Profiterole Cream puff or choux à la crème. Dessert recipe

What is a Profiterole? Is it the same as Cream puff or choux à la crème?

Yes, profiteroles are also known as Cream puff here in the United States, or choux à la crème in France.

It is believed that the origins of profiteroles are in Italy, where although having a more breading consistency, they were hollowed spheres used to be filled with savory and sweet flavors.

Later, when Caterina De’ Medici was married to Henry II, King of France in 1547, she brought with her many cooks and chefs from Italy to help herself in her new home. There, they shared their recipes with French kitchen staff and profiteroles quickly gained a strong foot in French cuisine and spread all over European countries.

Nevertheless, profiteroles reached their paramount, once French chef started using the new ingredient discovered in the Americas; Cacao, and the paste produced with it… Chocolate.

Spanish friars were who first introduced the Mesoamerican beverage into the Spanish Courts, to later spread it through Europe when sugar or honey was added to balance the natural bitterness of the cacao bean.

But it was not until the Industrial Revolution -when machinery was invented- that chocolate not only changed to a mass consumption product, but also became a more consistent ingredient. The path to chocolatiers and into the culinary world was laid ahead for the chocolate to reinvigorate the sweet and candy industry of the time.

We cannot discuss about profiteroles and especially chocolate profiteroles, without talking about one of Caracas staple Chocolatiers and bakeries: “Pastelería Mozart”.  It was founded in the 1970’s prosperous Venezuela’s Capital, by a European immigrant who discovered in Venezuela’s chocolate a fountain of inspiration, which helped him to upscale the profiteroles chocolate cake to the highest standards. That is our childhood happy memories and the guide for our recipe.

Profiteroles recipe:

Spoiler alert: we are not pastry chefs nor chocolatiers, we just love the good food! That said, and after so many experiments, this is the recipe that -with some differences and personal twists- is the closest we have made to reach our childhood memories when our parents took us to “La Mozart” in Caracas, Venezuela, to have no other than a chocolate profiterole cake that accompanied us in so many birthday parties. Once done with the disclaimer, here is our recipe:

Ingredients for the Profiteroles

Water	100%	200g
Butter	43%	86g
Sugar	11%	23g
Pinch of salt	0.3%	0.5g
Flour plaint	86%	172g

Ingredients for the Chocolate Pastry Cream

Milk (whole)	100%	500g
Sugar	20%	100g
Corn Starch	10%	50g
Egg	20%	100g
Vanilla	1-2%	5g
Fresh butter	10%	50g
Chocolate to taste	20%	100g

Ingredients for the Chocolate ganache

Heavy cream	100%	200g
Butter	15%	30g
Salt	1%	1g
Chocolate to taste	100%	200g

Profiteroles preparation:

• Melt the butter in the water in medium heat and stir. Add sugar and salt.
• Once butter is melted, heat until boil at hi heat.
• Once boiling turn off fire and add all flour and stir until the dough separates from saucepan in a consistent mix.
• Turn on the fire on low temperature and continue stirring the dough while cooking.
• Bring the dough to a mixer bowl and start mixing until the dough temperature lows, before adding the eggs one by one. Keep in mind you might not need to use all eggs.
• Mix dough until all ingredients are perfectly mixed and the dough gets shiny and silky but medium thick.
• Bake in pre-heated oven at 390F for 10 min. and then lower the temperature to 350F for some 15-20 min or until golden.
• Poke holes beneath the puff.
• Let it rest and dry.

Chocolate pastry cream preparation for profiteroles

• Melt fine aroma chocolate in a bowl on top of a saucepan of slow simmering water. This is known in most Latin American as “baño de María”.
• Prepare 3 different solutions
• Stir egg and half the sugar (Solution A).
• Add corn starch to a cup of the milk (Solution B).
• Rest of milk bring to boil with the other half of the sugar (Solution C).
• On boiling Solution C, add Solution A while stirring the liquid.
• Add continuously but slowly the Solution B on the boiling mix, while keep stirring the mixture for 2 min.
• Pull out of fire.
• Add melted chocolate and butter, and keep stirring until dissolved and have a uniformed mix.
• Change to the resting bowl and cover. Keep in the cooler until ready to use.

