Week 4 Profiteroles

Week 4, we made Profiteroles and Éclairs.

Choux pastry is really quite interesting to make. First you boil the water, salt and butter in a pot and once the butter has melted, the flour is poured in all at once and stir with a wooden spoon until it becomes a dough in the pot. Keep stirring for a minute or two to make the dough a little drier. Then let the dough cool slightly before mixing in the eggs one at a time. 

It is quite simple to make but then somehow there are so many ways to get it wrong. 
There are a few things you need to be careful of when making choux paste. The consistency of the dough. When the flour is mixed in, make sure you keep stirring vigorously for a minute or until the mixture forms a smooth, thick mass that comes away from the the side of the pan.

When adding the eggs, add one at a time and beat constantly and make sure it is mixed in well before adding the next egg. It may not need all the eggs, the dough should be glossy and falls in on itself when cut through with a spatula. 

When piping the choux paste, make sure you leave enough space between them for it to rise and not stick together. 

This is the first batch that sank after it came out from the oven. The inside is still not properly cooked. 

One of the most important thing is not to open the oven for the first 20minutes when the choux paste is in the oven or it won't rise properly.
Make sure oven is preheated before putting in the choux paste. Once the choux paste is in, do not open the oven!

This is the second batch which looks much better. The eclairs are filled with créme chantilly and the profiteroles are filled with créme pâtissière.

My first batch of choux didn't rise properly. Well of course we blamed the oven for being too hot.... and also blamed the recipe for having too many eggs. But honestly it could also have been that I took it out too soon, or I left the choux paste out too long before putting it in the oven or the consistency of the dough was not right. 

The second batch looks better! Hmm... the eclairs would have been nicer if we had chocolate ganache topping. Yum!