Giant choux buns, profiteroles, or whatever you want to call them! Filled with whipped cream and topped with melted Terry’s chocolate orange 🙂
This recipe is from my notebook. Reading it back to myself, I think I copied it verbatim from my mum’s instructions.
Ingredients (makes 16-20 large choux buns)
- 0.5 pints / 285 ml water
- 3 oz / 200 g butter or margarine
- 5 oz / 140 g plain flour
- 4 eggs
Method
Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper. Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees C / Gas Mark 6 / 390 degrees F. If you can be bothered, put a roasting tin in the bottom of the oven to heat. You’ll pour some water into this just before putting your pastry in the oven. The steam may help your choux pastry rise… if you’re lucky and this works. It’s never made any difference for me!
Put the water in a saucepan with the butter/margarine and heat until the fat has melted. Bring to the boil.
Remove the saucepan from the heat, add the flour and beat like the blazes (i.e. “vigorously”). You should get a smooth paste like this:
Allow the paste to cool slightly. You can transfer it to bowl at this point if you like. Add the eggs two at a time and mix gently (don’t worry if it looks really sloppy, it’ll come together, just keep stirring!) until you have a smooth, shiny paste, like this:
To make giant choux buns, use a dessert spoon to scoop and drop blobs of paste from your bowl onto your baking trays. Leave space between the blobs because they will spread as they cook. Obviously, if you want normal-sized, smaller choux buns, use a smaller spoon or a piping bag to get them neat and even.
Put in the oven (adding the cup of water to the roasting pan you’ve been heating, if you’ve been bothered) for about 20 minutes until golden.
Now, the next part all depends on how professional a finish you want to achieve. You can make a small hole in each bun to let the steam escape and so you can insert a piping nozzle to inject the cream later. But for giant choux buns I don’t bother. I just use a knife to slit each of them and insert a fork to prop them open to they can cool and dry out properly.
I then used a hand mixer to beat double cream until stiff. I then spooned this into each of the buns. Finally, I melted segments of Terry’s chocolate orange in the microwave and drizzled this over the top of the buns.
Store these in the fridge and take out a while before eating so they have time to reach room temperature. Personally, I rarely have the patience and end up scoffing them cold!
If you’re looking for other recipes featuring orange-flavoured chocolate, you could try:
My chocolate orange butterfly cakes – featuring Jaffa cakes!
My chocolate orange cups – white chocolate cases filled with a swirl of orange-flavoured dark chocolate.
Hi Claire! I’m so glad I found your blog! This looks delicious 🙂
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Thank you 🙂 They were yummy and disappeared fast!
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I bet they did!! 🙌
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That looks mighty scrumptious. I always love a good pastry. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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Thank you! I love choux buns and éclairs but hadn’t made any for ages. It was time! 🙂
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Those look amazing! Now to figure out where I can find Terry’s Chocolate oranges….
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I did mean to write “any chocolate will do”! I just saw Terry’s chocolate oranges on offer at the supermarket and thought it would make the choux buns a little more interesting 🙂
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My favourites! Never had them with chocolate orange though…interesting. 😀
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Me neither! I thought it would make a nice change. It was going to be either the choc orange or Toblerone and the Terry’s was on offer 😉
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Good enough reason 😉
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Wow!!! 🙂
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Thank you! 🙂
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I’m not a big chocolate lover but those choux buns look yummy!
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And the chocolate is entirely optional 🙂
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Choux pastry is on my ‘to bake’ list, not been brave enough yet. These look amazing! 🙂
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I’ve always been surprised at how easy it is. The key is the “beat like the blazes” stage! I honestly don’t think the whole tray of water in the oven to get steam trick makes much difference.
Next time I think I’ll make dainty little ones. Or be bothered to get the piping bag out and make eclairs… mmm… 🙂
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I’ll have a go eventually 🙂
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Simple ingredients and looks great and yummy! I’m so going to try and make these for my husband :).
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They are surprisingly simple but the results are really impressive! The key stage is the “beat vigorously bit” and then don’t add the eggs while the mixture is still boiling or everything curdles. So it’s more about timing than anything technical. No special equipment needed! 🙂
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Thank you for the extra tip! 🙂 Sounds like a wonderful challenge to me!
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Oh, they sound and look lovely!
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They were very nice! I’ve never thought of using flavoured chocolate before, but it worked really well 🙂
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Oh my goodness. Everything you make just looks so good.
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Thank you! These were very nice 🙂
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They look it! Amazing. A lady of many talents, clearly.
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They look sooo good. I don’t suppose you’d post some up to me 🙂
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I’d love to be able to send them to everyone. Then I could make more! 🙂
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These look divine, and I love the idea of using chocolate-orange for a bit of interest, instead of plain chocolate. I’ve never made choux pastry before, never even entertained the idea really, but seeing how straight forward it is, I think I’ll give these a go 🙂
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I always thought it would be so difficult and fancy and then my mum, whose very good at these things, said, “No! It’s really easy. You just have to get the beating bit right.” And she was right!
The idea came to me when wandering round the supermarket and I saw the orange chocolate and thought it would make them a bit different.
Next time I’ll make more effort and pipe the pastry into eclairs or small choux buns 🙂
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they look lovely!!
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Thank you! They were very tasty too 🙂
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they look delicious!
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