Baking for Beginners: Profiteroles with Limoncello and White Chocolate Cream

Making choux pastry, (just like meringues), has people absolutely terrified. After recently dreaming of dizzy baking heights and making a croquembouche tower, I decide it was time to get my choux on and make some profiteroles. I sort of tampered with a recipe on BBC Food, but took advice from Mary Berry on the telly as well. She's the baking queen. You should get about 25 in a batch.

They weren't nearly as difficult as I expected. I did have a few issues - a higher oven temperature for my oven may have been better. But the baking was very simple. The downside is that they don't keep for long. I actually made two batches. One was taken into the office where I watched the Times Digital team devour them in minutes. The other batch I had planned to fill and eat a day later. They were too stale by then and I had to throw them away (hence the stunt photo to the right). This means you'll have to eat them immediately. Oh no, how terrible.

You can fill them with whatever you like - creme pattiserie, whipped cream. The limoncello cream worked well for transporting but otherwise I'd probably have drizzled white chocolate over them too.

You'll need:

• 220ml water
• 2tsp caster sugar
• 85g butter
• 140g plain flour
• 3-4 eggs
• 250ml double cream
• 100g white chocolate
• 20ml limoncello

Bake it!

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees or gas mark 5 and grease and line a baking tray.
• Add the butter and sugar to the water and melt in a saucepan over a low heat.
• Sieve the flour onto a piece of folded parchment paper. Increase the heat on the pan and quickly 'shoot' it into the saucepan (this stops the pastry from going lumpy).
• Remove from the heat and stir until the pastry starts to come away from the side of the pans. Leave to cool in a mixing bowl.
• While the pastry is cooling, melt the chocolate in a bowl. Add the limoncello and cream and whisk well (electric whizzers are so much more fun).
• Pop the cream in the fridge to stiffen.
• Beat the eggs and add gradually to the cooled pastry mixture while stirring vigorously. For a while, nothing will happen, but then like magic you suddenly start getting dough. You might not need all of the beaten egg, just mix until the dough is smooth and shiny.
• Blob your mixture onto your tray and cook your profiteroles for about 25-30 minutes.
• Once they're turning golden brown, take them out and pop a hole in their bottoms and then put them back in the oven for 5 more minutes. This lets the steam out which should stop the insides from being soggy.
• When they're cold you can split them and add the cream mixture. You're done! If you're adding chocolate then do, otherwise scoff them into your face before everyone else gets to them.

Flickr image from thebittenword.com's photostream.