These chocolate profiteroles are like little bites of heaven.
So beautiful, elegant and delicious, these profiteroles will be the perfect dessert for your next event, party or celebration.
Recipe is pretty easy to make, so don’t get scared by the long list of ingredients and instructions, I’ve tried to be as thorough as possible in order to make things easier for you guys.
Happy cooking!
Ingredients for the Chocolate Pâte Sucrée Dough (sweet pastry dough):
80 grams (2,8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature
70 grams (2,5 oz) powder sugar
A pinch if salt
1 small egg
1/4 tea spoon vanilla extract
120 grams (4,2 oz) all-purpose flour
15 grams (0,5 oz) cocoa powder
Ingredients for choux (makes 25 profiteroles):
150 ml. (5 fl. oz) water
60 grams (2 oz) butter
1 table spoon white sugar
80 grams (2,8 oz) plain flour
A pinch of salt
2 medium eggs, beaten
Ingredients for the orange chocolate ganache:
100 ml. (3,5 fl. oz) freshly squeezed orange juice
210 grams (7,5 oz) dark chocolate, chopped
3 egg yolks
40 grams (1,4 oz) sugar
1 tea spoon orange extract
1/2 tea spoon orange extract
90 ml. (3 fl. oz) heavy whipping cream
Ingredients for the whipped cream:
150 grams (5 oz) sweetened heavy whipping cream
1/2 tea spoon vanilla extract
To make the dough:
Beat butter, sugar and a pinch of salt with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat for another minute. In a small bowl combine cocoa and flour. Add flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture and beat until a dough is formed. Remove dough from the bowl and knead with your hands for a minute or so to form a ball.
Shape dough into a disk, cover in plastic wrap and put in the fridge to firm up, about 2 hours (or overnight).
NOTE: Use your hands to form the dough if you don’t have an electric mixer with dough attachment.
NOTE: Place dough in the freezer for quicker firming in case you don’t have the time to wait for it to firm up in the fridge. Check it often in order to avoid actually freezing it.
To make profiteroles:
Preheat your oven to 200 C fan-forced.
Add water, sugar and butter into a medium sized saucepan and bring to the boil on medium high heat.
Add the flour into the saucepan all at once and start beating with a wooden spoon until the batter thickens and begins to pull away from sides of the pan.
Remove from the heat and add the eggs one at a time, mixing until batter is completely smooth.
Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
Put the batter into a piping bag and pipe it into medium size round balls, as you leave room between the profiteroles.
Assemble and bake profiteroles:
Remove pastry dough from the fridge, remove plastic wrap and place over a large piece of baking paper. Put another piece of baking paper over the dough and roll to 1/8th of an inch (3 mm) thickness.
Put the rolled dough in the freezer for about 10 minutes to firm up again.
Using a round cookie cutter (just a bit bigger than the size of piped profiteroles) cut out enough rings for all profiteroles. Gently place pastry rings on top of the profiteroles pressing gently just enough to stick to each other. Don’t press too hard (check this post for pictures of this process).
Immediately transfer the tray into the oven and cook profiteroles for about 20 minutes on 200 C. Decrease the temperature to 180C and cook for another 20 minutes.
Leave the door of the oven ajar and cook for another 10 minutes.
Turn off the oven and take profiteroles out to cool completely.
On the inside profiteroles should be dry, if the batter inside is still moist, bake for another few minutes then set aide to cool completely.
Prepare the chocolate mousse:
In a saucepan heat the orange juice. Remove it from the heat just right before it starts to boil. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and pour over the chocolate in a small bowl and stir until chocolate melts. Set aside until needed.
Prepare the egg yolk mixture: In a medium saucepan whisk the egg yolks and sugar until pale. Add vanilla and orange extracts and start cooking on medium / medium-low heat (depending on how strong your stove is). Whisk almost constantly until all sugar dissolves and the egg yolk mixture is hot to the touch. Cook egg yolks on medium low heat until you temper them, then you can turn the heat up a bit and continue cooking until the mixture thickens. Make sure to whisk often to avoid curdling the eggs.
Once the sugar dissolves and the mixture is thickened, remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate mixture. Set aside to cool completely to room temperature ans you stir occasionally.
In a large bowl whip the cream until soft peaks form. Add the whipped cream to the chocolate mixture and gently fold with rubber spatula.
Whip up the other whipping cream with the vanilla extract till stiff peaks form and fill a piping bag with it.
To assemble: Fill a piping bag with the chocolate mousse.
Cut profiteroles in two and pipe a little bit of the chocolate mousse over the bottom of each profiterole, top with the whipped cream, cover with the top of the profiteroles and serve immediately.
***Don’t fill up profiteroles in advance. If you want to have them for a dinner party or other occasion, prepare all in advance and just fill them up right before serving.
