Cream Puff with capuchino cream filling
Cream Puff, one of the first recipe I learned to make. The expression ‘Bête comme un choux’ (as bad-tempered as a cream puff) is related to the easiness of this recipe.
It looks complicated but no, it is not. Cream puff are intimidating to make, because of the length of the procedure I would say, but overall, it is so simple.
Basically a cream puff is made of eggs, water, salt, sugar and flour and done by hand, with a wooden spoon, so air can enter the mix and make the puff get bigger while baking. Also, about 5 minutes before the baking time is over, I cut a small opening on the top of each puff, with a pair of kitchen scissor so the air gets inside and help the puff bakes all the way to the bottom. Once the time of baking is done, I turn the oven off, leave the puffs in the oven for an additional 10 minutes while the oven door is slightly open. It makes the puffs crisper.
Ingredients :
Cream puff
80 g butter
125 g white flour
1/4 liter water
3 eggs
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 200C (I know, I am back with Celsius temperature in this country…). On top of the stove, heat together the butter, water, salt and sugar, until all dissolved. Add the flour, mix well until the dough doesn’t stick to the spoon anymore. Turn off the stove, put the pan with the mix in, aside and add one egg at a time, mixing well and fast with the wooden spoon.
Grease a cookie sheet, drop by spoonful the dough on the cookie sheet, making about 12 big mountain of puffs. Bake for about 20 minutes.
For the cream :
1/2 liter of milk (I used cappuccino milk flavor for this recipe. Plain milk will do)
100 g sugar
2 eggs yolk + 1 egg
50 g of white flour
1 pinch of salt
Heat the milk, salt sugar together in a pan. While the mix is heating up, in separate bowl, mix together the sugar and eggs until the mix gets white. Add the flour and little by little the warm milk. Mix well. Drop the entire mix back in the pan and heat it up until thickness of the mix. Transfer into a bowl and let it cool down (could be put in the fridge at this point).
Final step : cut the puffs in half, fill them up with the cream and dust the top with a bit of white sugar, if wanted.
Keep in the fridge until serving time.
