Diane Yang's Chocolate Profiterole

Diane Yang, executive pastry chef at Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis, shares a delicious and comforting recipe to break the grey of winter. The chocolate profiterole is a choux pastry filled with chocolate sorbet, complemented with a speculoos cookie crumble and brown sugar marshmallow.

Pate a choux (profiterole)
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1 cup butter
2 tablespoons sugar
½ tablespoon salt
8 eggs
1 ½ cups flour

1. Boil milk, water, butter, salt and sugar.
2. Add flour and cook over heat for several minutes until the mixture doesn’t stick to the sides of the pot.
3. Paddle in mixer until slightly cool.
4. Add eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.
5. If too soft, chill before piping filling.

Milk chocolate pastry cream
2 cups milk
3 ½ ounces egg yolks
3 ounces sugar
1 ¼ ounces cornstarch
½ tablespoon cocoa powder
8 ounces milk chocolate

1. Scald milk.
2. Whisk egg yolks, cornstarch, cocoa powder and sugar together and temper into milk. Whisk until thick.
3. Add chopped milk chocolate and whisk until smooth.
4. Pass through a chinois.

Speculoos cookie
210 g. butter
350 g. brown sugar
540 g. flour
Vanilla
130 g. milk
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon spice mix (cloves, nutmeg, white
pepper)

1. Cream the butter and brown sugar.
2. Sift and add flour, spices and vanilla.

Cocoa sorbet
14 ounces sugar
4 ½ ounces cocoa powder
1 ¼ cups water
1 ¼ quarts milk
5 ounces trimoline (invert sugar)
½ cup coffee extract

1. Whisk everything together.
2. Bring to a rolling boil and then strain through a
chinois.
3. Chill mixture, then run through an ice cream machine.

Brown sugar marshmallow
6 ounces egg whites
¼ cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
12 ounces corn syrup
Salt

1. Whip whites until frothy and slowly add plain sugar.
Continue to whip until medium stiff.
2. Bring sugar and corn syrup up to 239-240F.
3. Stream into whipping whites, whipping until thick.
4. Add salt.
5. Put mixture into a piping bag right away.

Photography by Attilio D’Agostino