Whisk Wednesdays—Profiteroles au Chocolat (Profiteroles with Vanilla Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Sauce)

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

Serves 6


For Vanilla Ice Cream
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks
½ cup sugar

For Choux Pastry
½ cup water
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
Pinch salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2/3 cup sifted all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1 egg, slightly beaten for glazing

For Chocolate Sauce
7 ounces semisweet chocolate, cut into pieces
½ cup milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

Unsalted butter for baking sheets
You can find the recipe for Profiteroles au Chocolat (Profiteroles with Vanilla Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Sauce) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
These profiteroles tasted spectacular! The choux pastry was tender and delicious while also providing protection for the cold ice cream from the hot chocolate sauce. The chocolate sauce, for such a simple recipe, offered the perfect balance of bitter and sweet. This recipe was a huge hit with my family and I encourage you to try it, even though it's deceivingly challenging.

The Cream Puff with the Receptacle Tip
Girl: I went to this awesome Italian restaurant last night.
Boy: Oh, yeah? What did you have?
Girl: This thing called 'Prophylactic.'
Boy: That's 'Profiterole,' you dumbass.

--20th St & 5th Ave
via Overheard in New York, Dec 24, 2006

Links
• Chocolate Éclairs…Kransekage
• Peppermint Cream Puff Ring
• Video of Alton Brown making choux pastry
• Article with step-by-step pictures of what the choux pastry should look like along with some history

Next Class
• Gaspacho (Gazpacho) page 96 Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook Home Collection

Award
I am so pleased to have won a DMBLGIT (Does My Blog Look Good in This) award for July 2009. It was hosted by Jeanne of Cook Sister! and judged by Jeanne and some other amazing bloggers: Bron of Bron Marshall, Ilva of Lucullian Delights, Juno of Scrumptious Blog and Andrew of SpittoonExtra.


Lemon Balm and Verbena Mojito
Check out all the winners and entries here. I am honored to be in the company of such amazing food bloggers and photographers. Cheers!

TV
Yesterday, I received a call from Norman Fetterley of CTV News who will be interviewing me today at my home for a segment about Julie and Julia, Le Cordon Bleu and food blogging. To prepare for the segment, I decided to throw together cream puffs! So here I am at 11:00 p.m. enjoying a tasting!

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Running total: $1,482.31 + $7.35 = $1,489.66
($1.23 per serving)

Butter used so far: 13 pounds, 4.5 tablespoons

90% complete Basic Cuisine

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::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.