recently, i’ve assigned myself a new baking challenge, a new mountain to climb. it’s a confection that’s elusive, almost volatile — but its constituents and chemistry are really quite simple. the flavor profile is defined completely by its internal organs, and not itself. its shape is hefty, but its texture light; it’s pretentious; it’s glycemic; it’s utterly french. it’s a quiet force in the scenery of a wes anderson film. it’s the childhood nostalgia of cracking open a white tub of them from costco.
it’s the cream puff. (or profiterole, or chou à la crème, depending on how much french you know past bonjour.)
Choux pastry is a thick batter made from flour, milk, butter, and eggs. Its most typical application is in the making of small round buns (as used for profiteroles) known in French as choux, literally cabbages, from their shape–hence pate a choux, the pastry used for making them. The first reference to the term in English comes in the 1706 edition of Edward Phillips’s New World of English Words: Petits Choux, a sort of paste for garnishing, made of fat Cheese, Flour, Eggs, Salt, etc., bak’d in a Pye-pan, and Ic’d over with fine Sugar.’ But it was not really until the late nineteenth century that it achieved any sort of general currencey in English.”
— An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press: Oxford]
there’s something magical about baking — having something come to life in the oven — that makes me feel like im aiding in the growth and development of a flour being. i’m making something new, something of my own; but also something that so many bakers have made in the course of history — at home in aged ash stoves or in paris on pressed white paper. when i bake, im a chemist, an innovator, an architect. my whisk is the survival of the fittest. the sugar, the egg, the little swirl of chocolate — the seeds of civilization. i feel like im part of something bigger.
and when the particular creation is something that’s difficult, finicky; that plays hard to get — that’s when i fall hard. there’s almost a type of joy in the struggle. and the subject of this struggle for me in this month of february in this year of 2019 is the cream puff.
i’ve tried four to five times this year, to varying degrees of success. i’ve used birthdays as an excuse to produce more. factory-esque. i’ve opened the oven too early and allowed the steam to elope away, along with the fleeting shape of the michelangelo dome. they’ve deflated, they’ve exploded, they’ve never even gotten off the ground. i’ve learned how to pronounce “choux” (shoo). i’ve pumped them until they bulged with strawberry cream, matcha cream, choco cream, cookies and cream.
and no matter what — even if their crackly tops looked more like a back of a defeated old man than a proud, young one — they tasted exquisite. there’s something about the crispness of the top imploding into the silk of the custard. it tastes like the edge of a galaxy. (or what i imagine that would taste like.)
i’ve succeeded once at the cream puff, and tried many more times. and i’ll keep on going.
here’s my recipe. (more specifically, the strawberry version of it).
Cookie Ingredients:
- 35g Unsalted butter
- 30g Sugar
- 45g Cake flour
- Red, white food coloring
Cream Filling Ingredients:
- 1 Egg yolk
- 20g Sugar
- 7g Corn starch
- 100g Hot milk
- 1/8ts Vanilla
- 150g Whipped cream (+15g sugar)
- Strawberries as necessary
Choux Pastry Ingredients:
- 30g Unsalted butter
- a pinch of Salt
- 33g Water
- 33g Milk
- 40g Cake flour
- 75g Egg
Directions:
- Cream butter with sugar until smooth to make cookie. Add food coloring. Incorporate. Add cake flour. incorporate.
- Knead cookie together. Spread and roll thin between plastic wrap. Refrigerate on a flat surface.
- Have bowl of ice water ready. Add egg yolk, sugar, cornstarch to pot for the cream. Mix until smooth, then add hot milk, then vanilla. Cook on heat until it congeals. remove from heat. Cool pot in ice water.
- Whip cream. Add custard from above step to whip cream. Incorporate. Put into piping bag. Refrigerate.
- Add unsalted butter and salt to pot for choux. Add water and milk. Simmer until small bubbles. Remove from heat. Add flour. Combine. Put back on heat for a bit, and pat down choux pastry with spatula for about thirty seconds. Remove from heat.
- Spread choux pastry to cover bottom of large bowl. Add egg in parts. Incorporate.
- Put choux into piping bag. Pipe 2 inch diameter rounds onto parchment paper. Take cookie out of fridge and use cookie cutter to cut 2 inch rounds. place cookie rounds on top of choux rounds.
- Bake at 350 for about 20 min.
- Let cool.
- Slice open and pump some custard cream in. Put a few pieces of diced strawberries in, then follow with more custard cream. Repeat until cream puff is full.
- Enjoy.
