Choux us a good time: simple choux pastry snowmen

My dad has always claimed that Christmas is all about children and I tend to agree with him. Of course, it’s made all the better when you have children around with whom to share the festive season. I have toyed with the idea of hiring my own out at this time of the year, purely in the spirit of the season of course.

One doesn’t have to summon too much creativity to produce the same Christmas desserts year after year. While the adults in your gathering might love the traditional Christmas pudding and sherry trifle, both laced with copious amounts of alcohol, these desserts are not always appealing to (or suitable for) children.

The most popular treats for birthdays and other parties in our house are eclairs, so I decided it would be a good idea to fashion these favourites into something a little Christmassy. Being a bit of a perfectionist was my stumbling block. After much trial and effort, I surrendered to the impossibility of ever making perfectly round choux balls. In the end I gave up on perfection, reminding myself that real snowmen are never perfect either.

When I arrived at the decorating point of the process I couldn’t lay my hands on my smallest piping nozzle so I had to make do with a DIY icing cone made from greaseproof paper, hence the snowmen’s slightly hazy features. The end result is a collection of entertainingly gormless looking characters I became very fond of, so much so that I didn’t fill some of them with cream, instead I put them on my mantelpiece where they still stand. The rest were eaten in a flash; admired, then beheaded and gobbled up.

See eunicepower.com
Photography: Shane O'Neill,
aspectphotography.net
Styling: Leona Humphreys, onefineplate.com