In honour of the return of the Great British Bake Off I decided to have a go at the scariest pastry of all - the profiterole.
I'm not silly, I'm not going to try for a Croque-en-bouche, no matter how amazing they look or how many teeth they have the ability to crack. For this challenge, some pastry with a variant of a custardy-mix with some form of sweet topping will do me!
Sidestepping the advanced techniques used by Good Housekeeping, I settled on a recipe by Nigella in How to be a Domestic Goddess.
Stage 1: make the pastry
This is me beating the eggs into the flour, butter and water mix. Slowly and steadily, followed by chuck-it-all-in as it got a bit boring. I also didn't use the mixer as I figured it was just another thing to get dirty and my arm is significantly more toned as a result.
Then make the pastry into small turds on a baking sheet using a large guage piping attachment. I really tried not to make turds, but it just wanted to be like that!
Stage 2: make the custard
Stir cream, milk, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract and caramelised sugar together. Pour into a jug and cool. Try not to eat it all with a spoon.
Stage 3: pile it up with toffee sauce
Still a bit of an inappropriate shape, but they were pastries, they had custard in and the toffee sauce was the sweetest thing EVER. The huge revelation though, was the homemade custard. Blimey is it better than the tinned / packet stuff.
Can you hear the sound of my diet blasted into a million pieces?
these look fab. we had croque en bouche for our wedding, loved it!
ReplyDeletesaw you were looking for a random recipe partner on Belleau kitchen's blog. let me know if you still do!