A profiterole (pronounced pruh-FIHT-uh-rohl, but I like to say "olé" at the end for flair) has its own fairly strict definition that's not to be confused with cream puffs. You must scoop vanilla ice cream (not whipped or pastry cream) inside a delicate puff of choux pastry (pâte à choux to be French about it) and drizzle the concoction with chocolate sauce (not sprinkle it with icing sugar as I did because it looks so pretty!). And don't try to call a savory choux pastry a profiterole!

Profiteroles are quite simple to make, if you know how to make choux pastry! Getting the consistency of the choux pastry just right is tricky.

Choux be do be do
Choux pastry is cooked twice, once on the stove and once in the oven. First, you cook the water, butter, sugar and salt on the stove until it comes to a boil. Then, add the flour all at once and cook over low heat until the dough pulls away from the sides and bottom of the pan. This is the tricky part. How long do you cook this mixture? How "dry" do you let the dough get?

Then, if you've figured that out, you whisk in the eggs off the heat, one at a time, until the mixture is light and airy, not runny, and the dough is "just right"! Here is where practice, practice, practice comes in. The size of your eggs, the type of flour used and how dry the dough is make a difference. Too many eggs, and your puffs will be flat. Not enough eggs, and your puffs will be tough. The dough should be glossy and stiff enough to pipe. Got that?

Pipe the dough into rounds and brush with egg glaze before baking at 425°F for 15 minutes and then at 350°F until they're browned, about 10 minutes.

Once you've mastered choux pastry, vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce are easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Recipe: Profiteroles au Chocolat (Profiteroles with Vanilla Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Sauce)

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

This week with Dorie we’re making pâte à choux, a magical pastry that’s cooked twice (once on the stove and once in the oven), puffs, and tastes so light that you think it could be good for you! Ever since I saw a picture of choux swans, I’ve wanted to make them. And this week I had my chance.

Pâte à choux (pronounced “shoe”), also called choux paste, dates back to 1540 and comes from the word “choux”, which means cabbage in French— that’s what pâte à choux looks like when baked as traditional cream puffs, supposedly.

Traditional choux paste contains four simple ingredients: butter, water, flour, and eggs. Dorie’s recipe includes some milk, sugar and salt for extra flavor. I ended up adding a bit of extra flour (about ¼ cup) so that the batter would come together in the pot. This meant that I had to add an extra egg as well, but everything worked out fine in the end.

Pâte à choux is such a versatile recipe, and can be used for both sweet and savory dishes, such as Gougères or chouquettes, Pommes dauphine, Croquembouche, Paris-Brest, and Gnocchi à la Parisienne.

Swans
To make the swans, you can pipe teardrop shapes, which become the wings when cut in half. I used a cream puff bottom for the base of the swan. The other half of the cream puff can be cut to make wings if you don't want to pipe out tear drop shapes.

To make the neck, pipe the number "2" on parchment paper. Make sure you watch the oven when you bake these since they burn really fast. (I only had one that was photo-worthy!)

To make the eyes, use a toothpick and dot some melted chocolate at the end of the number "2".

Links
Here’s a great article about choux pastry.

Here’s a video of making choux paste swans.

Recipe: Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

You can find the recipe for Peppermint Cream Puff Ring in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or at Bon Appetit. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Caroline of A Consuming Passion who chose the recipe for this week (and has also posted the recipe).

Tasting Notes
The minty, fresh taste of the cream with the lightness and slightly chewy texture of the choux and the richness of the chocolate was a perfect combination of flavors. I absolutely loved it! It was worth all the pastry bags I went through to make this dessert!

My kids enjoyed some of the cream puffs filled with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce since their palate is not refined enough to like mint! Another favorite was the peppermint cream over raspberries. Mmm, delicious.


I also used the peppermint cream on top of lemon bars! Mint and lemon are a winning combination, and this cream is so versatile.

You can store the cream puffs in an airtight container for a week or in the freezer. This is so dangerous to have on the counter that I think I’ll have to find room in the freezer! Another winning recipe from Dorie!

Note: I just read several great posts about choux paste over at Joe Pastry. Check it out!

Recipe for Next Week (June 24)
Mixed Berry Cobbler on pages 416-417 chosen by Beth of Our Sweet Life.