Starbucks Pain au Chocolat

The Starbucks Pain au Chocolat costs £3.10 and carries 424 calories with 15g of saturated fat and 14g of sugar. All butter pastry with chocolate sticks through it.

It is the same laminated dough as the butter croissant in a different shape, so the gap between them tells you exactly what the chocolate costs: 10 calories, 1g of saturated fat and 8.6g of sugar. That is a modest price for the addition, and it makes this the better value of the two for anyone who wanted chocolate in the first place.

Chocolate sticks rather than a spread or a filling is the detail that matters. Batons are made to hold their shape through a hot oven instead of melting into the dough, which is why a pain au chocolat has two distinct seams of chocolate rather than a smear. Reheated too enthusiastically in store, those batons do finally melt, and the pastry is worse for it.

Pain au chocolat is also the pastry most often eaten cold, and it is the one that suffers least for it. The croissant depends on a warm shatter that fades; here the chocolate firms up as it cools and gives the pastry something to bite against. A cold pain au chocolat is a legitimate item in a way a cold almond croissant is not.

Fibre at 4g is the highest of any pastry here, well above the croissant's 2.8g, and cocoa solids are where it comes from. Salt is 0.86g, protein 7.5g and total fat 22g. Sugar at 14g sits below the pain au raisin at 19g, which surprises people who assume chocolate outsweetens dried fruit.

Allergens are soya, egg, barley, wheat and milk, the soya coming from the chocolate. Prices reach £4.50 on delivery, the widest spread of the pastries. The almond croissant is the heaviest option at 519 calories.