Salted Caramel and Chocolate Profiteroles

Today is my aunt's birthday. We went out for lunch to a place that she'd been to before and said they did amazing profiteroles. When we went to order dessert, they'd sold out! She wasn't too happy about this so I came home and decided to give them a bash. I'd never made profiteroles before and the first attempt today failed as I didn't have enough flour, decided to wing it and found out the hard way that choux pastry can't be done in the haphazard way I usually bake. This actually requires measuring and careful following of the recipe. If you do that, it's actually really easy (not on the biceps though! You'd have guns like a superhero if you did it every day) and doesn't take too long. A relaxing afternoon bake for a rainy day!

 

 

Ingredients

120g plain flour

Pinch of salt

200ml cold water

75g butter

1 tbsp caster sugar

4 eggs, beaten

 

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

2. Put the water, sugar and butter in a pan over a low  heat until the butter is melted.

3. Turn up the heat to a boil then once boiling, turn off the heat and tip in the flour and salt.

4. Beat like your life depends on it until its a smooth paste which comes away from the sides of the pan in a ball.

5. Leave the dough to cool a bit.

6. When it's cooled a bit, beat in a little of the egg at a time. You'll need about 4 but stop when it's a smooth, glossy, pipeable paste. Don't keep adding to use it up as you'll get a mixture that's too runny and doesn't hold its shape in the oven.

7. Scoop into a piping bag with a round nozzle (or a food bag with the corner snipped off if like me you don't have a piping bag and nozzle to hand just accept the fact that you won't get symmetrical, perfect little choux buns).

8. Pipe into little balls in rows on baking trays lined with parchment and stuck down with tiny blobs of the mixture. This is the kind of consistency you want to end up with after the eggs are beaten in.

9. Dip your finger in cold water and flatten any 'nipples' on them before baking them.

10. Bake for about 30 minutes until risen and golden. They expand a LOT!

11. Stab each one's bottom with a skewer to release some air and put them back into the oven, hole side up for 5 minutes.

12. Allow to cool completely on a wire tray.

 

Tips

Don't pipe them too close together as they expand a lot when cooked! I didn't realise just how much they grew!

Put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to create more steam and give them extra puffiness.

Pipe in single squeezes. Don't go back to a blob and add more to it to make it bigger as it won't rise up in a ball shape and you'll get odd-looking random shaped balls.

Don't open the oven while they're cooking as they'll deflate.

Cook them until they're a dark gold. If they're underdone when you open the oven they'll deflate so be patient and let them go slightly darker than you think you should.

Make sure they're filled with cream! If you don't squeeze hard enough you'll get a measly amount coming out of your bag into them and that's no use to anyone... load them up! They should feel heavy compared to the unfilled ones.

 

I filled mine with a big pot of cream (about 600ml I think), whipped up with the zest of an orange. You just pipe it into the buns when they're completely cool (you do need a small nozzle for this though).

 

For the chocolate sauce, I melted 200g dark chocolate in a bain marie (heatproof bowl over simmering water) and added in half a tub of double cream (about 150ml). I just mixed it until smooth and dunked the filled profiteroles into it. If you weren't adding caramel sauce too, some Cointreau would be good so you could have chocolate orange ones. Or even melt in a chocolate orange instead of the dark chocolate which would make it reeeeally yummy.

 

I drizzled over some of the sauce I'd made for the chocolate and chestnut pavlova as I still had some of that left. I just added some sea salt to it to give it a hint of saltiness to cut through the sweetness. To make it I melted100g caster sugar with 4 tbsp water together then brought it to a boil. Don't stir the mixture or the sugar will crystallize. When it was a dark caramel colour, I removed it from the heat and whisked in a tablespoon of butter and 300ml of double cream. It bubbles up and sizzles but just keep mixing and you'll get your delicious sauce in no time. Add in salt to taste and then store the extra (if there's any left) in sterilized jars.

 

They're not that difficult to make and considering this was my first ever attempt at choux pastry, I don't think they turned out too bad! They taste so good that any minor aesthetic imperfections are instantly forgiven by the lucky people that get to chow down on them!!

 



Salted Caramel, Cinnamon and Apple Tart

I went away to West Wales for the weekend with my mum and came back to the house to find cream, apples and a block of puff pastry that needed to be used up. Instantly I thought of caramel and cinnamon and came up with this super simple tart. It's soooooo yummy. It was just a kind of 'bung it all together and hope for the best' kind of experiment but I really like it.

 

First of all I made a salted caramel sauce. I've used this recipe numerous times and it's always come out perfectly. I'd definitely do this bit first or a while in advance. It keeps really well in sterilised jars but really isn't that time consuming to make when you need it. For a tart this size I used a whole batch.

 

The other ingredients you need are:

2 eating apples, cored and sliced thinly

1 block of ready-made puff pastry (unless you have ages to spare to make your own, shop bought is perfect)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tbsp. caster sugar.

 

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

2. Roll out your puff pastry to about 1/2 a centimetre thick (or however big your tray is, mine was about 30cm x 20cm in a rectangle).

