Profiteroles à la Marilyn with Low Calorie Chicken Salad

Since I can remember, my gramma has been making profiteroles, or cream puffs. She usually puts a mixture of whipped cream and vanilla pudding inside, which is obviously delicious. For my wedding, she managed to make around 200 profiteroles and stuffed them with a chicken salad mixture - they were a HUGE hit.

Today, I joined my gramma in making about 150 profiteroles for her church function on Saturday. She'd had a mishap with one of her baking racks, so we had to rig the oven to support two trays, and then we still had to do four batches.



Profiteroles à la Marilyn
1 cup water
1 cup flour (455 calories)
1 stick margarine (640 calories)
4 extra-large eggs (85 calories each)

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a saucepan, bring water and margarine to a boil. Add flour all at once and stir rapidly with a wooden spoon until the ingredients form a ball in the middle of the pan. Remove from heat, add 4 eggs and stir rapidly until the mixture becomes a smooth paste - it takes a minute, be patient! Drop rounded half-teaspoon-fulls (the ones you eat with, not the ones you measure with)onto 2 un-greased cookie sheets, rows of 5, columns of 7. Bake for 30 minutes, or until they are firm to the touch. If they start to get browner than you'd like (they should be golden), turn the oven down to 325° and let the profiteroles dry out a bit. Squeeze the sides gently, if they give, they aren't finished. Remove from baking sheet and, depending on how you're filling them, either poke on the side with a skewer to let steam escape, or cut profiteroles in half.

*She doesn't add salt because the margarine has enough, if you're using unsalted butter instead of margarine, add a pinch of salt to the boiling water.

Makes 70 bite-sized profiteroles, 20.5 calories each -or- 30 double-bite sized profiteroles, 48 calories each -or- 15 large profiteroles, 95.75 calories each.

In true Grandma fashion, Gramma insisted that I take a batch home, so I threw together a simple chicken salad to stuff these for a quick dinner.







Low Calorie Chicken Salad
170 g. (6 oz) poached chicken breast, 1/2-inch cubes (about 1 large breast) (280 calories)
50 g. lowfat plain yogurt (33 calories)
2 tsp. fresh lime juice (2 calories)
1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped (1 calorie)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper

Makes two servings, 158 calories per serving.

I stuffed 8 30-count profiteroles, 4 per person for a total calorie count of 350 DELICIOUS calories per person.