Profiteroles with Dulce de Leche Cream
Jessica Hake on 
I’ve always been so fascinated by delicate desserts where the flavors were subtle but perfect blends of sweet and creamy and maybe tangy. When I was first beginning to bake the harder I thought it was to make something the more I wanted to make it. Now, I realize, a lot of those things I thought were such feats of creation were actually really easy, they just weren’t something I was familiar with. Choux pastry falls into that category and now that I’m older, with twins running in circles around my kitchen, I appreciate simple so much more. The finished product does take some thought but when you pair the perfect, airy pastry shell with a smooth filling that is just the right degree of sweetness it really is better than something that just got too fancy for it’s own dessert plate.
This recipe, using dulce de leche cream as filling, is the height of easy. If you want to do something more traditional the classic pastry cream filling with chocolate ganache on top is popular for good reason. Or try stabilized chantilly cream filling with a tart berry coulis drizzled over top.
Profiteroles with Dulce de Leche Cream
Ingredients
Choux Pastry
- ½ stick unsalted butter (1/4 Cup)
- ¼ cup whole milk
- ¼ cup water
- ½ tsp. sea salt
- 1 tbsp Sucanat (unrefined cane sugar)
- 1 cup Einkorn flour (all purpose)
- 3 eggs
Filling
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- ⅔ cup Dulce de Leche This heavenly concoction of "milk jelly" should be kept on hand at all times in every kitchen. It comes in useful in so many ways!
Instructions
- In a heavy bottomed pan melt the butter, milk, water, salt and sugar together, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture is scalded.
- Add in the flour, stirring until the mixture has become smooth. Then break up the mixture and move it around in the hot pan. Tend the heat carefully. You want to steam off some of the moisture without burning the dough. Break up the dough and move it around in the pan. Keep it steaming for about five minutes, at which point it can be moved to the stand mixer.
- Begin mixing and add in one egg at a time until all the eggs are in and the dough is smooth and glossy.
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and then shape the dough onto the parchment into your desired shape. Profiteroles are balls, usually the size of a golf ball. Eclairs are like logs. Both are pretty exciting. The dough rises a little so leave an inch between pastries. For this step many recipes will recommend the use of a pastry bag. I find them messy. Nothing wrong with messy if you really need it but in this case I have had equal or better results just using two spoons, one in each hand. I scoop a desired amount of dough in one, use the other to scrape it onto the parchment paper and then swirl my spoon around the top of the dough until it is smooth. If there are any pesky spikes of dough that are difficult to smooth one can wet their finger and tap the spike down, but use this sparingly as you do not want to add water moisture. We want as much egg moisture as the dough can hold but only egg moisture.
Freezing Option
- The pastries can be shaped on the parchment paper and set into the freezer instead of the oven to flash freeze. They can then be thawed and baked with no ill effects whatsoever.
- Take the frozen pastries out of the freezer ahead of time and let them thaw to room temperature before baking.
Baking
- Bake the pastry at 375 F until it is golden brown and has puffed up and is just perfectly crisp but not overdone. Part of the joy in Choux pastry is the crunch of the outside combined with the sweet explosion on the inside, so you'll want them just a smidge crispy. 15 minutes is a good time to begin checking.
Whip the Filling
- This filling recipe is divine and so, so simple. Just whip the two ingredients together till the desired consistency is reached.
Fill the Profiteroles
- Fill the pastry as soon as it has gotten to room temperature. A little syringe, the kind you’d give a child medicine with, works really well for filling the pastries. Garnish with drizzled Dulce de Leche and shaved chocolate. Serve immediately.
