Cream Puffs with Chocolate Pastry Cream

Whether enjoyed as a dessert at a formal gathering or savored as a special treat at home, cream puffs with chocolate pastry cream are sure to captivate your taste buds with their decadent charm.

Cream puffs are two different recipes. Pate de choux and pastry cream. Made separately and put together. Like a lovely friendship.

Pate de Choux

Ingredients

·      8 oz Water

·      4 oz Unsalted butter, cubed, room temperature

·      1 Tbl sugar

·      4.7 oz AP Flour, sifted

·      ½ tsp Vanilla

·      8oz Eggs (4 approx) lightly beaten 

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 375

Over medium heat put water, butter and sugar in saucepan. Butter should be melted before water boils.

Add in flour in one go. Take it off the heat and stir until it forms a dough.

Put it back on the heat and cook for 2 to 5 minutes, just to get the flour taste out. Stir constantly until it pulls away from the pan.

Transfer to a bowl and let cool (you don’t want your eggs to scramble).

Stir in your vanilla.

Add in eggs a little at a time, stirring while doing so. When you add in some egg, stir your dough until it is completely incorporated before adding in any more. Stop adding eggs when the dough becomes glossy and forms a “V” off the spoon. You may not add in all your eggs.

Pipe on to lined tray. Flatten points with a damp finger.

Bake for 30- 40 minutes. Do not open oven door before the first 20 minutes (try not to open the door, at all).

While they are still a little warm, prick a hole in the bottom to air out. Let them cool completely before you fill them.

 Chocolate Pastry Cream (Lactose-friendly)

Ingredients

·      2 ¼ C Plant-based milk (I like silk)

·      2 tsp Vanilla

·      2 Tbl Cocoa powder (Dutch-processed)

·      3 Egg yolks

·      1 Egg

·      ½ C sugar

·      2 ½ Tbl Cornstarch

·      ¼ tsp Salt

·      6 oz bittersweet chocolate

·      2 Tbl Unsalted butter softened

Instructions

Heat the milk and vanilla just to a boil.

While the milk is heating up, combine the next 6 ingredients in a bowl.

Temper in the milk into the egg mix, then pour back into the egg saucepan. Whisk it constantly until it begins to thicken. Let come to just a boil.

Lower the heat

Add in chocolate and whisk until melted.

Remove from heat

Whisk in butter until completely melted.

Pour custard into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, touching the custard so not to form a skin.

Let cool completely!