Cream Puff

This is one of my favorite. So easy to make and so easy to eat. Delicious!

Cream puff dough (modified from Laduree, Sucre the recipes)

• 120 g cake flour
• 100 ml milk
• 100 ml water
• 8 g sugar
• 1 g salt
• 80 g butter
• 3 eggs

Preheat the oven 200 C. Sift the flour. In the saucepan, bring the milk, water, salt, sugar and butter to boil. Remove from the heat. Incorporate the flour into the hot liquid, mix until homogeneous. Return the saucepan to low heat and stir for 2-3 minutes to pull out the moisture from the batter.

Transfer batter to a large bowl and allow to cool. add the eggs one at the time. When homogenous, Transfer the dough to the piping bag fitted with 10 mm plain tip.Pipe 3.5 cm diameter choux onto the a baking sheet.

Place in the oven and bake. After 10 minutes, when they will have start to puff up, open the oven door very slightly to allow steam to escape. Bake the choux for about 20-30 minutes with the oven door slightly ajar, until golden.

Pastry cream (from Rose Levy Beranbaum, The pie and the pastry bible)

• 2 eggs
• 28 g corn starch
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 100 g sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla bean paste
• a pinch of salt
• 14 g unsalted butter

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and corn starch. In a medium saucepan place the sugar, half-and-half and salt together. Over the medium heat bring it to boil. Whisk 2 TBSP of this hot mixture into the egg mixture. Bring the half-and half mixture back to a boil. Quickly add all the egg mixture. Whisking rapidly until the mixture become very thick add vanilla bean paste and butter, whisk in. Immediately pour the mixture into the bowl and place a cling film directly on top of the cream. Allow to cool to room temperature then refrigerate until cold.

Filling

Using the knife or the 8 mm tip with out the piping bag, poke a hole in the bottom of each cream puff. Transfer the pastry cream to the piping bag fitted with the 8 mm plain tip. Fill the cooled cream puff by piping cream into the holes.