Choux Pastry - Cream Puffs

Choux pastry is a light and puffy pastry with a cavity in it. This is a nice snack as you can add filling of your choice in the puff cavities. Creme patisserie and ice-cream are commonly used in these puffs as filling.
I personally think that this is not an easy to do snack. Consistency of batter and temperature control is rather important to get the pastry to rise. A lot of times the pastry will rise in the oven while baking and flop afterwards, making them inedible.
I did one lot last night and one this morning and twice I had success with this recipe and here it is sharing with you all!

Just out of the oven and still holding its height.


My share! The rest were gobbled up before I could do a photo shoot.


Ingredients: (8 puffs)
Choux Pastry:
85ml water
50g butter
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
50g bread flour
20g cake flour
2 eggs (lightly beaten)

Creme Patisserie:
240ml skim milk
5 tbsp castor sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg + 2 yolks
2 tbsp cornstarch

Method:
Choux Pastry
1. Cook water, butter, sugar and salt in a saucepan till bubbling hot. Turn the heat to low.
2. Add in the flour mixture in one go and mix with a wooden spoon till a dough is formed.
3. Still on low heat, cook the dough for 1 - 2 minutes till a thin white film is formed at the bottom of the saucepan.
4. Transfer dough to a mixing bowl and beat till it is lukewarm.
5. Add in egg by thirds and mix till well blended and smooth.
6. Place batter into piping bag and pipe it onto a lined pan in rounds of about 5cm in diameter. Spray some water on it.
7. Bake at 200C for 25 minutes then 180C for 8 - 10 minutes or till dry and golden brown in color. Turn off the oven and let it cool in the oven for 30 minutes.

Creme Patisserie
1. Mix 60ml of milk with the cornstarch till smooth.
2. Add the beaten egg and yolks into the cornstarch mixture.
3. Boil the remaining milk with sugar in a saucepan till bubbling hot. Pour 1/3 of this hot milk into the egg cornstarch mixture. Stirring all the time.
4. Now pour the egg cornstarch mixture through a strainer into the rest of the boiling milk. Stirring constantly till mixture thicken. Do not burn the custard.
5. Cling wrap custard with glad wrap with the wrap touching the surface of the custard (this is to prevent a hard film forming on surface of the custard) and chill till ready to use.

Notes:
Do not open the oven door in the baking process. Open oven door to remove puffs only after the 30 minutes in-oven cooling process.