Profiteroles!

My profiteroles waiting to be filled

 Ah, Profiteroles. Those tiny, little, darling puff balls stuffed with cream and dripping with sumptuous, dark chocolate. Who can resist them? I got a book on the Great British Bake-off from the library and in there was a recipe for choux pastry. (For us ignoramuses, the stuff that goes golden and puffy.) It looked super easy so I gave it a go. It was all going well until it came to piping the mix into balls on the tray as the bag I was using split. Mistakes in a kitchen are inevitable so don't worry about it if it happens to you. I once heard Jamie say something along the lines of, "Good chefs are made by their ability to take a really naff situation and make things right again." Anyway, I quickly put the bag over a bowl and continued just using spoons and they came out okay. So, the long and short is: if you don't want to bother piping, use two spoons as the results are near enough the same.

All there is to it

 Now, according to Mary Berry, this particular recipe was under the 'hard' section. With this information you could either tell yourself afterwards that it really wasn't that hard or you can believe her and at the end of it know that you just made a dessert that even Mary Berry considers a little difficult.

 Time: 50 mins

 Serves: 3-4

 RECIPE:

 1) Pour 150ml of water into a saucepan and plop in 60g of cubed butter. Bring it to the boil after the butter has melted and then take it off the heat. Sieve in 75g of plain flour all at once and really stir it until the mixture starts to form a ball that comes away from the saucepan. Leave it to cool and then you can add two eggs, beating it well after each addition so that it becomes smooth and shiny. 

I did mess up the chocolate sauce big time but they were
pretty delish anyhow. I think I've got the sauce sorted now!

 2) Take a tray, grease it with butter and flick some water over it. Spoon or pipe twelve portions of your mixture and bake at 220 degrees for ten minutes. Turn the heat down to 180 and bake for a further 20 minutes. The pastry should have risen and be a deep, golden colour. Cool on a rack.

Yorkshire pudding desserts!

 3) Whip in a mixer 600ml of double cream with a 2 tbsps of sieved icing sugar (tell anyone who asks that you are making chantilly cream!) and make an opening in the side of a pastry. Either pipe or spoon a good helping of cream into each one and stack in an edible pyramid for a greedy-guts-eat-it-all-myself dessert!

 A lesser known fact, chantilly gets its name from a medieval, French market town just north of Paris famed for its whipped cream but anyhow, the chocolate. There are a few ways to do the it but it's up to you. Mary Berry says to use 150ml of double cream to 150g of broken up chocolate which is pretty awesome. The only thing left to do is fetch a utensil with which to eat your creation and tuck in!

 Warning! Super Crazy Cheat: If you are wanting a real crazy cheat dessert then try two frozen yorkshire puds (they take less than 5 mins in the oven from frozen) stuffed with chantilly or, quicker still, squirty-cream. Place the first one on your plate, the second upside down on top of the first and drizzle with loads of chocolate sauce.

Seasoned with Gusto,

Jacob

P.S. Check out croquembouche cakes for some profiterole extravaganza!

"To glorify my Savior, Jesus Christ, the Creator 

of the universe and to spread further abroad His glorious gospel." - Yours Truly