Profiteroles

• By Matty Cremona

200ml of water, 70g of butter, 90g of plain flour (sifted), three eggs, one egg beaten with a little water (egg-wash).

For the profiterole filling: 500ml of cream, 100g of icing-sugar, 50g of grated chocolate.

For the chocolate sauce: 200g of fine black chocolate, 25g of butter, 25g of icing-sugar, one tablespoonful of brandy.

Put the water and butter in a saucepan and bring this to the boil. Immediately remove the pan from the heat. Add the flour all at once and stir it – off the heat – until the mixture is smooth. Turn it out into a food processor and beat in the eggs one at a time, until smooth. Place teaspoonfuls of the mixture or pipe rounds of it onto baking-trays lined with non-stick baking-paper, leaving about two centimetres in between each. Brush them with egg beaten with a little water. Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200C, and bake them for 10 minutes. Turn up the heat to gas mark 7/220 C and bake them for a further 15 minutes until they are golden and puffy. Remove them from the oven, immediately make a slit in the sides and leave them to cool.

To make the profiterole filling: whisk the cream until it is thick. Add the sugar and whisk again. Fold in the grated chocolate and use this to fill the profiteroles, using a piping-bag. Pile up the filled profiteroles on a plate and drizzle them with chocolate sauce.

To make the chocolate sauce: melt all the ingredients together bain-marie (in a glass bowl suspended over a pan of barely simmering water, or use a double-boiler) and pour it over the profiteroles.