Ingredients

The following ingredients have 10 Servings
  • 75g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
  • 1 tsp golden caster sugar
  • 100g plain flour
  • 3 medium eggs
  • 75g ground almonds
  • 75g caster sugar
  • 50g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
  • 250g strawberries
  • 300ml double cream
  • ½ - 1 tbsp rosewater
  • 5 tbsp icing sugar
  • a few for decorating sugared rose petals, optional

Instruction

  • For the almond crumble, rub the almonds, sugar and butter together to breadcrumbs, then press together to make a dough. Roll out between two sheets of baking parchment as thinly as you can, then put in the freezer for 1 hour.
  • To make the choux buns, heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Line a large baking sheet with baking parchment and draw on 10 well-spaced circles that are 4cm wide (use a cookie cutter, lid or template as a guide). Flip the paper over.
  • Put 175ml water, the butter, sugar and ½ tsp salt in a medium saucepan. Gently heat until the butter has melted, then turn up the heat and bring to a fierce rolling boil. Lift off the heat, tip in the flour and beat with a wooden spoon to a smooth paste. Return to a low heat and continue beating for 1-2 minutes more to dry out the mixture. Cool for 5 minutes.
  • Beat in two of the eggs, one at a time, back to a smooth, shiny dough each time. Beat the third egg with a fork in a separate bowl, then beat in a dribble of this at a time until you have a nice thick dough that will only very reluctantly drop from your spoon when it’s banged hard on the side of your pan – you probably won’t need all the egg. Transfer to a piping bag, fitted with a large round nozzle, or snip the end off a disposable one. Pipe rounds of the dough onto the prepared tray, using the circles as templates. Remove the almond crumble from the freezer and using a 5cm cookie cutter as your template, stamp out 10 discs from the frozen crumble. Sit a disc on each round of dough and bake for 40 minutes. Turn off the oven but leave the buns in until fully cooled.
  • Whizz 200g of the strawberries and the rose water in a food processor until smooth. Beat the cream and icing sugar until thick, then gently fold in the strawberry purée. Slice the remaining strawberries very thinly. Halve the buns and arrange a few strawberry slices in the base of each. Spoon or pipe some cream onto them, then sandwich with the tops. Dust with a little icing sugar to serve.