Photography Tips Online

 We are friends from the early days of blogging.. Infant friends..Isnt it nice to hear and know? Reminisce the  days I would push a pencil to her on FB,learning and exchanging our thoughts on compose pictures and how do we go about it. Those were the days....
 I admire the way her treatise unfolds a new story!! You will so do agree with me ,when you pop in her Arena. She definitely has an affair :) Yes,I am talking about Ananda from A pinch of Love. Just like the name,her space is filled with love and its warmth is spread across her composition,pictures and more. 
When I wrote up to Ananda about doing a guest post, it was an instant Yes! and I knew it has to be a dessert.Its Ananda's love n forte. Over to this lovely girl, who has been absolutely benevolent in doing the post for me, amidst her really crazy work schedule. Thanks Pen Pal.

To try profiteroles has been in my bucket list for years, when Sandy expressed her interest for a guest post. The things that flashed in my brain were profiteroles or petit fours. Quickly I did some research and went through my notes from British bake off and got influenced by petit fours. Then, I came up good combination of flavours. During first stage I experimented strawberry leather, oh my great lord, though it was freaking easy the time it took in the oven was enormous. I couldn't be left unbothered when there was something getting ready in the oven. I enjoyed my strawberry leather; honestly I didn't want to redo the whole process all over again. The backup plan was profiteroles, next day at work I asked a French colleague to pass over her trusted recipe, which I could follow with my eyes shut. But…..the beauty of we researchers are we just super forgetful people. 

Took these profiteroles to coffee table at work, to my surprise it was big success and it was approved by French people. They said it's just perfect. Do get your hands on these profiteroles with strawberry cream cheese filling!

Makes 40 mini profiteroles

INGREDIENTS:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees centigrade.
2.  In a small bowl mix flour and salt together.
3.  Bring the water to boil in a medium-size saucepan over medium heat. Add the butter to boiling water. When the butter has melted, add the flour altogether and stir vigorously. Keep stirring and cook until the mixture forms a ball and it doesn't stick to the pan.
4.  Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature. Add the eggs, one at a time and gently whisk until the dough is smooth.
5. Pour the smooth dough into piping bag with star tip or a round tip and pipe circles of size 1.5 cm or of your desired size onto a greased baking sheet. If not with piping bag you could spoon the dough onto a greased baking sheet. Bake the puffs for about 20 minutes until they are golden brown and puffy. If the puffs are medium-size and/or larger size bake for 25 and/or 30 minutes.
6. Remove the profiteroles from the oven and poke a hole at the backside of the profiteroles using a sharp edge or using small dogbone fondant tool in to the bottom side of each profiteroles to let out the steam. Cool on a wire rack.

• Cream- 100 ml
• Sugar - 60 gram
• Cream cheese - 100 gram
• Lemon Zest - 1/4 tspsn
• Vanilla extract - 1/4 tspn
• Instant Strawberry jam - 2 tbspn (or store brought strawberry jam) ***

1. Whip fresh cream with sugar until stiff peaks are formed
2. Add in the strawberry jam, lemon zest, vanilla extract and cream cheese and fold in gently until well combined.
3. Spoon the filling into a piping bag with a 5mm plain nozzle. Poke into each hole at the back side of profiteroles and pipe in the filling until full. Make sure the profiteroles are cool before you do the filling.

Instant Strawberry Jam

• Fresh strawberries - 100 gram (cleaned, towel dried, hulled and finely diced)
• Sugar - 2 tbspn

Method:

1. In a small saucepan over the medium heat, cook strawberry with sugar until the water evaporates and it forms a jam like consistency

Royal Icing

1.  Whisk egg white, sugar in parts and food colour using a wooden spoon until free falling consistency is obtained.
2.  Spoon the icing sugar and pour it over the profiteroles 
3. Top it fondant flower and sprinkles. Learn how to make the fondant flowers from here or use a store brought flowers