Cream Puff



Puffing up





 It was more than that before I take the photo.. They look too gorgeous to me, can you see they are winking at me? That's the reason I can't resist the seduction and pop few of them into my mouth. :D I like to make a petite cream puff, nice and cute, just need one bite and that's it. Good quality of cream is a must for cream puff, need to be silky smooth, rich and creamy enough BUT not too sweet. I would say puff is too easy to prepare, one of the easiest pastry apart from scones (I think). You will get so excited when you see them puffing up. Not just limited to round shape, how about a love shape for your loved one today?

Recipe for choux puff (14 round shaped)

Water 100cc
Butter 45gm
A pinch of salt
Low gluten flour 60gm
Eggs 2

Optional:
Ground almond
Caster sugar

Heat the water, butter and salt in the pot until it boiled. Turn of the heat and pour the flour into the mixture and start to stir them by using spatula until it becomes a dough.

Turn on minumum heat and cook the dough. This is to help to dry up the dough a bit. Cook until you can see a thin layer forms on the pot. It may takes about 1 to 2 min time. Remove the pot from heat and add in the eggs. If you want to know if the batter is ready, try to scoop by using spatula, when the batter flows down, it should be slowly forming a V shape. If it is too hard to flow down, no harm to add extra egg mixture.
*For this recipe, so far I never have to do so.

Use a piping bag to pipe out the round shaped on a non stick baking paper. Get some egg yolk and brush it on top of the puff. It's optional to put 1/8 tsp of sugar and 1/8 ground almond onto the puff. Spray some water on the puffs before they go in the oven.

Bake them at 200 degrees for around 30 min

Recipe for custard cream:

One egg yolk
Milk 200gm
Cream 80gm
Cornstarch 16gm
A pinch of salt
1/8 tsp of vanilla essence
Sugar 60gm
Butter 30gm

Whisk the egg yolk and cornstarch until well combined with no lumps. Heat up the salt, milk, cream and sugar until the sugar melted, it doesn't need to be boiled at this point.

Slowly pour the milk mixture into the egg mixture and stir vigorously. Put them back to the pot and continue to cook, avoid maximum heat. Stir well at this stage as it is very easily to get burnt. Cook until the right consistency (thicker) and small bubbles appear. Remove from heat and butter can be added in followed by vanilla essence.

* The custard will get thicker after you leave in the fridge.

To pipe the cream, simply cut of the top part of the puff and pipe in the cream.