually delicious.
Come join me in Hayl's Kitchen and let's eat high protein, sweet and guilt free!