Chocolate profiteroles with vanilla fudge ripple ice cream

I made chocolate crepes so why not make some chocolate cream puffs this time.  You definitely don't need to twist my arm to try chocolate versions of our favorite desserts - in fact, I look for every opportunity to do it.  

So this time, it's the cream puff's turn to make a chocolate transformation.  It's amazing what a tablespoon and a half of cocoa powder will do.  It makes regular cream puffs into chocolate ones that you can do many things with.  

You can split them and fill them with some type of whipped cream for chocolate cream puffs, pipe the choux pastry dough in "finger" length shapes and make truly chocolate eclairs, or do like I did here and make profiteroles for dessert.  

I think "cream puffs" and "profiteroles" are sometimes used interchangeably but for me, profiteroles are choux pastry puffs filled with ice cream.  I tend to think vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce (just like I made them here before).  But this time, instead of topping the profiteroles with a fudge sauce, I imbedded the fudge right in the profiteroles by filling them with homemade vanilla fudge ripple ice cream!

Philadelphia-style (no-egg) vanilla bean ice cream with swirls of fudge ripple

This was an easy leap for me.  I've been making vanilla fudge ripple ice cream - it's one of my family's favorites and it's nostalgic for me because I used to buy these little plastic cups of vanilla ice cream with fudge at the corner grocery store growing up. I'd eat them with a wooden spoon and dig into the fudge pockets and be in a very happy place.  Homemade vanilla fudge ripple ice cream seems to put everyone in my family in a happy place so I've been making it and I thought it would be a good idea to set some aside for these profiteroles.  

I think this ice cream is such a compatible filling for the profiteroles.  The Philadelphia-style (no eggs) vanilla bean ice cream has a very clean, dominant vanilla flavor coming through.  I make the fudge ripple separately and layer it into the ice cream as I transfer it to the container after churning.  When you scoop into it, you get these delicious swirls of fudge mixed with that pure vanilla flavor.  It packs a lot of flavor into each profiterole.  For comparison purposes, I tried the profiteroles with plain store-bought vanilla ice cream and while it was good, it cried out for some chocolate sauce whereas you don't miss it with the vanilla fudge ripple. 

I think this is not only a fun dessert but a great marriage of chocolate and vanilla together.