Choux pastry and a profiterole disaster

It was my mum's birthday last week and I attempted a profiterole tower thinking it would a pretty impressive yet relatively easy birthday surprise. It wasn't. The choux pastry itself was fine and filling them with the cream was really fun but the whole dipping-them-in-chocolate-stacking-them-with-caramel-making-a-tower-thing pretty much flopped (literally). Due to the fact the tower was not a pretty sight there are no final pictures but I will go through the steps of making choux pastry - I made chocolate eclairs recently and they looked so cute but completely forgot to take a picture!

Choux Pastry (makes about 6-8 chocolate eclairs, double up like me if you want more!)

• 30g of strong white flour 
• A teaspoon of caster sugar 
• 25g butter
• 80ml of water
• 1 large egg, whisked

Set your oven to 180c (fan oven) and line a baking tray with baking paper/grease it. Heat your water and butter in a pan on the hob mixing until you have a melty buttery watery soup. As soon as it starts to boil take it off the heat (don't let any of that water evaporate as this is what puffs up the pastry) and throw in the flour and sugar all in one go and mix it up until it forms a kind of soft dough. You'll only have to stir if for a minute or two and it should look like this:

When you've got something that resembles this add in your whisked egg BIT BY BIT - don't just chuck it in at once because your mixture will curdle. Add a teeny bit at a time mixing in between until your pastry no longer looks like dough and starts to look all smooth and glossy like this:

Next put your lovely shiny mixture into a piping bag and pipe into the shapes you want. Little circles for profiteroles and longer tubes for chocolate eclairs.

Pop them in the oven for 10 minutes then turn the heat up an extra 20c and leave them there for a further 15 minutes until they're looking golden and crisp. Stab each of the buns with something sharp (like a knife) and leave them in the turned-off oven for the insides to crisp up. Use a piping bag to fill them with cream and spoon some melted chocolate on top and you're done!