And brush my blog up before it inched towards a near-dormant state!
I baked this today after Smitha tempted a bunch of us yesterday by announcing that she was making Choux pastry.
It was the first time I had heard the term, but when she said that these puffs were used to make profiteroles and eclairs, I found myself drooling even more.
Now, I am a very lazy person, especially when it comes to cooking or baking. So I normally steer clear from complicated cooking unless of course it is absolutely necessary. But the easy way with which Smitha had gone about baking, filling the puffs with creme all so fast while chatting with us, had me thinking that it was something that I could attempt too.
So I got the recipe from her last night. One glance through it and I remember thinking, “Oh wow! This is quite easy!”
I had most of the things needed for the pastries except for whipped cream and nozzle for the filling. Since I was fully charged up to try out the recipe today itself I rushed to the store and bought all that I needed.
The baking process began and everything from the measurements of the flour to butter-water consistency to thickness of the dough was turning out just right! Now the recipe had a simple instruction of using a spoon to put small balls of dough onto the baking paper. But clearly spoon was too amateur for a baker like me who had had it so easy up till now, so I went in for a piping bag to squeeze the dough out to make small balls! And what was the result? Well, the result was blotches of dough splashed across my kitchen-top and baking tray, not to mention the spots on my t shirt, as a result of an enthusiastic squeeze with all my might because of which the nozzle burst off! :eyeroll:
So…simple spoon was back in the game.
These are the Choux pastries in the making.
I had at first planned to keep the puffs simple with just the whipped cream filling and few sprinkles of icing sugar on top. But my eternal craving for chocolates had me looking out for means to make some choco-flavoured topping. I didn’t have to go too far, as I found a jar of chocolate cream, right at home, that we had picked up on a visit to the Lindt Factory in Zurich this year! Slurp!
As it turned out, the profiteroles royally dipped in chocolate were much relished by all the three chocoholics in Deeps’ abode 🙂
Smits, thanks loads for the recipe! 🙂
Edited to Add..
For some strange reason the recipe doesn’t mention the baking part. So let me add that bit the way Smitha explained to me.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade.
Spoon 5-6 teaspoonfuls of the dough on to a lined baking tray and bake for 30 minutes or until they are puffed and golden.
Remove the tray from and poke a hole in the bottom of the balls to release the steam and put them back in the oven for about 5 minutes to dry the insides.
Once the buns are done, transfer them to a wire rack and let them cool.
To put the whipped cream filling, cut a bun in half and squeeze the cream onto the lower half, using a piping bag.
Cover by placing the top half of the bun over it.
Sprinkle some icing sugar on top and serve.
Alternately, for chocoholics, the top side of the bun could be dipped in chocolate cream or ganache, which is what I did, before placing it as a cover 🙂
I found this video on Youtube quite helpful too..
Perceptions 