Profiteroles

For dessert on Christmas night I made Profiteroles.   Everyone loves these delicious treats.    There are three parts to making these treats.

The Choux Pastry: First you have to make the choux pastry.  This is actually a lot trickier then I expected it to be.  The recipe which came from Julia Child's "The Way to Cook" is fairly simple, but getting them to puff up is a lot of luck and timing.   I am not going to post the recipe here, because of copyright laws, but I recommend using this recipe for choux pastries.

Here are some hints if you plan on using Julia Child's recipe...
1) The big key is to have ALL your ingredients laid out and ready to go before you start.  
2) When making the dough, one of the steps is to roll the dough around the pot.   This is important because your trying to get as much water out of it as possible.  The more water you get out of the dough by rolling it around the pot, the more egg the dough will hold when you start adding egg.  The more egg the dough holds, the more it will puff up, so its important to get the water out.
3) Make sure you cook the pastries enough, otherwise the minute they come out of the oven they will immediately deflate.

You can make the choux pastry ahead of time and store them in an airtight tin.  Make sure they cool completely before storing them.   They still might get a little soggy.  Crisp them up by putting them in the oven at about 300 degrees for 5 minutes or so, until the pastry is crispy again.

Homemade Fudge: The second step was to make the fudge.  The UNBELIEVABLY GOOD recipe also came from "The Way to Cook."   The first step is to boil corn syrup.  Note, its a fine line between undercooked and overcooked.  If the corn syrup is not boiled enough the sauce will be to thin.  But if it gets overcooked, it will begin to harden.  Once you have the corn syrup right and add the water it's time to add the sugar/cocoa to the sauce.  But here is the trick with this... make sure the sugar is COMPLETELY dissolved before moving onto the next step.   A trick to tell if its dissolved is to put some on the spoon, let it cool slightly and then roll it between your finger.  If you still feel the sugar then keep stirring.   It is a good idea to substitute granular sugar with quick dissolve or fine sugar.   If you use these few tips and you follow the directions, your hot fudge should come out good.  Store the chocolate fudge in a glass jar and reheat before serving by placing the jar in a pot of boiling water, then stir.

Assembling the profiterole is easy.  Cut the pastry puff in half, add vanilla ice cream, and then pour the fudge on top.  Its a delicious French treat everyone will love.