Do you know about profiteroles? If not, then you’ve definitely heard of eclairs, right? It’s one of my favorite french desserts where hallow pastry is stuffed with cream and then drizzled with a rich chocolate sauce. Yumm-aa!
Asha, Arjun, and I cranked out a few profiteroles recently to surprise Devang for his brithday. This is one of those desserts that looks so fancy but is actually super duper easy to put together. Not just that, they are really fun to bake with kids because it’s all about major transformations – dough poofing up into balls; cream whipping into clouds; chocolate melting into a river of sauce. I mean, come on!
My baking face as captured by Asha.
Asha and Arjun help me out in the kitchen often and together we have baked plenty of cakes and cookies. But this one was extra fun because it involved learning a new skill, how to pipe dough. It was tricky but they both did so well. Asha helped me pipe the circular mounds for profiteroles, while Arjun piped the lines for eclairs (which was easier to do for his age).
The most important part of the recipes is making the hollow pastry and I used this recipe by Martha Stewart to make sure I got it right. Then Arjun helped me whip some cream while Asha monitored the melting of the semi-sweet chocolate chips and cream.
Once the profiteroles came out of the oven, I let them cool before piping with whipped cream and drizzling some chocolate sauce. I did this part by myself because – confession – I didn’t want the kids licking and wasting the ingredients which were limited in quantity. And also because I really enjoy this part the most! = )
They chilled in the fridge until after dinner time, at which point, we stuck some candles in them and wished the best dad in the whole wide world a very happy birthday.
If you know me then you know how weird I am about presents and kids. I always. ALWAYS. want my children to know that the most special thing they can give someone is their time and something they created on their own. The profiteroles, along with a homemade box of love notes (stuffed with a back scratcher which we purchased because it’s our inside joke with dad, see it here if you are interested ;), and a very special (and hilarious for us) dance show that all three of them organized on their own, was what made up the perfect surprise for dad.
If you need ideas on how to bake with your kids, you can ready this old post of mine. Don’t forget to mix-up your usual cake and cookie routine for these profiteroles if you can. Happy baking!
Yum! These look delicious and I love that your kids helped:).
Thank you!! It was a great bonding process which we celebrated later by eating the fruits of our labor!