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How to Make Italian Profiteroles – Step-by-Step Recipe

Perfect dessert for your holidays: heavenly delicious puffs filled with rich custard cream, piled up and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Irresistible! This recipe will FOR SURE make a big impression at your holiday dinner table.

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This post is written in collaboration with Taste Europe, Butter of France. All opinions are mine alone.

Today I present you with my recipe for this world-famous Italian and French dessert made with mouthwatering puffs, filled with rich pastry cream, piled up and drizzled with warm chocolate sauce.
These irresistible profiteroles will surely make a big impression on your holiday table!

Profiteroles are light and airy puffs (also called bigne’ in Italy) made from choux pastry, traditionally filled with Italian pastry cream (crema pasticciera), and drizzled with chocolate sauce.

Profiteroles are similar to the classic French croquembouche. But rather than having chocolate all around the puffs, in the croquembouche, the puffs are served as a neat tower covered in crunchy caramel.
I’m sure you have seen it before: a cone-shaped big tower of cream puffs, all drizzled and kept together by the hard caramel. As the word “croquembouche” suggests, these puffs are a “crunch in the mouth”.

The secret to making the best choux pastry for the puffs is the use of high-quality European butter. For this recipe, I’m using the best of all: rich and golden French butter which adds a remarkable layer of flavor to the pastry

100% natural, with a higher fat content, this butter is the perfect choice to create light and airy, puffy, and slightly crispy profiteroles.
Make sure to check out @TasteEuropeButterofFrance and their website, tasteeurope.com, for store locator, recipes, and to learn more. In stores, you can find it in the dairy aisle marked “Product of/Imported from France” on the packaging!

This recipe for profiteroles is not a hard recipe BUT it does require several steps and some patience.

First of all, you need to prepare the cream puffs, and make sure they are properly baked. If not, they deflate once they are out of the oven. Still good, but not as pretty!
The choux pastry doesn’t use any baking powder or yeast. What makes them puff up is the volume of water in the batter with evaporates into steam when in the oven.

Start by melting the butter in the water with a bit of sugar (optional – but I like a little sweetness to it) and salt. Add the flour and cook until the mixture starts to detach from the edges of the pan.
Remove from the heat, transfer to a bowl and let cool for a few minutes.
This is an important step: you don’t want the hot mixture to cook the eggs. So let it cool off a bit and then add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly in between. You can do this by hand, with a hand mixer or a stand-up mixer. Make it nice and smooth.

Place the choux pastry in a piping pastry bag, with a large round tip (or simply cut the tip of the bag) and pipe it into little dollops on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
To make a round top, wet one or two fingers with water and pat down the peaks with your wet finger.

To bake: make sure to preheat the oven and bake for about 30 minutes on a baking sheet. At the end, turn off the oven, open the door slightly and let the puff cool down with the low heat for at least 5 minutes. This will make the outer part lightly crispy and less likely for the puffs to deflate.

The second thing: you need to make the custard cream. You can’t go wrong with this recipe. I made it with cornstarch, not flour, and it tastes delicious. It’s thick and rich, with a pudding-like texture. Amazing with the puffs!

Once the cream is cold and refrigerated, and the puffs are at room temperature, all that is left is to fill the puffs and stack a few on top of each other. Drizzle with your favorite chocolate sauce and enjoy!
Many steps I know! But trust me: every bite of this dessert is worth the effort!

NOTES: The puffs can be make in advance. You can easily store in an air-tight container. And so can the cream: it can be made the day before and stored in the refrigerator.

How to Make Italian Profiteroles – Step-by-Step Recipe

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Perfect dessert for your holidays: heavenly delicious puffs filled with rich custard cream, piled up and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Irresistible! This recipe will FOR SURE make a big impression at your holiday dinner table.

Servings:

8

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Prep Time

30 min

Cook Time

40 min

Resting Time

1 hr

Total Time

2 hr 10 min

Ingredients

For the choux pastry
  • 4 oz, 1 stick (115 gr) unsalted butter, cubed
  • 10 fl oz (300 ml) water
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons (30 gr) sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup (125 gr) all-purpose flour
  • 3 large eggs
For the custard cream:
  • 1 1/2 cups (355 ml) whole milk, hot
  • 2 large egg yolks
  • 1/4 cup (50 gr) sugar
  • 3 tablespoons (25 gr) corn starch (or all-purpose flour)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup (235 ml) whipping cream
  • Chocolate sauce and whipped cream to serve

Instructions

To make the custard cream:
  1. Warm up the milk until hot, but not boiling. You can warm up in the microwave or in a small pan on the stove.
  2. In a medium sauce pan, add the egg yolks, sugar and corn starch. Whisk well until light and fluffy. Add a little bit of the hot milk and whisk some more. Incorporate the rest of the milk, while whisking.
  3. Place the pan over medium heat and bring to a slow boil, while stirring continuously. The cream will thicken so make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom.
  4. Add the vanilla extract, lower the flame when it starts to bubble and cook for one or two more minutes while stirring, until it reaches the desired thickness.
  5. Transfer the cream in a glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap. The plastic should touch the cream, so it won’t create a “skin. Let it cool down to room temperature and refrigerate.
    To make the puffs:
  6. In a medium sauce pan, bring to a boil 10 oz of water with the butter cut in pieces, sugar, vanilla extract and salt.
  7. When the water starts to boil, whisk in the flour some at a time. Mix until smooth. Lower the heat, mix continuously and cook for a couple of minutes until the dough starts to detach from the sides of the pan. Remove from the heat, place in a large bowl and let cool for 10 minutes
  8. Preheat the oven to 350º F (180º C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  9. Add the eggs one at the time while mixing the mixture until nice and smooth. Place in a piping bag and pipe the mixture into balls onto the prepared baking sheet. Make sure you leave enough space between the puffs, because when they cook they will increase in size. You can smooth the tip of the puffs with a wet finger if you like.
  10. Bake for 30 minutes at 350F or until they are puffed and golden on top. Turn off the oven, open the oven door slightly and leave the puffs inside, until they cool down a bit. This will prevent the puffs to flatten down once outside the oven.
To assemble
  1. Whip the whipping cream and fold into the pastry cream until smooth. Place in a piping bag with round tip. Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve
  2. Once the puffs are cooled down, use a piping bag and fill the puffs with the prepared custard cream.
  3. Serve four or five cream puffs on a plate drizzled with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and chocolate shavings if you like.

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