Chocolate Choux Buns

We made choux buns on Sunday afternoon - the first time I have made choux pastry and it was surprisingly easy!

Here's how we made them:

Heat the oven to 220 C (425F or gas mark 7).  Butter two baking trays and then hold them under the cold tap for a few seconds (no idea why - but I do as I am told).

Sift 65g of plain flour onto a piece of baking parchment and leave to one side.  Break two medium eggs into a small bowl and beat with a fork, set aside.

Cut up 50g of unsalted butter into a saucepan with 150 ml of cold water.  Heat this gently - as soon as it starts to boil take it off the heat and quickly tip all the flour into the pan.  Stir it in for approxmately one minute until the mixture begins to form a ball in the emiddle of the pan.  Let this cool for five minutes.

Add a little egg, stir in well, then repeat until all the egg has been added.  Then put teaspoonfuls of pastry onto the baking trays, leaving a good amount of space between them.

Bake for ten minutes, then turn the heat down to 190C (375F, gas mark 5) and bake for a further 25 minutes until they are puffy and a golden colour.

Take the buns out of the oven and transfer to a wire rack.  Prick a hole in the side of each bun to let the steam out.

In the meantime whisk 200 ml of double cream with half a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon of icing sugar.  The buns take very little time to cool and by this time were ready to have the cream added.  We cut the buns in half and filled with the cream.

We then melted 100g of plain chocolate with 25g of butter and 2 tablespoons of water in a bowl over simmering water.

Once this was smooth and completely melted we spooned the chocolate sauce over each bun and left them to cool.

These ingredients made 16 buns - enough for 4 each!!!!!  We had to taste test them whilst the chocolate was still warm, but enjoyed them better when they were cold and had been in the fridge for a couple of hours.

I think we need some again this weekend!