Choux pastry was the order of the day this weekend and as both Mary Berry‘s eclairs and profiteroles are made form the same pastry method, I decided to make both…or I will never get to the end of this challenge!

I read Mary’s baking bible carefully and got out a medium size saucepan, and weighed out the butter and measured the water and put the pan on a low heat. Once the butter had melted and the mix was beginning to boil, I added the flour and mixed it together until it formed a dough ball that came away from the sides of the pan.

Mary tells you to allow it to cool a little before adding the 2 large eggs and then mix it together to form “a smooth shiny paste” and I used my electric mixer for this.

Then the fun part, trying to put this lovely mix into a piping bag without making a mess- I failed dismally at this part…but what’s a little mess when you are cooking? Mary recommends using a 1cm piping nozzle, I didn’t have one of these, so used the largest plain nozzle I had, the eclairs kind of resembled caterpillars!! Anyhow, I piped some eclairs and some balls for the profiteroles and then into the oven they went, on a higher temperature for part of the bake and then a lower temperature for the rest of it.I took the goodies out of the oven and cut them to allow the steam out.

Then while they were cooling I whipped the cream and made the chocolate icing topping. Although Mary uses dark chocolate for this, I don’t like dark chocolate very much so this is where I decided to put my own twist on it- with GALAXY chocolate! It looks much lighter than the traditional topping but it was very yummy!