Make these delicious profiteroles to impress your friends and family! So easy to make but absolutely divine, you can knock these up in no time.

I have made these with just vanilla and chocolate, but have previously done different variants. Once you have the basic choux pastry right, why not get experimenting and add different flavours to the sauce and cream?

I’ve previously tried a lavender infused chocolate sauce with a creme patissiere filling (like a thick custard). I have also added orange zest to the cream and also to the chocolate to make chocolate orange profiteroles. But some more ideas would be to add a little rose water to the cream to make a Turkish Delight flavour or why not try adding some chopped cherries and kirsch to the cream and serve with the chocolate sauce to make Black Forest Profiteroles.

(Ok, yes the photo isn’t great and they look proper rustic- but they taste great!)

Recipe

For the choux pastry

200ml cold water

1tbsp caster sugar

85g butter (a little extra for greasing)

100g plain flour

3 eggs, beaten

For the chocolate sauce

100g dark chocolate

2 tbsp double cream

For the cream filling

600ml double cream

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

Preheat your oven to 200C.

For the choux pastry, place the water, sugar and butter into a large pan and heat it gently until the butter has melted. Turn up the heat and quickly tip in the flour. Remove it from the heat and beat the mixture well until you have a smooth mix. Take off the heat and leave to cool for 15 minutes. Next, beat in a little of the eggs, bit by bit, until the mixture is smooth and glossy.

Lightly grease a large baking tray and then using a piping bag, pipe the mixture into small walnut sized balls. Wet your finger and rub the top of the pastry, to smooth the top of the pastry.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes and until golden brown (make sure they are brown as they will become soggy when cold!)

Remove from the oven and then turn the oven off. Pop a little hole into the base of each profiterole and put back onto the baking sheet with the bottom up. Return to the off oven and leave for 5 minutes to dry the them out.

For the filling, whip the cream with the vanilla bean paste until softly whipped

For the chocolate sauce, place the chocolate and cream into a bowl and sit this on a small pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until melted.

When the profiteroles are cold, fill a piping bag with the cream and poke this into the hole on the bottom of the profiterole. Fill with the cream.

Serve  the cream-filled profiteroles on a large serving platter and pour over the chocolate sauce. You can serve these either hot of cold! Enjoy.