Profiteroles

You may have had these or you may have seen them on a menu. Profiteroles are a classic dessert in France made from pâte à choux (cream puff pastry). I saw somebody make them on tv recently, so I thought I'd give it a go.

My baked puffs cooling on the rack.

I read that the name of the pastry, pâte à choux (literally, cabbage pastry), is a deformation of the original pâte à chaud (hot pastry). The origin of the pastry is attributed to one of Catherine de Médicis' chefs, who made the dough and dried it out on the fire before baking it. I also read that it's called that because the puffs look like little cabbages.

My recipe comes from Julia Child and it is extremely simple. First, you bring some water, butter, sugar, and salt to a boil. You remove it from the heat and stir in some flour. When the mixture is smooth, you stir in eggs, then put the pot back on the heat and stir some more to dry it out a bit. This stage goes pretty quickly, which is why I didn't take any pictures of it.

The puffs are sliced open to dry.

Next, you put the dough into a pasty bag and pipe it onto a baking sheet in little round shapes that you then smooth out with a brush dipped in water or egg. These go into a moderately hot oven for about twenty minutes, then you poke a small hole in each puff with skewer to let the steam out and bake them for another five or so minutes.

Fill each puff with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

After they've cooled a bit on a rack, slice the top third off of each puff and open them up. Scoop out any soft dough and let them dry a little more. Then fill them with vanilla ice cream, put the lids back on, pour chocolate sauce over them and serve.

Top with chocolate sauce and serve.

A standard portion is three profiteroles. I made twelve puffs. That means we had them two days in a row. And, since I made them in France, they have absolutely zero calories.