Cream Puffs

Choux is super simple and delicious. I’ve tried adding flavorings to it, but since there’s so much butter it’s difficult. I’d say just focus on the filling flavor. Here I’ll talk about hojicha flavored diplomat cream, with commentary if you want to do a fruit flavor. Any flavor works. With or without the puree or powder. For the best result, add flavoring to both the custard and whipped cream.

Also started adding craquelin (crunch part on top). It’s pretty awesome. Will include the recipe but it’s not necessary.

Update Oct/20: made some and proportions were off for diplomat and craquelin, so tried fixing!

1. Hojicha Craquelin:

  • 75 g butter, room temp
  • 75 g brown sugar
  • 75 g flour
  • 4- 6 g hojicha powder (can literally be anything)
  • few drops of food coloring (if needed)
  1. Cream the brown sugar and butter until combined, but not super soft.
  2. Add in sifted flour and hojicha powder and mix.
  3. Roll out between plastic wrap into a thin sheet (maybe a few cm) and place in the freezer.
  4. Leave there and move onto choux (if you did make this, return to it on Step 10 of Choux).

2. Choux pastry: [for about 25ish small cream puffs or 10 larger ones]

  • 200 g water
  • 125 g milk
  • 112 g butter (stick, cut into small pieces)
  • 4 g salt
  • 4 g sugar
  • 150 g flour
  • 3 large eggs
  1. Preheat oven to 400F (205C).
  2. Add milk, water, butter, sugar, and salt into a saucepan and bring to boil. You want your butter to have melted prior to boiling, so make sure you cut up the stick of butter into small pieces.
  3. Sift out the flour.
  4. Take the saucepan off the heat, and add in the sifted flour. Stir in (wooden spoon is best) the flour until everything comes together into a ball.
  5. Return to heat and stir vigorously until you start to see some dried residue on the side (3-4 minutes minutes). Sometimes if I’m not sure, I just stir for longer. In my experience, having less liquid in that dough is better.
  6. Transfer the dough into a bowl and beat until steam no longer rises. If it’s in a stand mixer, until the bowl is no longer hot to the touch. You don’t want to scramble your eggs that you’re about to incorporate.
  7. One at a time, beat in the eggs. Be patient and don’t add them all at once.
  8. Dough/ batter should now be a bit droopy (check Youtube to see a video of consistency). Add to a piping bag with a large round tip.
  9. Pipe your desired size onto a silpat or parchment paper (though, silpats are awesome and everyone should use them).
  10. If you did not make a craquelin: grab a small bowl of water and using your finger dipped in water, flatten all the points which resulted from piping them. Those little points will burn in the oven, so flatten those and any other pointy edges which may be on your silpat.
  11. If you did make a craquelin, take out of freezer and cut out circles slightly smaller than the size of the cream puffs. For small cream puffs, I use the back of a very large piping tip. For larger cream puffs, I use my smallest circular cookie cutter. I press down onto the plastic wrap, so the cutter doesn’t stick. Place each circle onto a cream puff.
  12. Bake until the cream puffs are golden brown (~30 minutes). Opening the oven/ taking them out before this will cause them to collapse on themselves. You want the puffs to form a solid structure.
  13. Now open the oven and without pulling out the pan, press lightly on the puffs to see if they’re solid. If they are, you want to stab holes in the bottom or bottom edge. I have a long pointy piping tip that I now use, but I used to use a chopstick and that worked perfectly fine. Bake for about 15 more minutes at 250F (120C). You can turn off oven and leave them in to dry out even more.
    • If they aren’t fully baked yet, drop the temperature down to 250F and bake for another 15 minutes. After that, check back every 10 minutes to see.
  14. Once the insides have dried (you can check a tester), take the tray out and let fully cool.

3. Hojicha Diplomat Cream (with alterative fruit option commentary):

  • 5 large egg yolks
  • 45 g cornstarch
  • 425 g milk
  • 90 g sugar
  • 85 g milk (NOTE, this is what you’d sub out if you did a fruit puree) [or you honestly could do without this as well]
  • 10 g hojicha powder (or freeze dried fruit if fruit flavor)
  • 280 g heavy cream
  • 10 g powdered sugar
  • 4-6 g hojicha powder
  1. You need to make a custard and a whipped cream. Take your large bowl and whisk that you’re going to make the whipped cream with and throw that into the fridge before you begin. You want it cold.
  2. Take ~50g cream and heat up for a ~20s in the microwave. Whisk in the hojicha powder. now place in the fridge to cool (will be added to your whipped cream).
    • If you’re going to do a fruit flavor, start by reducing down sieved puree in a saucepan (or a skillet since you can increase surface area) over low - medium heat. You want a thick paste so that it is packed with flavor and won’t make your cream too runny.
  3. First, prepare custard component. In a large bowl, combine egg yolks and about half the sugar and beat until the color becomes pale yellow. This isn’t necessary, but it helps reduce the yellowness. Add in the cornstach and mix.
  4. Heat up a small amount of milk in the microwave and add in the hojicha powder and whisk so there aren’t any lumps (I treat it as I would matcha). Note, if you don’t have the powder and just leaves, you could steep the tea in the milk and have this as your flavor base.
  5. In a saucepan, high heat, combine milk, hojicha milk, and remaining sugar. Bring to boil and remove from heat.
  6. While whisking constantly, slowly add to bowl with yolks, sugar, and cornstarch. You are tempering the egg yolks so that they won’t scramble.
  7. Return the mixture to the saucepan on high heat.
  8. Bring to rolling boil, while whisking/ mixing constantly (I use a hand blended since it’s easier). The mixture will become custard like (dipped in spoon should have the custard coat it.
  9. If it’s still lumpy, sieve through a fine mesh into a bowl.
    • If you’re doing a fruit flavor, now add the raspberry paste puree and a few g of freeze dried fruit powder if you have. For non acidic fruits/ flavors, you can add with the milk before tempering the eggs (since it won’t curdle). To be safe though, you can always add at the end.
  10. Cover the custard with cling wrap. Make sure to press it directly onto the custard to avoid condensation. Chill. Freezer is fastest [but if you do this, keep an eye on it so it doesn’t freeze!] :D.
  11. Now prepare whipped cream component. Take out the chilled bowl, whisk, and cream. 
  12. Add cream, hojicha cream, powdered sugar, and whisk until firm peaks.
    • For fruit, you’d add the fruit powder before whisking.
    • NOTE: this is for a firm diplomat. If you want a Bibble & Sip situation, you need to stop at soft ish peaks.
  13. Take out your custard and whisk a bit to loosen it up. You do not want lumps. Add a small amount of whipped cream (maybe 50 g) to lighten the mixture even more.
  14. Slowly fold in the rest of the whipped cream, making sure not to overfold (will deflate the cream). I say this, BUT, when I’m lazy, I’ll add the softened custard (after you’ve added a bit of whipped cream into it) to the total whipped cream and whisk up. It basically works the same.
  15. Add the cream to piping bag with a small tip that will fit in the hole you made in the cream puffs.

Filling and Decoration:

  • For non craquelin, a few g of powder (either hojicha or your freeze dried fruit powder or powdered sugar)
  1. Take cooled cream puffs (important) and fill with the diplomat cream. You will feel the pressure, so stop when the cream puff gets heavy and feels like it’s going to explode.
  2. Dust the cream puff with your powder of choice.
  3. Fill shortly before serving. If you make the empty puffs the night before (keep in an airtight container in the fridge), make sure to bake them for 20 - 30 min at 250F. And make sure they’re cool when you fill them or else the cream will melt.

Craquelin/ large:

Normal:

comments powered by Disqus