Sunday 18 July 2010

Chocolate Profiteroles - So Easy a Child Could Make Them...?

My children surprised me the other day by announcing they were going to make profiteroles.  I've never made them before and have always regarded choux pastry as 'too tricky'.  Plus, I was busying myself with other things, so I agreed, but told them that I wouldn't be able to help.

Surprisingly rapidly, they had summoned up these with the help of the River Cottage Family Cookbook:


They weren't prepared for how much they expand during cooking and the little lumps of pastry mostly merged into one big choux bun.  The pasty doesn't have that much sugar in and when we tasted it, a bit warm from the oven, we all agreed it tasted (and looked) like Yorkshire Pudding - obviously, as the recipe is very similar.  The four profiteroles around the edges of the tin were perfect.


The children still weren't convinced.  

"We've just made Yorkshire Pudding and it's rubbish," they sighed, ready to chuck them away.

After dinner,  I convinced them to make a chocolate sauce regardless and that we could fill the profiteroles and the big blobby one with vanilla ice cream instead of whipped cream.  The results were delicious.  Yorkshire Pud with chocolate sauce and ice cream perhaps, but delicious nevertheless.




5 comments:

Angie said...

Yes indeed, choux pastry is dead easy. So easy, in fact, it's easy to get blase about it and forget to add something - as I did years ago in a college exam. I forgot to add the eggs at the end, with the result that the little blobs that went in the oven came out the same size! But 'never say die' being my watchwords, I quickly drained them on kitchen paper, dredged them with icing sugar and served them with coffee later on! They were delicious. So kids the moral of this story is that there is no such a thing as a culinary disaster. You can ALWAYS call it something else but - shush - don't tell anyone!

Choclette said...

I'm with Angie, but hopefully they were won over by the chocolate sauce, so wont give up. Weirdly, I haven't made choux pastry since I was a child, but you're right I don't remember it being that difficult.

Northern Snippet said...

Yes its what you put with the pastry that makes it so tasty.Like the ice cream idea!

GotChocolate said...

Ice Cream and Chocolate always make it all better! Very interesting reading about this though, mishaps and all.

Choclette said...

Hey Kate - yep still up for it. Meeting you at Fat Lemons at 2:30 this Saturday! Assuming I manage to get organised, do you still want some of my rye sourdough starter?

Featured post

Taste of the Teign Food and Drink Festival 25 September - 1 October 2017

South Devon’s third year of the most exciting celebrations of local produce is Taste of the Teign Food and Drink Festival.  This f...