Hey – I know you people. Don’t think I don’t know you people. Enthusiasm for my salade niçoise recipe was at an all-time low. Why concern yourselves with salty fish when you can have … profiterole?
What are profiteroles you ask yourselves?
Why, cream puff pastries! With yummy things inside! Things like ice cream or whipped cream, with strawberry toppings or chocolate!
Now we’re talkin’ – let’s take a moment to get reacquainted. I’m Lady Jennie and this is my blog. No, I’m not French royalty, I’m just some lady that lives in France.
I find when making a more complicated recipe, that it helps to be prepared. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) and grease and flour your baking sheet.
And have all your ingredients at the ready.
Okay, so you need to make pâte à chou (literal translation is cabbage dough (for its shape) and loose translation is cream puff pastries). I’ve made this before in my chocolate éclair post, but don’t click there. It’s disastrous.
Melt ½ cup butter with just over 1 cup water. Add a half teaspoon salt
and a teaspoon sugar.
When it’s nice and melted, pour 1 ½ cups of flour in slowly
whisking all the while until the dough has absorbed all the moisture and is almost sticking to the pan. I used gluten-free flour. This is one of those recipes that does really well with GF flour.
Remove from the heat at this point and add the 6 eggs one by one.
Stir. Oh boy are you ever going to get an arm workout.
And then your dough looks like this.
Fill a pastry bag and use a 8mm tip. I have no idea what that is but I got the biggest one I had and struggled to squeeze the unwieldy dough through its teeth.
But not so bad, some of them. See here?
Bake for about 18 minutes and don’t open the oven for at least 10 minutes (or at all if you can help it). The pastries won’t puff.
Et voila.
Hello little cabbage.
Now let’s throw caution to the wind and make this warm chocolatey glaze. It’s my own recipe and was declared by not one, but two Frenchmen to be the best they’d ever tasted.
One was Sir, of course, but the other doesn’t owe me anything.
Break 200 grams of dark chocolate into little pieces.
Pour in 2 cups of heavy cream
and 2 cups of confectioner sugar.
Add 2 Tablespoons of butter and melt it all together over low heat, stirring constantly.
Drool.
Select your puff pastries and cut them in half.
See how … puffy they are? It’s all those eggs.
Fill them each with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.
And pour the hot chocolate glaze over the top.
Do you love me again?
You love me again.
- Puff Pastry:
- 1 cup (250 grams) water
- ½ cup (110 grams) butter
- 1 t sugar
- ½ t salt
- 1½ cup (140 grams) flour
- 6 eggs
- Chocolate Glaze:
- 200 grams dark chocolate
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 2 cups confectioner sugar
- 2 Tablespoons (30 grams) butter
- Filler:
- Vanilla ice cream
- Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease and flour baking sheet.
- Melt water, butter, sugar and salt over low heat.
- Add flour into melted liquid bit by bit, whisking constantly until all moisture is absorbed.
- Remove from heat and add eggs one by one, stirring constantly.
- Put dough into pastry bag with an 8 mm decorating tip and form little “cabbages.”
- Bake 18 minutes without opening the oven.
- For chocolate glaze, break chocolate and melt over low heat with cream, powdered sugar and butter.
- Cut the pastries in half, fill with vanilla ice cream and top with hot chocolate glaze.
yummy!
Love your very yummy and informative post. I used to work for a caterer and I was the one who made ALL of the mini eclairs and cream puffs. We used a different pastry bag tip but, I like your result much better.