This week has been my youngest’s 7th birthday. It feels quite a milestone as my oldest was 7 when the youngest was born. I have loved being a mum, everyone used to say to me how fast it goes. I would smile, exhausted, surrounded by toddlers and dreaming of a full nights sleep, believing them but at the same feel time wondering if it would ever end!

But it has definitely gotten easier in a lot of ways. Although the learning curve with each new age and season still feels steep, (we’ve had to apologise many times to our oldest who has been our parenting guinea pig!) I wouldn’t give up this opportunity to be stretched in every area!

So back to my, not so baby, baby boy! He asked for a croque en bouche for his birthday cake! Which is basically a tower of profiteroles! It sounds far more impressive than it actually is! But I thought I would share the recipe I used so you can have a go yourself!

Ingredients

To make the Choux Pastry. Put the butter and water into a saucepan and heat until the butter melts then bring to the boil. (It’s important that you wait for it to bubble). Remove from the heat and add the flour. Stir vigorously until the mixture forms a soft ball. Leave to cool slightly, then gradually add the eggs, beating well between each addition, to form a smooth, shiny paste. (You’ll also have an aching arm! Or you can cheat as I did this time and use a freestanding mixer with the metal ‘K’ beater!)

Grease a baking tray. Use 2 teaspoons to create little balls with the choux pastry dough, put them on the tray, ensure you leave at least 1cm either side of them, and brush with beaten egg. (Before you brush with the egg I always try to make them look a bit rounder by wetting my fingers and dabbing the points smooth.) Sprinkle the tray with water (this will create steam in the oven which will help them to rise). They will look small but trust me they grow. You could also pipe them onto the tray but I haven’t been doing this as it’s more work! This recipe will probably make two or three trays worth of profiteroles so half it if you don’t need that many.

Bake in a preheated oven at 220˚C for 10 minutes then bake at 190˚C for a further 20 minutes. Leave them to cool on a wire rack. Poke a hole in each as they cool so the steam can escape.

Make the crème patisserie by whisking together the Cornflour, Sugar and Egg Yolks until smooth.

Heat the milk with the vanilla until almost boiling. Pour a little of the hot milk into the egg mixture and whisk it in, gradually add the rest of the milk, then pour it all back into the saucepan and whisk it on a low heat until it thickens. This can happen quite quickly so you need to watch it carefully and whisk continuously.

Sieve it into a bowl or jug to cool (sieving it also cools it quicker and stops it cooking to much more). Make sure to lay either baking paper or cling film over the top to ensure you don’t get a skin.

Make a hole in each of the profiteroles and, using a piping bag, pipe the cold crème patisserie inside each profiterole. (I buy reusable piping bags which you can pick up quite cheaply, I get mine from Wilkinson but I know that Lakeland sell them too). Or if you don’t have a piping bag cut the top off the profiterole and spoon in the custard.

Finally add your topping, whether that’s melted dark chocolate or white chocolate. You can spread it on or drizzle it over them.

If I know I’m making profiteroles I will often make the custard the day before so that it’s really cold before I start to pipe it but you can do it on the day as well.

For the fillings and toppings the ingredients change. This time I did three different types. One was an orange for which I used the zest of one orange which I added to the custard and then topped with dark chocolate. The second was Raspberry and white chocolate, for which I used the vanilla custard and popped a raspberry in the middle of each of the custard then topped with white chocolate. For the last type I did plain vanilla custard with a mixture of the white and dark chocolate for the topping.

A long post this week. But I’d love to know how you get on if you give this a go and maybe that can be the next birthday cake!