Archive for July 14, 2008
Recipe of the Week – Profiteroles
(from the Dessert Collection at emealsforyou.com)
Profiteroles- huh? Profiteroles- what? Cream Puffs- Oh yeah!
For those of you who suffer from Juliachildaphobia, the fear of French cooking, I offer an easy way of breaking that fear. Yes, I did say easy.
Pâte à choux, or as we normal humans call it, cream puff dough is one of the easiest and I think most fun things to make. There is something rewarding about dumping flour into buttered water, stirring a little and there it is…this wonderful and extremely versatile pastry dough. Shown above with hot fudge sauce, the profiterole is the classic quick dessert. Fill the cream puffs with ice cream, berries, pudding or or even whipped cream and you have a fast, impressive dessert. Leave the sugar out of the recipe and make them spoon-size and you have an excellent appetizer shell to load up with your favorite chicken, ham or shrimp salad. Make a bunch and freeze them, they stay forever in the freezer and you can take out just what you need.
Any way you choose to use them; your friends and family will be impressed and you don’t have to tell them how much fun it was to make them. Who knows… you may even say, “Bon Appetit” when you serve them.
Profiteroles (Cream Puffs)
| Complexity: | Easy |
| Serves: | 12 |
| Category: | Dessert |
| Meal: | Dinner with Old Friends (Celebration Meal Plans) |
| 1 | cup | water |
| 0.5 | cup | butter, unsalted |
| 0.25 | Tb | salt, kosher |
| 1 | Tb | sugar, white |
| 1 | cup | flour, all-purpose |
| 4 | large | egg |
Place water, butter, salt and sugar in a pan over medium heat. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add flour, stir until mixed, place back on low heat and stir for 2 minutes. Immediately remove from heat and add to bowl of food processor, add eggs and pulse until just mixed.
(you may use a mixer instead) Place large spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper, space 2 apart. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-22 minutes, until golden brown. Turn off oven, remove from oven and quickly poke a few small holes with a toothpick in the sides of the puffs to allow steam to exit. Return cookie sheet to oven, open oven door and let puffs sit for 20 minutes in oven.
Cut off and reserve top, fill with ice cream, place top back on. May be served with caramel or hot fudge sauce.
For cream puffs fill with vanilla cream. For éclairs make cream puffs and drizzle melted chocolate on top.
This recipe and menu recipes may be found on our website emealsforyou.com
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