Cream Puffs

This week's recipe is one I'm very excited for because it used choux (pronounced shoo) pastry. I like the challenge to try to shoe horn in a choux related pun (nailed it). This recipe really has two parts, the dough and the filling. The choux dough provides comprehensive instructions but that filling is really just a list of ingredients so we're talking quarter final level technical challenge here in Bake Off  terms.

Let's break this down into ingredients

Dough

• 1/2 cup Butter
• 1 cup Hot Water
• 1 cup Flour
• 3 Eggs

Filling

• 2 cups Milk
• 2 Eggs
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon Corn Starch
• Vanilla to Taste

Here's how I'm going to tackle this

I am pleasantly surprised by the level of instruction in the dough portion of the recipe. I'm going to get a pot going on the stove with the butter and water in it. I'll give it a stir once the butter has melted and then let it get up to a boil. When it's rolling I'll add 1 cup of flour and turn off the heat. Stir with a spoon until the flour is all incorporated and set aside to get cold. This was easy to incorporate. I always assumed this dough was fancy and difficult so I'm surprised but happy that it was all pretty straightforward.

Just before stirring

After stirring for 2 minutes

I wanted the dough to cool quickly so I transferred it to a separate bowl and popped it in the fridge. While I was waiting for the temperature to drop I cleaned the kitchen because I've never baked anything without using every bowl in the house.

< There's no picture here on purpose because the amount of mess I've made is embarassing >

Now for the tricky part, the filling. I would imagine because there are two eggs the filling needs to be cooked so my first instinct is to put all these ingredients in a pot on moderate heat and see what happens. From watching baking shows I think I remember that eggs can get added in at the end after the thickening has happened, but if you do it that way you have to be careful not to accidentally scramble your eggs. "The thickening" is a weird thing to say so I apologize that I made you read it twice.

I quickly learned I don't actually own corn starch because I don't plan ahead before I go to the grocery.

That may also be why I have all this butter

I know the corn starch is in there to thicken the sauce into a custard so I decided to use flour instead. A quick internet search said I would need 3 tablespoons of flour per cup of liquid and that I would need to cook it a bit longer to cook out the raw flour taste.

The rest is really just a guessing game.
I started by mixing the flour with about a half of a cup of the milk in a small bowl. This helps to make sure the flour isn't clumpy. I poured this into my pot with the remaining milk and turned on medium heat. I'm not sure how long it takes to cook out flour taste so I set a timer for five minutes and stirred constantly. At the end I had a pretty thick liquid, maybe just a little thinner than a pudding. Then I poured in the cup of sugar and stared pensively at the mixture while trying to decide how to add the eggs.

Is this a pensive face? It was this face

I think you temper eggs by adding some hot mixture to the eggs to bring up their temperature before incorporating them into the rest. I took a big ladle full of the hot mixture poured it into the egg then panicked because I hadn't taken any pictures then panicked because I wasn't stirring so I poured the whole thing in the pot whisked vigorously and took it off the heat.

I did take a picture before I started

At this point it looked like a custard so I did a happy dance, added some vanilla, and put it in a container to cool.

I know the picture looks weird. I was using brown vanilla & the color took an unflattering turn

Back to the dough, check to see if it is now "cold". I'm a lady on a deadline and it was at roughly room temperature so that's cold enough. Add the eggs one at a time incorporating each one before adding the next. This was surprisingly difficult. The dough is already held together pretty firmly and it took a lot of stirs to get the eggs in there. 

Pictured: Stubborn Dough

I also used a bowl that was a bit too small for the job which is how I ended up vaulting my third egg out onto the counter after I'd cracked it into the bowl.

God's punishment for my preemptive happy dance

Spray a muffin tin with non stick spray and distribute the dough as evenly as possibly into each container.
Usually I've seen this dough piped out of a bag either into a stick or circle for eclairs or puffs but it was pretty simple to just dollop them in the pan so maybe this is a bit of a hack to make the process easier if it works.The oven is preheated to 350 and while the instructions say 30-40 minutes I don't know what temperature that's at so I'm going to check on them at about the end of every other Hamilton song to make sure they don't burn. I often measure time by how many songs it takes me to do something because I always listen to music, especially in the kitchen. 

Out of the oven they smell a little like biscuits and they have golden edges so hopefully they're cooked through

Final step is to get the custard cooled all the way and put everything together.

Verdict

Okay maybe that's an exaggeration but this was very tasty. The pastry was light and had all those air pockets you'd expect it to have.

I think the presentation could have been prettier if the dough had been piped to get those nice swirls in it, but in flavor and consistency I think the dough was spot on.

The custard wasn't perfect. It had some lumps that must have formed when I added the eggs but you really couldn't tell once it was in the dough and you were eating it. Using flour instead of corn starch meant it wasn't going to have a nice glassy finish and using brown vanilla meant it was going to look like I made a terrible mistake so when I make this again I'll try to remedy those things. The flavor was very good so I can forgive some visual issues.

Everything is better when eaten with a scoop of Graeter's Ice Cream

Take away

Don't anger the Kitchen Gods of Good Fortune by dancing when there's still four more steps to go in your recipe.

To end, here's something I think we can all agree on...

 "Tainted butter and milk that is not quite fresh do not enhance domestic bliss" - McCray Refrigerator ad

I put the next recipe up to a facebook vote and the inner is Vinegar Pie. Check back next week to see how that goes. If you enjoyed this recipe and want to make sure you never miss out you can subscribe to my posts at the top of the page. If you think your friends would enjoy reading it as well I hope you'll consider sharing. Let me know in the comments what you would have done differently!