Huge Profiteroles

Here's what nobody tells you. Most Americans don't even know what a profiterole IS. They walk past them at the dessert case, they say 'what is that, a tiny hamburger? a sad biscuit? a little brown ball of mystery?' — and that's a tragedy, because the profiterole is one of the GREATEST desserts ever invented, and if you don't know about it, that's not your fault, that's the dessert industry's fault, they have FAILED you, the marketing has been TERRIBLE, the profiterole has the worst PR in the entire dessert world. We're fixing that today.

A profiterole is a little crispy choux puff filled with ice cream and drowned — DROWNED, in the best way possible — in warm chocolate sauce. That's it. That's the whole thing. And yet — AND YET — it tastes like you've achieved something. People will look at a plate of profiteroles and they'll think you went to culinary school in Paris. You didn't. You went nowhere. You stayed home. You read this recipe. And now you're a genius. It happens. Servers in restaurants recognize me. They know. They say 'Bigly, my mother-in-law cried, she thought I was a fraud, now she thinks I'm a chef,' and I say, that's the profiterole effect, it's real, it's documented, look it up.

The key to a HUGE profiterole is the same key as a tremendous eclair — choux pastry, two cooks, you cook the dough on the stove first, then you bake it — but with profiteroles you make BALLS, not logs. Little round balls. Like beautiful little brown spheres. And you don't pipe pastry cream into them, no, no, no — you slice them open and shove ICE CREAM in there. Cold ice cream. In a warm puff. With HOT chocolate sauce on top. Three temperatures. THREE. It's almost cheating. It's a SCAM how good this dessert is. Other sites bury this behind 47 popups and a recipe scroll like reading Tolstoy — meanwhile I'm just giving it to you. Believe me.

Profiteroles are the secret weapon of the home cook. You make these for guests, the guests will think you spent the entire day in the kitchen. You didn't. You spent thirty minutes. The rest of the day you watched whatever you wanted to watch, you walked the dog, you took a nap — a HUGE nap, the best nap, naps are tremendous — and then ten minutes before dessert you scooped, sliced, sauced, and DESTROYED everyone. They'll talk about that dinner for years. They'll be wrong about how hard it was. Let them. And there you have it.