TWD - Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

I hate to be beaten by anything so I had to make this week’s TWD recipe twice! The recipe was chosen by Caroline of A Consuming Passion and is peppermint cream puff ring. The dessert is a choux ring, filled with mint flavoured whipped cream and topped with a chocolate glaze and flaked almonds.

I knew that I could make choux pastry as I had made it the week before for the Hay Hay It’s Donna Day challenge. Dorie’s recipe instruction was to pipe the dough into a large ring before baking. I duly followed the instructions, but my choux ring looked more like a choux pancake. It rose but not as much as I had hoped and then when it came out of the oven it completely collapsed.



So, not to be defeated, on Saturday I had my second attempt. This time I halved the choux mixture. There were a few things that I think I did wrong the first time, so I made sure to remedy them – one was I don’t think that the oven first time round was hot enough to start with. Secondly I don’t think I beat the eggs in for long enough and thirdly, I opened the oven door while the ring was cooking – apparently that is a real No No when making choux. Second time round, I also didn’t pipe the dough – I spooned dollops of the mixture into a ring. And my choux turned out perfectly! I was so excited.



Next was the filling - cream, heated and infused with mint leaves, then cooled, beaten with some sugar and mixed with some crème fraiche. I actually left out the crème fraiche and just had mint flavoured whipped cream. It was so yummy! I would definitely flavour cream with mint again, as you get this amazing freshness against the richness of the cream. The choux ring was split, filled with the cream and then topped with a glaze made from chocolate, cream and corn syrup – I left out the corn syrup simply because I didn’t have any.

This was such a yummy dessert, once I finally got the hang of it! It was quite different to the kind of thing I normally make and I had forgotten how much I enjoy chocolate éclairs. I will definitely make this again. See the other Peppermint cream puff rings here.