Choux à la crème

This food has astounded me for quite a while now. I first made it in high school, during one of the earlier years when food tech was one of the classes we could take. I remember food tech classes pretty distinctly, even now- who I partnered, what we made, what failed and why. If only my memory serves me this well for everything...

From baKEE

Why is it, that with these ingredients alone, this choux pastry can form hollow puffs after baking? Where is the raising agent?? It is possible to make cake that raises without baking powder or soda, but that usually involves whipping the mixture (or in most cases, egg whites) to incorporate air into it before baking.

From baKEE

Making choux pastry isn't foolproof- it failed the first time. With baking or cooking, failure is not something that I can easily tolerate with myself (this should apply for most things, but unfortunately, I don't take a lot of things seriously enough to care...) so I went and tried again. Inspecting the ingredients, the first step is to mix the milk, water and sugar together and heat it up. Liquid is extremely vital because the KEY to puffiness is the steam released during baking. 

Then you melt the butter with the liquid mixture. There is no substitute for butter. Ever. Unless you are intolerant to dairy. There is medication for that, so really that isn't an excuse. Unless you are allergic. Then I'm sorry that you don't get a chance to know butter =(

Next comes the flour and salt. A good choux pastry will use bread flour because the protein absorbs the liquid and that's where you get the steam. Gluten helps form that hard crust on the outside. I used normal plain flour... dump the whole lot into the liquified butter mixture and stir vigorously. Note that this has to happen for quite a long time, at least 3-5 minutes, flour has to cook properly (and this is where we failed the first time...) Cool it down a bit before adding the eggs. They hold the butter and flour together.

From baKEE

Then you drop them onto parchment paper, bake at 200 degrees until it's brown enough, poke a hole at the bottom of each to dry out the inside and wait for them to cool so you can fill them.

From baKEE

From baKEE

Meanwhile, the filling... we made custard. I forgot the actual recipe used, but there's another one that requires 4 egg yolks, 1/3 cup sugar, 3 tbsp plain flour- whisk the lot together. Boil 1.5 cups milk, pour that slowly into the first mixture slowly while whisking the whole time. Put over the heat and whisk while it's heating up so it thickens. Add some vanilla and you're done.

From baKEE

I wasn't very patient with this batch. This happened after failing once and it was getting late... but at least they don't look like flattened pancakes.

Lesson learnt: make sure the flour is properly cooked to make good choux pastry.