Caramel Profiteroles: A stab at French patisserie

Caramel Profiteroles: My attempt at recreating 

 

On a recent break to Nice in the south of France, I had the most delicious profiterole dessert from a local patisserie that was open until 10pm! Imagine if such an amazing thing existed in my home town?! I’d never have an emergency dessert baking moment again… Oh to dream!

So while in France, it’s obligatory to eat as much from the local patisseries as possible,from breakfast croissants to afternoon treats after a long day of sightseeing. Well that’s what I think anyway!

This is a photo of the Caramel Profiteroles I had in Nice, France- doesn’t it look so perfect and delicious?

So as you can see this dessert was amazing and I haven’t seen it available anywhere since. The choux pastry was crisp and the creme patissiere not too sweet. The burnt caramel offset the cream perfectly and I was so sad to eat the last mouthful! Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to go back and get another one as we left the next morning. So I have recreated it in my own kitchen as part of the Mother’s Day lunch for my family!

Caramel Profiteroles

 

I have to admit that I don’t have a recipe to share as I kind of made it up as I went along, starting from a basic choux pastry mix and filling the profiteroles with creme patissiere. But here is a similar one if you want to give it a go yourself!

When working with the caramel, be very careful as I managed to burn my middle finger and a thumb on the burning hot sugar! Blisters alert! 😦

With only a photo of the original dessert on my phone to go by, I made a stab at reconstructing the dessert to look the same. The base is a disk of choux pastry that I had to squash down as it puffed up then I used some of the caramel to ‘glue’ three creme patissiere filled profiteroles onto the base. I decided that easiest way to do the profiteroles was to fill them first that dip them into the caramel, hence the burning of fingers as they were heavy and kept falling in! I topped the freshly whipped cream with some flaked almonds that I toasted then ground.

Caramel Profiteroles- home made

 

I think I managed to capture the general essence of the dessert, not as neat I wanted but it was OK for a first attempt. Unfortunately I was pressed for time so was unable to take step-by-step photos. Maybe I’ll attempt this again and take photos next time! 🙂

 

 

Profiteroles: Ferrero Rocher inspired

Chocolate and Hazelnut Profiteroles

This is round two of the profiteroles adventure after the success of yesterday’s mid week dessert of profiteroles I wanted to try a new flavour.

Rooting around the cupboards I found a jar of Nutella and thought about my favourite chocolates- Ferrero Rocher!

Just by combining a couple of table spoons of the naughty hazelnut chocolate spread with the whipped cream and toasting a handful of hazelnuts, the standard profiterole was transformed into a double chocolate heavenly dessert…

Chocolate and Hazelnut Profiteroles

Profiteroles with Pistachio Sprinkles: mid week treat after a difficult day…

 

Profiteroles with Pistachio Sprinkles

Today was a difficult day at work. Meetings back to back and all were pretty hard going! The thing I enjoy about my job is the variety that the day can bring. However it can sometimes be a little difficult to switch off and go home…

By the time I left the office at 7pm the only thought getting me through the traffic jam was the thought of the big pile of profiteroles that I could treat myself too. I think they refer to people like me as ’emotional eaters’! 🙂

Luckily I had these choux balls in the freezer from the Black Sesame Mousse Cake and the chocolate ganache left over from the Ultimate Chocolate Cake made a few days ago. The pistachios were toasted and crushed for a previous cake too! The only addition was some fresh whipped double cream with a touch of icing sugar to sweeten it up.

 

Profiteroles with Pistachio Sprinkles

I reheated the choux pastry straight from frozen in the oven for five minutes then left out to cool on a rack. With the oven turned off I put the bowl of ganache in the cooling oven melt down into a sauce. Whipped cream was then piped into the balls of crisp pastry before drizzling with the ganache then sprinkled with nuts. All in all this took 10 minutes to put together and 3 minutes to eat!

And if this wasn’t the perfect end to a challenging day, there is still enough of all the ingredients to have another round of profiteroles tomorrow night! 🙂

Not bad for using up left overs…