Cream puffs! ( Choux à la crème)

It's been a while since my first blog post. On the day after this first post I caught the flu and then we went on vacation to Vancouver, but I continued cooking as much as possible and will share the recipes soon. But first, after the strawberry tart, the other recipe that needs to have a special place in my blog is the recipe for cream puffs!

I made some for the first time ever a few weeks ago. I was prepared for them to not taste very good, because the idea of making cream puffs just seemed like a lot of work and skills. However, these cream puffs turned out to be surprinsingly good and quite easy to make. I found the recipe on Allrecipes. To add the cream inside, I discreetly cut the top of the puff, inserted the cream and closed the puff. It looked the puff had never been touched! Of course, this is only good for cream puffs beginners like me :) . The one advice I have for these cream puffs is to make them in the morning and then enjoy them during the day while they are fresh. They taste so delicious then. Eating them a day after makes a big difference. I cooked them late at night and they already didn't taste as good the following morning.

 

 Cream puffs (choux à la crème) recipe:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup white sugar
5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 pinch salt
2 cups milk
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup water
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 pinch salt
4 eggs

For the custard: In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup sugar, 5 tablespoons flour and a pinch of salt. Stir in milk, a little at a time, until smooth. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil 60 seconds, then pour a small amount of hot liquid into the 2 egg yolks, and stir. Then return now heated egg yolks to saucepan and stir, over heat, until mixture starts to bubble again. Remove from heat, add vanilla. Cover and chill in refrigerator.

This is how the custard looked like for me:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).

For the pastry: In a medium saucepan, combine shortening and water and bring to a boil. Sift together 1 cup flour and a pinch of salt and pour all at once into boiling mixture. Stir vigorously until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat, and add eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition. Drop by spoonfuls onto baking sheet, or pipe into desired shape. Be careful, the puffs will maybe double in size while baking.

Bake 10 minutes in the preheated oven, then reduce heat to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) and bake 25 minutes more, or until golden. Cool completely, split, fill with custard, and replace tops. Enjoy!

Strawberry Tart

Given the theme of this blog, I thought there would be no better way to start than with a strawberry tart. I could also have chosen cream puffs, but they will have to wait for a later post. 

Strawberry Tarts are very common in France. They usually come with a sweet shortcrust pastry or "pâte sablée", a layer of custard called "crème pâtissière", the strawberries, and sometimes a layer of syrup. I actually wondered whether I should go for the syrup for a while, because I tend not to like it on the tarts that you can buy in french bakeries. I think most bakeries add the syrup because it makes the strawberries look shiny and if the strawberries are not that fresh it will hide it. But it doesn't bring much flavor to the tart itself. Despite that, I decided to go with the syrup since I found a recipe with very good reviews and the syrup didn't seem too heavy. 

To realize this tart, I mixed two recipes from Marmiton, which is a famous French cooking website similar to AllRecipes. The result was very good. The sweet shortcrust pastry was not the best I have had but it was ok, and the crème pâtissière (custard) was tasty. Depending on how you like your tart, you might want to use only a fraction of the custard. I might have used only two thirds of it for my tart, since I like the taste of custard to be light.

Strawberry Tart Recipe:

Ingredients:

500g (around 1lb) strawberries

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry:

250g (2 cups) plain flour

125g (1/2 cup) unsalted european butter 

70g (1/3 cup) granulated sugar

2 egg yolks

5 cl water

1 pinch of salt

Crème Pâtissière (custard):

25 cl milk

1 egg

30g (1/4 cup) plain flour

40g (3 Tbsp) granulated sugar

Pinch of vanilla or cinnamon

Raspberry Syrup:

200g raspberry jam

4 tbsp water

For the sweet shortcrust pastry, mix egg yolks and sugar until the mix gets whiter, add water. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and butter with your fingertips until it looks like sand and the whole butter is absorbed. Pour the egg yolks/sugar/water mix in the bowl and mix all the ingredients together. Form a ball with your hands. Roll out the pastry and put it in a round tart mold that you will have previously rubbed with butter. Cover the pastry with cooking sheet and beans and bake it in a preheated oven at 180°C (355°F) for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

For the custard, boil the milk with the vanilla or cinnamon. Mix the egg and the sugar, then add the flour.  Pour the boiling milk on the mix while stirring. Put the pot back on the stove and bring to a boil, always stirring. 

Pour the custard on the pastry, then add the strawberries cut in half on top. 

For the raspberry syrup, heat the water and raspberry jam on low heat in a saucepan. Let it simmer for 10 minutes or until the syrup is smooth. When the syrup is cold, pour on the strawberry tart.