Simple ingredients can somewhat make us be surprised. Would you believe that with flour, butter and egg you can make a cream puff? This is the most simple pastry dessert I have ever tried. Cream puff, as it is popularly called, is one type of puff pastry. Of course you also have the eclair (the elongated version), moorkop (a Dutch pastry), bossche bol (the bigger version of cream puff) and reuzenbol (the biggest version, you heard read it right).
Just to give you a brief history, the origin of cream puff is a little bit obscure. Some reference says it came from Italy, where some says it is from England . Perhaps the cream puff you order in a French restaurant may taste different from the cream puff you order in England though it has the same name. It also comes in different names such as profiterole or choux à la crème.
Making this pastry dessert is quite different from the usual mixing and bake-in-the-oven procedure since it involves cooking the dough over low to medium fire on stove. You can also play on the flavor of the filling you want. You can serve your cream puffs filled with your favorite ice cream, pastry cream or a simple whipped cream. Glazing it on top with garnish of your choice from chocolate or caramel sauce and even dusting it with powdered sugar to make it more scrumptious.
Ingredients:
For the choux or puff pastry
1 cup All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Granulated White Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Butter, cut into pieces,
room temperature
1 cup Water
4 pieces Large Eggs
For the glaze
1 piece Large Egg
For the filling
1 cup (240ml) Heavy Whipping Cream, chilled
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 1/2 Tbsp Granulated White Sugar
1. Pre-heat oven at 200°C (400°F). Grease baking sheet with vegetable oil or line with parchment paper.
2. In a mixing bowl, mix together all purpose flour, sugar and salt. You can use wire whisk or you can sift it.
3. Meanwhile place butter and water in a saucepan over low to medium fire. Bring mixture to a boil. Make sure you slice butter into smaller pieces so that it melts before the water boils to reduce the amount of evaporation in the mixture.
4. When boiling starts, remove from fire. With a use of a wooden spoon, add flour mixture and give a good stir until it forms a smooth and thick consistency. One indication is when the dough on sides comes away during stirring.
5. Transfer the dough in a mixer with paddle attachment and beat on low speed for about a minute. This is done to cool the dough faster before adding the eggs. You do not want to have scrambled eggs in cream puffs, right?
6. Once it is look warm, you can touch and feel the temperature of your dough, start adding your slightly beaten eggs.
7. Continue mixing in low to medium speed until your dough forms a smooth thick paste. Remove from mixer and ready to assemble.
8. With a use of spoon, scope dough into 12 small balls onto the baking sheet with at least two-inch apart from each other.
9. Brush and glaze each with slightly beaten egg on top of the dough.
10. Bake for about 15 minutes and reduce after temperature to 180°C (350°F). Baking it at a high temperature will make your dough rise and establish its structure. Bake your dough further until the shell are amber in color, splits and almost dry from the inside. It takes about 30 to 3 minutes. Remove from the oven and turn it off.
11. Make some slits on side of your pastry shell to further dry out the inside when placed back in the oven.
12. Place the baking sheet with your pastry shell in the oven leaving the door slightly open. Let it cool completely.
13. In a pre-cooled mixing bowl, place whipping cream, vanilla extract and sugar and mix using a mixer. Whip the mixture until it reaches stiff peaks.
14. After the cooling process, split the pastry shell in half. Use the bottom part of the shell and fill it with the whipped cream. Cover with the top portion. Ready to serve. You can add garnishing to give it variety of flavors.
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