Rjómabollur – Icelandic Profiteroles

Once a year Icelanders go bat-shit crazy for profiteroles. Some call it cream puffs, we don’t know the difference. Profiteroles sound more sophisticated. We’ll use that. So, why? Jesus! That’s why. Three days before Lent, when we’re supposed to fast but don’t, we stuff our faces with high caloric food and fill our bellies before the fast, which we don’t participate in. It all starts on a Monday, seven weeks before Easter, where we eat profiteroles. Fat Tuesday follows, a.k.a. Mardi Gras, where we eat salted lamb and split pea soup, then it’s Ash Wednesday, where kids get candy in exchange for songs. We used to eat profiteroles on Fat Tuesday, but we probably moved it to Monday to stretch the eating of rich food for more days. Today, the heathens that we are, we’re more and more getting into eating on Sunday, because that’s when we have time to make them. The custom of eating profiteroles in the 19th century came from Danes or Norwegians, who knows, who cares. Though Sturlunga, an Icelandic Saga from the 12th century, mentions that people ate “white food”, meaning dairy, before Lent. The Scandis taught us to bake, we guess! So you just bake them and eat them, nothing weird happens? Well… there is this thing that for kids to get a profiteroles, they have to make a small little paper paddle and spank their parents while screaming BOLLA. If they manage to do that their parents have to bake profiteroles for them. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?

Bollur

We call it bollur (plural) og bolla (singular) or rjómabolla/bollur. Rjóma: cream. It’s a generic term for round things, even for people. The kind of bolla you eat has changed quite a bit. It started with pastry dough, similar to danish pastry. Then moved into bready bollur but now in recent years, choux pastry bollur are all the rage and the one that we’ll show you how to make. Toppings and fillings are totally up to you but the classic is whipped cream and jam in the middle and chocolate glaze on top. Putting an Iceland instant pudding, named Royal Búðingur, is also quite popular.

Icelandic profiteroles

Choux pastry:

  • 250ml water
  • 125 g butter
  • 125 g all-purpose flour
  • 4 egg
  • 2 pinches salt

Method: add butter and water to saucepan, melting the butter. Once fully melted add the flour and salt to butter-water mixture and stir vigorously for a minute or so. The mixture with transform into a thick batter. Adding one egg at a time, beat them in until reaching the desired consistency (as some eggs are larger than others).

Transfer the batter to a piping bag (we tried using spoons but the inconsistent surface caused them to fall during baking) and pipe them out to buns of your desired size.

Bonus tip: If you’re bringing this to a family celebration, you could pipe it into a massive circle (doughnut, if you will) and the guests can just cut a slice!

Best icing:

  • 75gr Butter
  • 240gr Icing sugar
  • 4 tbsp Cocoa
  • 1 tbsp essence of vanilla
  • Splash of coffee.

Method: Combine icing sugar and cocoa. Melt butter on the hob and once melted add essence of vanilla and icing sugar and coca. Mix until fully combined and add coffee until you’ve reached the desired consistency.* The coffee also is great to counteract the immense sweetness of the icing sugar.

*Be careful of not making it too thin. Once it cools the icing will set, err on the side of thicker.

Fillings

You can fill your Bollur with anything you fancy! Although traditionally it will be jam and cream. So you must make a few like that!

Another great mix is Caramel pudding(Angel delight, Jello) and whipped cream. Mix the pudding with less milk to make up for the added cream!

 

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