BWBO ‘Free-from’ Baking Challenge – Gluten-free profiteroles

Baking for friends and family can be quite daunting, especially when you have specific dietary requirements to follow. Missing off the key ingredients of a well-practised recipe can change your finished piece entirely.

However, adapting things to suit your loved ones or even your own specific diet can be done! Our BWBO Week 5 winner, Serena from Bewilderedbug.com, has proven it with these incredible gluten-free profiteroles.

How amazing do they look?

You’re in for a real treat with this week’s recipe, as Serena has offered two incredible flavoured profiterole choices. For her efforts, she’s won our Mason & Cash casserole dish.

If you’d like to recreate her tasty treats, here’s the full recipe…

For your pastry you will need:

• 75g of gluten-free self-raising white flour
• 50g of dairy-free spread
• 150ml of water
• 2 eggs
• ½ tsp of caster sugar

For your pastry cream (x2 if you’re making both flavours)

• 1 cup of dairy free milk (roughly 240ml)
• 3 egg yolks
• ¼ of a cup of sugar (roughly 50g)
• 2 ½ tbsp of corn starch

Flavour 1 uses a tbsp of dried lavender buds

Flavour 2 uses the zest of one lemon. Cut your lemon and add the juice of one half into your mixture.

Let’s get started on that choux pastry…

1. Preheat your oven to 200C and line your baking sheet with non-stick paper.
2. Sift your gluten-free flour and sugar into a large mixing bowl.
3. Melt your dairy-free spread on a low heat in a saucepan. Once you have a liquid, add water and bring to the boil.
4. Now this is when you need to be speedy! Remove your saucepan from the heat and quickly pour your flour and sugar into the warm mixture.
5. Beat the mixture vigorously using good old-fashioned elbow grease or an electric beater if you have one to hand. You should be aiming for a thick paste.
6. Add both eggs into your paste to create a dough. Don’t worry, this isn’t supposed to be as structured as bread dough, it should generally be a shiny paste.
7. Scoop your mixture into a piping bag, or plastic bag with the end cut off. You don’t have to be precious about the shape of these as they will expand in the oven. Pipe evenly-spaced profiteroles across your baking sheet.
8. Let them bake for 17 – 20 minutes, or until your profiteroles have puffed up. Keep an eye on them, particularly if you’re using a fan-assisted oven, as they may take less time to cook.
9. To test whether they are thoroughly cooked, break one in half and check that they are crispy on the outside and dry on the inside.

Leave to cool whilst you make your cream…

1. If you are flavouring the pastry cream, add either the lemon or lavender buds to the dairy-free milk and bring to a boil in a saucepan. Once it begins to bubble, remove it from the heat and set it aside. This recipe still tastes great without the added lemon or lavender, so don’t worry if you don’t have any to hand.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk your egg yolks and sugar until you reach a fluffy consistency and a pale yellow colour.
3. Add in your corn starch to the mixture and whisk.
4. You’re going to be using some of that muscle power from before again! Pour some of the warm milk into your mixture and mix vigorously. If you add too much you could risk scrambling your eggs. Adding a little bit at a time and whisking quickly warms the eggs gradually. Continue with this method until you’ve used all of your milk.
5. Once all the milk is added, pour your mixture back into the saucepan through a strainer to ensure any anomalies from your flavouring are removed.
6. Heat the liquid in the saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it has thickened. Keep a close eye on the bottom of the pan in case any begins to burn or stick.
7. Take the pan off the heat and pour the mixture into a small bowl. Cover the top of the pastry cream with cling film to prevent a skin from forming. Leave to cool, but don’t be tempted to put it in the fridge straight away. Adding cream to the fridge whilst still warm could cause bacteria to grow and we certainly wouldn’t want any guests getting food poisoning.
8. Once cool and ready to serve, the fun of filling your profiteroles begins! To fill them, add your mixture to a piping bag with a nozzle fitted. Grab one pastry and pierce it with the nozzle. Be careful to squeeze your cream slowly and gauge whether the pastry has swollen too much. They can and will tear if you’re not careful!
9. Once you’ve finished your piping you can add your chosen topping. Serena whipped up a tasty meringue glaze for the lemon flavoured profiteroles and melted dairy-free chocolate for the lavender ones!

So the next time you get a dairy-free or gluten-free guest you’ll certainly be well prepared! If you’re a keen baker yourself, make you join our post-Bake Off chat every Wednesday via the Silver Mushroom Twitter page. We get going at 9pm.