Cream Puff With Fresh Strawberry

I always love to bake and cook. It has become part of my life and how I always wish that I can have more time to spent on experimenting new recipes everyday. I like to try out new recipes but my first choice of the recipe to try shall be something that my kids would enjoy eating. I have started baking cream puffs 10 years ago. It was a recipe shared by a friend of my mother in-law. I use to bake cream puffs with her recipe until recently I think I have found another great one from KITCHEN CORNER. Thank you so much Grace!!

At first I just attracted to the lovely pictures of her cream puffs, beautifully decorated with fresh berries and look so yummy. I feel like want to have a bite on it. I give her recipe a try and I think I will stick to her recipe for cream puffs now. The puff appear to be more in shape and the custard taste just nice, not too sweet and not too thick. It's just GREAT !! (*hope you know what I mean here =)

Cream Puff Recipe (Yields 20 puffs)

For the Pastry:

70g plain flour

3 beaten eggs

100g water

60g unsalted butter

Pinch of sugar and salt


Method:

• In a cooking pan bring to boil water, butter, pinch of sugar and salt. Off the heat, add in the plain flour and mix with a wooden spoon until well combine and become smooth dough.
• Add in half of the beaten eggs and keep stirring until the egg mix into the mixture. Once the eggs completely mix with the dough, you will find it quite dry and hardly to mix.
• Continue add the beaten eggs slowly, little by little into the dough and continue mixing. You might not finish using the beaten eggs.
• Control adding the eggs to get a smooth and silky consistency of the mixture. When you spoon up the mixture, it should drop back to the pan very slowly. *The mixture should not too dry or too wet
• Transfer it into a piping bag and pipe out about 20 dollops of mixture on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
  
• Dip your fingers with some water and gently touch the top of the mixture. This is to prevent it over burning while it's baking in the oven. Then spray some water on the mixture surface. (Not too much)
• Bake at 200'C preheated oven for 15 minutes until it puff up then turn the temperature to 170'C and bake for another 15 minutes. Transfer the puff on a wire rack to cool down.

For the Custard Filling:

3 egg yolks

200ml milk

60g castor sugar

20g plain flour

10g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract/essense

Ways to cook it:

• Boil the milk with sugar in low heat until sugar dissolve but not boiling. Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and flour into thick paste but no lumps in it. *Add two tablespoon of milk if you find it too dry to mix.

• Pour the dissolve warm sugar milk mixture into the egg yolks mixture. Pour slowly, little by little and mix with a hand whisk until everything well combine (*strain the mixture if necessary) Then, pour back the mixture into the cooking pan. Cook in very low heat and keep stirring until it thicken.

• Once the mixture thicken, remove from the heat and keep stirring until the heat slightly cool down but slightly warm. Then add in the butter and vanilla extract. Continue stirring until well combine. (*It look silky smooth at this time)

• Transfer the custard into a plate and cover with cling film. Make sure the cling film touch on the mixture, this is to prevent it from skin forming on its surface.

• To assemble the cream puffs: Spoon in some custard fillings then sandwich it with some strawberries. Chill the puffs in the fridge before serve.

p/s: This recipe needs a lot of stirring. A very good hand exercise... hahaha!


Happy Trying & Enjoy!

AMY