Choux pastries

I love being outdoors in Dubai in the morning and in the afternoons. During the hotter moments I hide... in my kitchen.

 At first choux pastry making was simply frightening to me.  I imagined that only some wonderful French chefs could make them.

But like with everything in life, you need to just try to do it for the very first time. I recall the lovely moment in "Julia & Julia" movie, when as a beginner Julia Child practises chopping the onions for the cookery school in Paris as if she was doing it to perfection. Readers of cook books know that she became an expert in food preparation in the US and internationally.

As soon as you learn these types of skill - they can really become an important part of your weekly menu. Especially, if you enjoy entertaining your guests with home-made food.

Various creations of choux pastries will really impress your visitors. They are perfect addition to savoury dish, cheesey style or make lovely desserts. I recently served cheesy profiteroles at my daughter's 2nd B-Day party in London.

What about a challenge of a delightful pyramid made of many profiteroles filled with whipped cream and drowned in dark chocolate?

The ingredients are: water, milk, flour and eggs with pinch of salt and teaspoon of sugar. Honestly, the important part is to mix the ingredients well and energetically.

I made it once before for my Japanese guests. It came out perfect. I had no previous experience. I simply read carefully my french cookbook's instructions.

What are the proportions?
I mixed:
1/2 cup of milk,
1/2 cup of water,
125g butter,
which I boiled together in the pan.
then I added 1 cup of flour  and mixed vigorously until a smooth paste was created.  Don't worry if it looks a little limp provided that it is coming off the sides of the pan easily

I let the mixture cool down for 15 minutes and I added 3 medium size eggs to the mixing bowl. Again, your mixture may look rather scrambled egg like but with vigorous mixing, it should form again into a smooth paste. Then using two spoons I popped the blobs of mixture one by one on to a buttered dish and baked it in the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees C. Alternatively, use aluminium foil if you don't want to have to wash the butter off the dish.

Do make sure that you leave space between each profiterole as they should grow quite fast - but try not to open the oven to check on their progress before the 20 minutes is up. (A good tip I learnt is to place a pan/tray of water in the bottom of the oven while you are baking - what this does is to provide steam which allows the profiteroles to rise).

Some of you, may prefer to use a piping bag to make the portions of mixture. This is very professional but a normal freezer or sandwich bag will do allow you to achieve the same result. Once you have laid out each of the blobs, use your fingers to touch the top of each of them with a little drop of water - this will help them to brown.

 You do not need  Lakeland/other accessories for any of this. A bit of imagination can save you lots of money. OK, I admit it,  Lakeland is full of cute things which I do buy frequently myself!

This is a picture of the blobs prior to baking - I have touched them with water and left plenty of space.

My daughter could not resist the profiteroles and had seven as soon as the pastries came out of the oven. The aroma in the house was irresistible.  You can fill them with cream if you want or just melt chocolate in a pan and pour it freestyle!

Voila!