Profiteroles are a type of sweet pastry made with choux pastry dough and filled with whipped cream, custard, or ice cream. They can be topped with various toppings and incorporated into other desserts like croquembouche and St. Honore cake. Choux pastry is easy to make, and profiteroles can be found in bakeries.
A profiterole is a type of pastry, often better known as puff pastry. It should not be confused with phyllo-based pastries, which may be called puff pastry. Instead, the average profiterole is made with a type of dough called choux pastry, which is a combination of flour, butter, egg, and water. Usually, this concoction is spread or drizzled onto round-shaped pans and then baked until golden brown. The inside of the choux pastry has a soft, scrambled egg-shaped center that is removed before the pastry is filled.
Typically a profiterole always refers to a sweet pastry and not other choux pastry that might be filled with savory ingredients. Almost invariably, the cream puff is filled with ingredients such as whipped cream, custard, or ice cream. Cooked round choux pastry can be used as a great base for things like chicken salad, but it’s not considered a profiterole.
There are many variations of profiteroles. The filling, as mentioned earlier, can range from sweet whipped cream to ice cream. Different toppings can also be tasted, and thicker chocolate icing tops the cream puffs. There is no need to use chocolate and cooks can get creative. They could fill the cream puff with more cream, add fruit sauce to the top, sprinkle the top with powdered sugar, or drizzle caramel all over it. For variety in the middle of the pastry, people can add sliced fruit in addition to the cream, although too much fruit can make the pastry soggy.
The profiterole can be served on its own or can be incorporated into other desserts. One such dessert is croquembouche. It is a tall cake made up of layers of cream puffs, which become progressively fewer so that the cake has a pointed shape at the top. Each cream puff is filled with custard and the cake is held together with fudge sugar. This is an impressive dessert that takes a while to make, and is usually reserved for special events like weddings.
Another dessert, as complex as croquembouche and relying on profiteroles, is St. Honore cake. This is an amazing combination of cream-filled choux buns, rum-soaked cake, custard, and flaky pastry. It also features caramel or fudge sugar on the profiteroles, which gives them a tasty crunch outside.
Even though desserts like croquembouche and St. Honore pie take a lot of work to create, profiteroles are actually quite simple to make, and almost any cook can produce excellent cream puffs. Most of this is because choux pastry is very easy to make and the fillings can require little or no work depending on your choice. Finding puffs in bakeries is also a fairly simple job and can be the best idea when time is short.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
