Cream Puffs Galore

Let's talk French desserts. Fancy ones.

French doughs and batters have lots of fancy names, like pate a choux, or pate brisee, or pate sucre. I don't think that helps the approachable factor.

Pate A Choux (eclair or cream puff batter) translates to cabbage paste. See? Not so scary. If you're wondering about the name, it's because cream puffs "look like little cabbages", and fun fact, "Mon petit choux" is a term of endearment meaning, "My little cabbage". Cute.

Last weekend I taught Jesse how to make cream puffs. She took lots of pretty pictures. Now it's your turn to make these delicious little puffs of gold.

Let's start with the Pate A Choux - here's the breakdown.

1 cup water

1/2 cup butter

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/3 cup flour

5 eggs

Combine water, butter and salt in a heavy saucepan. Bring mixture to a full boil. Remove the pan from the heat and add the flour all at once. Stir quickly.

Return the pan to moderate heat and stir vigorously until the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the pan. 

Transfer the dough to the bowl of a mixer, and with the paddle attachment, mix at low speed until the dough has cooled slightly. It should still be very warm but not too hot to touch.

 At medium speed, beat in eggs a little at a time. Add no more than one quarter of the eggs at once, and wait until they are completely absorbed before adding more. When all the eggs are absorbed, the paste is ready to use.

 Pipe into desired shape, keeping them all uniform size and shape. Bake at 425 until crisp, about 17 minutes.  Do not open oven while baking, they WILL collapse.

But that's what the oven window is for! (super concentrated face helps too)

A few notes on Pate A Choux:

- My batter in these pictures was still a little warm when I piped it, so I would recommend refrigerating for 15 minutes if you have the same problem. 

- Feel free to pipe into eclairs, mini eclairs, or whatever your heart desires. Just remember, they expand a lot in the oven, so keep it small. 

- Don't have time to finish this whole process in one day? I didn't. Good news is these shells freeze beautifully, so once you have them baked and cooled, just pop in the freezer and defrost in the oven for a few minutes when you're ready to use them. 

Here's what they should look like when baked, and you can see the middles are completely hollow in the middle! Lots of room for delicious filling. 

Now may come the question, what to fill these little gems with? Well, the options are pretty much endless, but we're going to stick with the classic vanilla pastry cream here. 

Pastry Cream (Crème Patissiere)

4 cups milk

1/2 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup sugar

4 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp vanilla

In a heavy saucepan, dissolve sugar in the milk and bring just to a boil.

With a whip, beat the egg yolks and whole eggs. Sift the cornstarch and sugar into the eggs and whip until smooth.

Temper the egg mixture by slowing beating in the hot milk in a thin stream. Return the mixture to the heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. When the mixture comes to a boil and thickens, remove from the heat. Stir in butter and vanilla. Refrigerate until cold and whip before filling éclairs.

Don't have time for pastry cream? While I highly suggest it if you're going to all this work, another easy option is to fill with sweetened whipped cream. 

Next up, ganache. 

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup cream

Bring cream to a boil in a medium saucepan. Turn off heat and add chocolate chip and let sit for 1 minute. Whisk until smooth.

Whew, ok, that was a process, but bear with me here, almost finished!

Time to fill these puppies! 

The filling process is made much easier with a pastry bag and tip, not going to lie here, but obviously I forgot both of those things when I made this batch, so I'll give you some options. 

1. Pastry bag/tip - Poke holes in bottoms of pastry shells with tip, fill with cream. 

2. Ziploc bag/tip of vegetable peeler - yeah, that happened. 

Once filled, dip in ganache, and be prepared for some marriage proposals. 

Yum yum!