Chocolate Profiteroles

Fri, 27 April 2018

 People tend to have a fear of choux pastry and because of which rarely or never make it. It is in fact one of the easiest pastries to make providing you follow the very simple rules. It is important to bake the commodity well-sometimes the profiteroles we buy in the supermarket can tend to be doughy and soggy whereas they should be a crisp shell filled with the flavouring of your choice.

½ pint/250ml cold water

4oz/110g butter

5oz/150g strong flour

4 large eggs

Pinch of sugar and salt

 

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4

Grease two baking sheets with melted butter.

Put the butter, water, salt & sugar in a large saucepan and bring to the boil.

It is important that the mixture comes to the boil-if you just melt it and do not allow it to come to the boil the mixture will go dramatically wrong.

Take the saucepan off the heat.

 

Sift the flour and add it, in one piece, to the boiling liquid.

Stir rapidly with a wooden spoon.

Return to heat and beat continuously until the mixture comes clean away from the sides of the saucepan. You are cooking the flour at this stage.

Transfer to a large mixing bowl and allow to cool for about 5 minutes.

 

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs together.

Slowly beat the eggs into the cooked paste. I tend to use an electric whisk as the mixture can be quite stiff. Add the eggs little by little beating thoroughly between each addition.

 

Spoon on pipe small amounts of the mixture onto the tray. You should get approximately 30-35 profiteroles. Bake for 30-35 minutes until they should hollow when tapped on the underneath. Remove from the oven and allow them to cool on a wire rack.

 

When they are cool, split each profiterole, fill with fresh cream and serve with chocolate sauce or drizzle the profiteroles with melted dark chocolate.