Iced vanilla & caramel profiteroles Recipe

6
30 mins
50 mins

Ingredients

50 50g 50g butter
60 60g 60g plain flour
1 1 1 tbsp caster sugar
2 2 2 eggs, beaten Egg egg The ultimate convenience food, eggs are powerhouses of nutrition, packed with protein and a…
200 200g 200g caster sugar
2 2 2 tbsp double cream
splash splash cognac
300 300g 300g good-quality vanilla ice cream, bought or homemade (see below)
250 250ml to milk Milk mill-k One of the most widely used ingredients, milk is often referred to as a complete food. While cow…
250 250ml 250ml double cream
50 50g 50g sugar Sugar shuh-ga Honey and syrups made from concentrated fruit juice were the earliest known sweeteners. Today,…
6 6 6 egg yolks
2 of 2 vanilla pod

Preparation

Step 1

Put 150ml water, the butter and a pinch of salt into a medium pan and gently heat until the butter melts. Turn up the heat and bring to the boil. As soon as it’s boiling, tip in the flour in one go. Beat quickly to combine. TIP: It’s important to tip the flour in as soon as the water boils, because losing too much liquid by evaporation will affect your pastry.

The starch in the flour needs to be cooked out now. Beat well, over the heat, until the mix turns smooth and glossy and starts to come away from the edge of the pan. Tip the mix into a bowl and allow to cool a little.

Give the mixture a quick beat, then start adding the eggs a little at a time, using a whisk, wooden spoon or electric beaters. You may not need to add all the egg – stop once the pastry is smooth and elastic and drops easily off a spoon.

Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Drop a medium nozzle into a large piping bag and scoop the pastry into it. Line two baking sheets with non-stick paper and pipe 15 x 10p-size balls of pastry onto each one. Use a wetted finger to smooth the tops. Bake for 15-20 mins until dark golden and very firm. Transfer to a rack, turn each one upside down, then leave to cool. Will keep in an airtight container for up to 2 days. TIP: The just-piped pastry buns have pointy tops, which can quickly burn. Tap them down gently with a wet finger before you put them in to bake.

For the sauce, heat the sugar in a large, non-stick frying pan. Melt it gently, swirling every now and again until dissolved. Turn up the heat a little, then bubble until you have a dark golden caramel, about 5 minutes in total. Keep the pan on the heat and carefully stir in the cream to make a silky sauce. Add the Cognac and stir again. Pour into a serving jug. Can be made up to 2 days ahead – warm in the microwave for a few secs and stir to loosen.

If making your own ice cream, place the milk and double cream in a pan. Take 1 tbsp of the sugar and add to the pan, too. Whisk the remaining sugar with the egg yolks and the seeds of the vanilla pods. Heat the milk until just boiling, then pour it onto the egg mix, whisking constantly. Tip back into the pan and heat gently, stirring with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Pour through a sieve and allow to cool. Now churn the mix in an ice-cream machine, or freeze it in a shallow container, beating thoroughly at least three times, until it is frozen and smooth. Will keep frozen for up to 1 month. Makes about 500 ml, 5 mins prep, 20 mins cooking and freezing.

Allow the ice cream to soften slightly in the fridge for 30 mins. Scoop into a piping bag then, holding the bag with a tea towel, poke the nozzle into the bottom of one of the buns. Pipe in the ice cream until completely filled (see tips). Work as quickly as you can – you need to get the profiteroles back in the freezer before the ice cream starts to melt. Will keep well-wrapped in the freezer for up to 1 week. NOTE: Wrapping a tea towel around the piping bag insulates the ice cream from the warmth of your hands. If piping in the ice cream seems too fiddly, simply cut the buns open with a serrated knife and fill with teaspoon-size scoops of ice cream.

Make ahead

To make ahead, the simplest thing to do is to
fill with the ice cream up to a week ahead. The
pastry will still be crisp if you have cooked it
properly. Make sure you serve them straight from
the freezer before the ice cream has a chance
to melt. If you like, you can cook the pastry up to
two days before, re-crisp in a hot oven if you
need to, then cool, fill and freeze.

Some people swear by poking a hole in the
base of cooked choux buns to let out the steam and stop them going soggy. Cook them my way, until very dark golden and very crisp, and you won’t need to. Make sure you put them upside down on a rack to cool quickly.

Try this chef’s trick to stop your parchment
paper lifting off the baking tray as you’re piping
profiteroles – glue the corners down with a little
of the mixture first. This works for meringues, too.

How to make caramel

How to make salted caramel

How to make salted caramel brownies

How to make caramel

We show you how to make delicious, sweet caramel quickly and safely and then how to use it in...

How to make salted caramel

The Good Food team show you how to make deliciously smooth caramel sauce for your favourite...

How to make salted caramel brownies

Reader offer: Good food deserves great coffee

All our recipes are tested thoroughly by us to make sure they’re suitable for your kitchen at home. We know many of you are concerned about healthy eating, so we send them to a qualified nutritionist for thorough analysis too.

Love the new look or think we’ve missed the mark? We want to hear your thoughts – good and bad – to make sure we make the new website as useful as possible.

Discover a BBC Good Food Show near you.

BBC Studios is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC. No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. The profits we make from it go back to the BBC to help fund great new BBC programmes.