the kooky cook: The Lady Scientists who lunch on profiteroles

I have job as a struggling research student . I work in agricultural research and you would think that this would be a male dominated environment , full of burly farmer and Ag researchers , but not so . The proportion to female to male student is about 4 to 1 .
As a result the social activities can veer off to those more traditionally associated with women.
One of these is the Wentworth Miller Baking Society( WMB soc) , as a founding member we like to think of ourselves as a guerrilla like splinter group modeled on the Irish country Woman Association , or the Woman's Institute. We are an umbrella society with remits that cover , baking , gossiping , wine drinking , politics , metaphysics , world economic reform etc etc etc .
When the WMB Soc meet they require sustenance for all this discussion , scheming and gossiping therefore it was decided by committee that choux pastry in the form of profiteroles would be the order of day .

Choux pastry is a bit of a marvel , it only requires four ingredients flour , eggs, butter and water and a lot of muscle to beat it into submission . Fortunately one of the member of the WMB soc is a weight lifter , so she has adequate strength for this job . You can spoon the mixture out or if a more elegant bun is required pipe them . The recipe used here was based on Mary Berry's from Her Baking Bible

Choux pastry

Ingredients

100g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
75g stork margarine
3 eggs at room temperature, beaten

Preheat the oven to 200 degree Celsius and grease and line to baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
Weight out the flour on to a sheet of grease proof paper
Melt the butter , pinch of salt and a tablespoon of water (15 ml )in a saucepan over a medium heat until the butter is melted
Immediately tip in flour and stir like crazy to incorporated the flour . It should be a smooth and heavy dough , this can take about five minutes.

Leave the flour , water and butter paste to cool slightly and then add a tablespoon of beaten egg at a time . This is where the tough love come in you must beat like a maniac in order to mix the egg into the mixture , hence the weight lifter , if you do not have one handy , use the electric hand mixer . keep beating until the mixture become shiny and start to leave the sides of the sauce pan .

Spoon your mixture onto the trays , I used a teaspoon and dolloped them on , or pipe them for a neater finish

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 200 c and then open the oven door for 5 seconds and reduce the temperature to 180 for a further 10-15 . I have a hot spot in my oven so I turned the trays at the ten minute point.
Take the buns out of the oven and pierce them with a skewer or a knife to leave the steam out , let them cool compete on on wire rack before filling.

on the left are the spooned buns and the right are the piped buns . it all depends on how dainty are your guests . I am of the attitude the bigger the bun the better!

Filling

punnet of raspberries

300 ml of cream

icing sugar to taste

Whip the cream to form soft peaks , I had a bottle of rose open so I added a drop to give the cream a little lift .
Whizz your punnet of raspberries to a puree with the stick blender ( if you do not have stick blender you can push the soft fruit through a sieve ) .
If you are fussy you can eliminated the seeds by passing this through a sieve , in this instance I didn't bother

Add the icing sugar to the puree to your taste , I threw in roughly four tablespoon of sugar.
Fold your fruit puree into the cream and bobs your uncle you have just made raspberry Chantilly cream .

Spoon the cream into a piping bag and pipe the cream inside the buns , be careful not over fill the buns , you want to leave something to the imagination , so cream bursting out the seams is not the look your looking for . ( if you do not have a piping bag you can open the buns out like a pitta and spoon the cream in )