 Chocolate ganache preparation for profiteroles

• In a mixing bowl, place the fine aroma chocolate.
• Add the heavy cream, butter and salt to a saucepan and bring the mix almost to boil point.
• Add the hot mix to the mixing bowl where the chocolate is and make sure it is all covered with the liquid.
• After a few minutes, start stirring the mix with plastic or wooden spoon until the mix is homogeneous.
• Let the mix rest for some 20-30 min so it starts thickening.

What are you looking for in a Profiterole?

Round sphere shapes with shiny chocolate on top. Firm but not crunchy, moist creamy inside, and a thick creamy chocolate coverture garnished with whipped cream.

If serving small portions, you could have a fun choose and pick by interchanging the chocolates used in the filling and for the coverture.

Our main goals in this dessert are:

• Aromatic one-layer cake or dessert portion.
• Playful chocolate flavors.

What are you looking for in a Profiterole? 

Overall and the most important: Chocolate to be used

This is a chocolate dessert.  So, please use real high-quality sustainable chocolate. We will be discussing this in extend later, but here are some important key aspects for you when picking a good chocolate, keeping in mind that good chocolate is not only the one you like when eaten, it is also chocolate that is sustainable and that was sourced fairly.

Chocolate comes from the cacao tree, specifically from cacao beans. As any other plant-based product, the cacao beans are different in their quality, because of the plant type and because of the place it grows.

The tree, Theobroma cacao, is not such a tall tree.  It usually grows beneath the rain forest canopy. That means that this tree requires shadow from taller trees and the humidity that the deep rain forest can provide.

There are 3 general classifications of cacao trees: Forastero, Trinitario and Criollo. Being the first the most resistant, more productive and the best for cacao farmers selling cacao beans to the candy industry. On the other hand, the Criollo is the most delicate of them all, susceptible to diseases, the lest resilient and the one that provides fewer cacao pods and fewer cacao seeds per pod.  Nevertheless, it is the one that provides the best aroma and the most refined chocolate, being the favorite for the Fine aroma chocolate business.

When processed, cacao beans produce the 2 main ingredients for chocolate: Cacao butter or cacao fat, and cacao mass or cacao liquor. If your chocolate has any other ingredient other than cacao mass, cacao butter and sugar, then you must start questioning if what you are buying should be even labeled as chocolate.

Thus, do some research, do not use any product. Search and use real sustainable chocolate.

For the profiteroles

• Sift the flour.
• Add the eggs one by one, since you need a firm, slow motion but falling dough that would pass through the pastry bag. You might not need to use all eggs.
• When placed the dough balls on the tray, lower the dough tips before baking with your fingertips moistened with water.
• Do not over bake the profiteroles. You do not want to have a crunchy crust. You look for a moist light capsule, soft but firm.
• Let the profiteroles rest on a baking mesh, poke a small hole on the bottom to let the steam release.

For the chocolate pastry cream

• Stir egg first with half the sugar, we want the sugar to help breaking the white of the egg.
• Dissolve the corn snatch with little of the cold milk.
• Slowly add the solution of dissolved corn snatch to the liquid where you already mixed boiled milk + sugar, egg + sugar and melted chocolate.
• Let the solution rest in the refrigerator, properly covered by touching to surface with the wrapping plastic to avoid lumps into the cream.

 For the ganache

• You could use milk or a mixture of milk and heavy cream to obtain a more liquefying or creamer ganache.
• You could also cover individually or pour the ganache on top of the profiteroles for a denser coverture of the cake.

Here are some other tips:

• Use only fine aroma chocolate, preferably 70% or higher if using only one chocolate. If you decide to use more than one chocolate, you could use milk chocolates over 40%, or dark chocolates with 55% or above, with high percentage of cacao butter for a better ganache.
• If you want your commensals to have some fun, you could do mix profiteroles, by alternating the fine aroma chocolates used for both covertures and cream.  You could use one with fruity tones and other with wooden hits.
• We personally like the following: Kacao (Ecuadorian fine aroma chocolate) 74% organic chocolate for both; or if mixing different chocolates, we would use Kacao 74% organic chocolate for the ganache.  For the chocolate pastry cream, we would use Caoba 41% milk chocolate or Mijao 61% dark chocolate, both from Chocolates El Rey (Venezuelan fine aroma chocolate).

There is a Cream Puff day, so please mark your Calendar for next January 2nd, and meanwhile, let’s start practicing getting it right for the celebration!

Need fine aroma chocolates? Contact us now, we have the correct one for your recipe.