Making Profiteroles

Having recently discovered we can successfully make croissants from scratch, I have been wondering what other French delights we can make. This weekend, we embarked on coffee profiteroles.

Our profiteroles were inspired by one of the first pastry treats we tried in Lyon, France. These wonderful pasties were filled with coffee crème pâtissière and smothered with coffee icing.

Ours were smaller and less elaborate, but still delicious.

Profiteroles are basically a pastry shell, filled with custard (crème pâtissière, or pastry cream, is basically custard) or whipped cream. They take some time to make, but come together surprisingly easily. I think that choux pastry (the pastry shell of a profiterole) is the least labour intensive dough I have made. With the help of our stick mixer with whisk attachment, it was whipped up and in the oven in 10 minutes.

The stick mixer also made easy work of the custard. The longest part of the whole process is waiting for the pastry and custard to cool before you can pipe the custard into the pastry shells.

I can also recommend using the egg whites left over from the custard to make meringues, and enjoying them with the left over coffee cream.