Vanilla cream puffs

Don’t get me started on how much I love cream puffs. I remember on saturday mornings when I was younger, I would go to the café with my parents before we did our weekly food shopping. Instead of getting a croissant, I would opt for the cream puffs. My oh my, how delicious they were. Never did it cross my mind to make them as I thought they would be difficult to make, until a month or two ago when I gave it a go. They came out amazing. I could not believe that I had waited probably 10+ years to try and make them myself. They were so simple and I impressed a lot of people. My mom had some visitors over the first time I made them at her house and they thought they were store bought. I could proudly tell them that they were home made. I’ve made them four times and the last time something happened that caused them to come out not as good and it was the day I made them for my aunt, who had heard so much about them. Just my luck. I think that the batter was too cold when I put them in the oven and the oven was set 10-20°C more than it should have. Oh well, these things happen, but they were so delicious. You can fill them with home made or store bought cream custard.

Ingredients:

Choux pastry:

1-2 tablespoons sugar (depending how sweet you want it to be. You can fill these with savoury things as well so in that case you would only put 1)

100 g whole milk

100 g water

100 g butter

100 g flour

3 eggs

A pinch of salt.

Vanilla custard:

300 g whole milk

3 egg yolks

100 g sugar

2 tablespoons corn starch

1/2 a vanilla bean  of 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract

How to:

Choux pastry:

Put sugar, milk, water, salt, and butter into a saucepan and heat until butter is melted. Remove from heat and add the flour and mix well. Put back on heat and cook for 2-3 minutes until the mixture doesn’t stick to the pan. Remove from heat and add to a bowl and refrigerate for 10-15 minutes before adding the eggs. Once slightly cooled add one egg at a time. Put the mixture into a piping bag and squeeze out the puffs. Cook in the oven for 25 minutes.DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DURING THIS COOKING TIME. Remove from oven and let cool.

Vanilla custard:

Add milk and vanilla to a saucepan. Heat up and remove before boiling point. In a bowl mix together egg yolks, sugar and corn starch. Add a little bit of the milk and stir. Add the egg and milk mixture back into the rest of the milk and heat up again until the custard thickens. Let cool down and refrigerate. Add the custard to a piping bag with long tip and fill each puff with the custard. Cover with icing sugar and serve straight away.