These Lazy Profiteroles with Caramel and Walnuts are relatively quick and utterly delicious dessert with a thick caramel sauce and roasted walnuts.
Hi, my friends. I hope you’re doing fine. So am I. Thanks for asking. Anyway, I am kind of behind my schedule as this post should have appeared yesterday or even better on Monday. The feeling of spring makes me lazy :)
Hopefully, these Lazy Profiteroles with Caramel and Walnuts help rectify my horrible behavior. “Why lazy?” You might ask. Honestly, I have no clue. I just opted for this name. As the matter of fact, they are not that lazy. Basically, you need to bake choux pastry as you would normally do. The simple thing is that you won’t fill profiteroles with cream. Instead, we are going to make a luscious caramel spread and cover the profiteroles in it and then sprinkle with the roasted walnuts. Sounds delicious? Indeed!
My mom used to make something similar when I was a kid (Which appeared to be…like…xxxxxx years ago). She often would make little choux pastry and simply mix them with some sweetened condensed milk and then dust with cocoa powder.
Lazy Profiteroles with Caramel and Walnuts
I remembered this simple yet delicious idea this year. I decided to recreate it but just make it a little bit more sophisticated (And if you know me, everything which includes dulce de leche is deemed to be sophisticated.)
You know what is the best part about these Lazy Profiteroles with Caramel and Walnuts? You don’t need to worry about the perfect shape of your profiteroles. Make them small, round, long, beautiful, zigzag-shaped, star-shaped, or ugly. My mom would pipe the pastry in a shape of tiny finger cookies. In fact, the ones you see here are not the best for this dish – the smaller, the better, in this case.
Thus, if you are not familiar with choux pastry yet, those lazy profiteroles would be the perfect recipe to practice and master your skills (Btw, there’s nothing complicated in choux pastry!) Once you feel comfortable with this idea, we will proceed to some filled profiteroles. Don’t you worry – I have some lovely ideas to share with you.
Notes
havocinthekitchen.com
Ingredients
Choux Pastry
- 2/3 cup (160 ml.) water
- 80 gr. butter, at room temperature, cubed
- 2/3 cup (100 gr) pastry flour, sifted
- 3 eggs, at room temperature, divided
- oil/cooking spray, for greasing
Caramel
- 3 tbsp. salted butter
- 1/2 cup 10% cream
- 1,5 cups dulce de leche
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 cup toasted walnuts, chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F). Brush a baking tray with the oil/spay. You can use parchment too.
- Whisk one and two remaining eggs in two separate small bowls. Set aside.
- Place the water and cubed butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring, for about 3-4 minutes or until the butter has melted. Do not cook at higher heat and do not allow to boil as this makes more water to evaporate.
- Add the sifter flour to the butter mixture at once and beat with a wooden spoon until well combined.
- Place over low medium heat and cook, stirring, about 1-2 minutes or until the mixture starts to come away from the side of the saucepan.
- Remove from heat and let cool about 4-5 minutes.
- Stir in the 2 eggs into the mixture while beating with a wooden spoon. Add a little (about 1 - 1,5 tbsp) of the remaining one egg.
- Beat about 1 minute until the mixture is glossy and holds its shape.
- Spoon out / pipe the mixture onto the tray, about 2 cm apart. Brush the tops with the remaining egg.
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes then reduce heat to 170 degrees C and bake for another 10 minutes. Do not open the oven's door while baking!
- The profiteroles should be golden and looking dry from outside. Now you can open the door and check (by cutting in half) one of the profiteroles. It should be only slightly moist from the inside.
- Turn off the oven and leave the profiteroles inside for another 15-20 minutes then remove them from the oven and let cool.
- If you have smaller choux pastry, you will need to decrease the baking time.
- In a meantime, grease the medium saucepan with 3 tbsp of butter. Add the cream and dulce de leche and place over medium heat. Cook about 10 minutes stirring often. if it's getting too thick, add a bit more of cream. Stir in the vanilla and off heat and cool slightly.
- To assemble the dessert, arrange the profiteroles on one or two dishes mixing with the caramel and walnuts.
- Let stand for about 30 minutes and enjoy!
Hi – I’m Ben, a blogger, recipe developer, and food photographer. I’m glad you’re here! I hope you will enjoy hundreds of delicious recipes and a pinch of havoc in the kitchen.
Aren’t caramel and roasted walnuts a dangerous and addictive combo! Even better with those profiteroles!!
I was going to say, “you had me at ‘lazy’, but honestly, it’s the ‘profiteroles’ that has me. I neeeed to make some Choux and get this together, especially with the sophistication of the caramel. My mouth waters…. thanks for the recipe, Ben!
I want this whole bowl!! Anything with caramel….I”m in!! I definitely need to try choux pastry at some point – this looks like a pretty good place to start. And spring? What spring?! All I see is white outside of my window :(
Totally love this recipe! The roasted walnuts, the caramel, the pastry choux…it’s soooo sooo heavenly! Now I just need to taste it!! I know I wouldn’t be able to stop once started, but you only live once right!? :)
Kim | The Baking ChocolaTess recently posted…Chocolate Peanut Butter Malt Poke Cake
These are perfection, Ben! You know I love anything made with choux pastry and the addition of dulce de leche is an added bonus. I think I’d gobble every single one of these up all by myself. Have a great weekend, my friend!
Spring? Spring? You clearly must be living south of me as we’ve had about 24″ of snow this past week. I welcome the thought of Spring! Also, I welcome the thought of these profiteroles. This isn’t the way I’ve made profiteroles in the past, but I love it. Kinda like “reach in and grab one” type of recipe. Or in my case, “reach in, grab the whole plate and start running before Ben can catch me” type of recipe. These look delicious…and definitely not lazy! :-)
David @ Spiced recently posted…Cast Iron Skillet Nachos
I’ve never made profiteroles, but I’ve seen choux pastry being made on cooking shows and have always wanted to give it a go.
Our winter here hasn’t been too bad at all, though we are expecting snow this weekend, but hopefully that won’t happen! I’ll have to prepare though with lots of snacks and maybe it’ll be an opportunity to finally try my hand at profiteroles :) These look too good not to try, especially with the caramel and crunchy walnuts! Have a wonderful weekend!
We would be glad to be experiencing any glimpses of spring here too Ben, but at the moment the temperature is still hovering around zero and we’re still expecting more snow. It’s been so long since I’ve made profiteroles. I laughed when I thought of that time which was when Lynne and I made a tower of profiteroles. Maybe it’s time to make that tower again but with this different version with the luscious caramel spread over the tops instead of filling with cream the traditional way. I like it Ben, thanks! Hope you have a great weekend!