Profiteroles - My first attempt at Choux Pastry

There what you see above is my first attempt at choux pastry. I've heard that it is hard and watched those poor bakers on The Great British Bake Off be criticised for their attempts. My mum put it to me as ' they're just a bit of a faff' but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be... or maybe I was just incredibly lucky this time!

Yes I did make them a little on the large size.. the recipe said that the mixture would make 48.. whereas my big dollops only made 14. The larger size had no impact on their taste it just meant you had to cut them in half as you definitely couldn't just pop one in your mouth. No one seemed to have any qualms with massive profiteroles either I may add.

They came out lovely and light on the inside and crisp on the outside. They took a little longer in the oven as they were so big, and I was getting a little worried at one point that I may accidentally over bake them, but I played it by eye and everything turned out okay.

I used a recipe from the Great British Bake Off book which I got for Christmas after pining over it for months, and this is the first thing I've actually managed to bake from it!

I watched a few youtube videos beforehand so I could try and master the technique but it turns out the professional chefs make it look a lot easy than it is! I also noted from watching the clips that some of the recipes deviate a little from the one I was using, some tend to use milk and water for the pastry whilst the recipe in this book just uses water.

The GBBO book gives you the recipe for choux pastry and how to make this in to éclairs and profiteroles, it also gives you three filling recipes: almond filing, chantilly cream and pastry cream. I made the recommended chantilly cream and chocolate sauce. The cream turned out wonderfully and it was actually a lot easier than I thought to fill the buns. It made me smile to see them inflate ever so slightly with the soft and luxurious cream.

When it came to serving I sprinkled some icing sugar on top (not mentioned in the recipe) and poured on the chocolate sauce. The sauce was very rich and if I was making again I may use a milkier chocolate to make the sauce but no one else complained so was probably just me being picky!

I am definitely going to try choux pastry again, I may try my hand at éclairs but I think I would also like to try out my own recipe too. I would one day like to be able to make a croquembouche but I think a few more practise runs will have to take place first, I also need to practise size control!