3. Stab the pastry with a fork, leaving about an inch around the edge as a border. This should stop the middle puffing up too much but give you a nice light edge to the pastry. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until golden and puffed up. When you take it out turn the oven down to 160 degrees.

4. When the pastry is golden, take it out of the oven and spread over your salted caramel, leaving about an inch around the edge.

If your pastry has puffed up in the middle too much, feel free to keep stabbing it (I did as I liked jabbing it with the fork) but don't worry too much as the caramel will flatten it down.

5. Once you've got your pastry all covered in caramel, lay your apple down in rows.

6. Mix your caster sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle over the apple.

7. Put the tart back into the oven (remember its at 160 degrees now) for about 10-15 minutes until the apple is slightly brown and the cinnamon sugar is melted and caramelised.

When it comes out it should look like this:

 

Sprinkle with some icing sugar and allow to cool slightly (the caramel will firm up if you leave it to stand for about 5 minutes) and serve it up. It's also really good cold!

 

Tips

*Serve with ice cream or custard (I made custard the old fashioned way to go with this as I had egg yolks left after making a mousse)

*Don't worry if your caramel looks runny when going on. If you make it in advance and allow it to cool it should be a spreadable consistency for topping the pastry and it'll firm up as it cools after baking.

*If you reeeeeally love cinnamon then when the pastry comes out of the oven after being in the first time, sprinkle on some cinnamon sugar then too before adding the caramel. I did and it was yummy!!

*For a more refined and less rustic tart, try serving the caramel in little jugs, baking apple wedges in cinnamon sugar by themselves (just on a baking tray and sprinkled with sugar until softened) and making your pastry really thin and cutting into small rectangles. Sandwich baked apple between the cooled pastry rectangles and build it up kind of mille-feulle styley. You can drizzle over the caramel just before serving to stop the pastry from going soggy. I've not tried this but it should definitely work. I'll give it a go sometime but if anyone tries it this way, fire a picture over!! :)

 

I served it with the homemade custard (it's quite pale so blends in with the plate) but vanilla ice cream or some yoghurt would work really well too. Obviously there's absolutely nothing wrong eating it by itself! Also, if you want a bigger chunk there's nothing wrong at all with that. I went for a modest serving as I'd just eaten a chocolate mousse I'd made beforehand and been dunking biscuits in caramel as I was getting on with the tart and had caramel cooling... Oops!!

 

It's super simple and has hardly any work or ingredients involved and looks like it's a real labour of love. Give it a go! :)

 

 



Salted Caramel Sauce

Okay, I know this recipe isn't technically baking, but I think the fact that it goes with baked goods (such as the tastiest sauce ever to drizzle over warm chocolate brownies with a big blob of vanilla ice cream) totally justifies it being in here!

It's a really simple recipe with only 4 ingredients and although it requires a bit of concentration to make it, you'll be really proud of yourself once you've done it!!

Ingredients

175g caster sugar

3 tablespoons water

125 ml double cream

1/2 - 1 tsp salt flakes (depending on how salty you want it)

Method

1. Gently heat the sugar and water in a heavy-based saucepan over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Once the sugar has dissolved, stop stirring!

2. Turn the heat up and boil the mixture - don't stir it or the sugar will crystallize!!

3. When the colour changes to a rich gold, remove the pan from the heat. If you're getting parts of the pan cooking the sugar faster than others then swirl the pan to get an even distribution of sugar and heat but don't be tempted to stir it!

 

4. Once you have your golden caramel, remove from the heat immediately (it'll carry on cooking and go from golden to burned in no time unless you're really careful - this is the hardest bit!), and add in the cream and salt. It'll bubble up but this is totally normal because your caramel is so hot. Stir the pan until the caramel is smooth and thick. When you've got your caramel texture, set the pan aside to cool.

I couldn't get a picture of mixing the cream and salt in as the steam blocked up the camera on my phone but persevere, don't be scared and just keep stirring!!

This stores really well in a sterilised jar and is a really versatile sauce. It's really handy to have a jar in the fridge to dunk biscuits into if you've had a day that's really sucked... it's a guaranteed pick-me-up! I think sugar fixes everything and this recipe is definitely one that can make most things better!

Tips

- Try serving with ice cream to create a super simple dessert.

- Don't be scared to try it - if you cook the sugar too much you've only lost sugar and a bit of water. If you think you may have burnt it don't just add the cream and hope for the best or you'll get a bitter tasting caramel that really doesn't taste too good. You're better off starting again, learning from the mistake and being even more careful to make sure you get your salted caramel perfect. 

- Try adding it to the top of a Nutella pizza (I'll post a recipe to that when I get round to making it) to give it a bit more 'oomph' (not that it needs it). Definitely not something for the faint-hearted! Probably enough calories in that to last you a week but once you try it you really won't care!!

This recipe makes about half of a jar full so if you wanted to double up the quantities to make a full jar to give it as a cute homemade gift that'd be perfectly fine :) It also stores well in the fridge, just let it come to room temperature before serving.

(As you can see by the time I'd got round to photograph it, half the jar had 'mysteriously' disappeared..)