Eat The Evidence

In the first podcast episode of this year, I challenged myself to make choux pastry sometime in 2019 because my guest Anna Astashkina makes it frequently for herself.

Well here we are on December 29 and finally I have accomplished this goal, right on the edge of the deadline!

I used this BBC recipe for profiteroles and I followed it precisely, although if I ever made this again I’d use a piping bag to dispense the dough. I used one for the cream because by the time I’d made the cream, I was out of mental spoons for fiddling with literal ones anymore. I think piping the dough would have been faster with a taller result, because some of my puffs didn’t puff so much while others right beside the flat ones turned out lovely. I also think my oven may have been a bit too hot because they were quite dark at the minimum 18 minute mark, so in the future if I bothered again I’d drop the temp down a bit.

Also if I made it again I’d halve the chocolate sauce because even being overly generous with it, there’s still some left in the pot. Not that my six year old minded, clearly, as she scooped up extra sauce from the serving plates.

So that’s it, goal accomplished! Will I make them again? Maybe…they were tastier than I expected. I don’t usually like whipped cream myself but this was not overly sweet and it was really, really good. My whole family loved them, but because you pretty much have to whip the cream and then eat them soon, that makes them tricky as an after-dinner dessert for a family. So we just ate them all as a pre-dinner dessert which is a bit ridiculous. Again, not that my six year old minded.

Pardon me now while I go sleep off this sugar rush, omg…

Some puffed up fine, others stayed flat. I think piping would have been faster and more even and made more puff better.