Mini puffs with black raspberry glop
Jun. 21st, 2024 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI took these to DLB round 2 and they were a hit with the lunch crowd. Instructor asked for the recipe. (Please to be imagining a fist pump of triumph, here.) DLB had two. A lot of people had two, tbh. I took 21 of them and there were I think six left over and we had... I think eight people for lunch. So, yeah. They went over pretty well.
Things you need to make mini cream puffs with black raspberry topping. Please read through directions first to make sure you have all the stuff and understand what is going on for each of the components.
1. Choux pastry. This is the flour-based shell that you are going to fill up with pastry cream and/or fruit stuff. It is not, by itself, especially super tasty but it exists to transform pastry cream into finger food, so taste is not as important as structural functionality.
INGREDIENTS:
½ cup water
½ cup whole milk
1 stick nice butter, cut up
1 cup white flour
4 eggs
DIRECTIONS:
Bring water, milk, butter to a boil over medium heat.
When that is boiling, then dump in the flour. Just dump it in there. It’s gonna look like a mess and this is OK.
Then, stir and mash the flour mixture with a large spoon/spatula until it kinda makes a smooth ball. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll kind of solidify into a mass. Do your best.
Remove from heat, cool 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. (This is to bring the temperature down enough that it won’t be able to cook the eggs you’re going to add here directly.)
Add the 4 eggs, one at a time, stirring the mixture until each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one. At first it will not look like the egg is going to stir in, but be persistent. The egg will stir in. Four eggs will stir in. It’s gonna be fine, trust the process. I use a spoon to stir.
Once eggs have all been added and stirred in, you’re ready to use your choux pastry.
Make your shapes (you can use a large round piping tip with piping bag or a cookie scoop or a regular spoon) on a parchment-paper lined cookie sheet. The entire point and purpose of choux pastry is to make hollow food items that can then be filled with deliciousness. So, these shapes WILL EXPAND and become hollow on baking. Leave room between them when setting them out on the cookie sheet.
Shaping: Eclairs are kind of a strip. Cream puffs are a reasonable-sized dollop. Mini cream puffs (like I brought to the DLB thing in June) are formed with a 1 Tablespoon cookie scoop (like an ice cream scoop but smaller). Take a wet finger and smooth the surface of the shape you make to generate smoother, nicer-looking finished items.
Baking: 15 minutes at 400F oven, then 15 more minutes at 350F oven. Remove from oven when hot, if doing cream puffs large or small, cut off tops (pretty high up) using a serrated edge bread knife and a gentle sawing motion, and scoop out any excess material from insides using spoon or chopstick, then allow to dry in the turned-off oven as it cools. I do not retain the “tops” for minipuffs, but it’s a nice high-fat dough that a pupper would probably love. If doing traditional full sized creampuffs, the tops are retained and set back on as jaunty lids. For eclairs there is no cutting off of a top, you poke a hole in one end with a chopstick and then just dry them in the turned off oven.
The choux pastries should be room temperature before they are filled.
2. Crème patisserie. Pastry cream. This stuff is the filling in eclairs, in cream puffs, in (if you live right) proper Boston cream donuts. I have also been known to layer it in a pint glass with piped whipped cream and black raspberry topping (see below) for a wonderful dessert option that requires no oven. You can also just eat it with a spoon, if you want. It’s stupidly easy for how good it is.
INGREDIENTS:
1 & 1/3 cup of whole milk
1/3 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
¾ teaspoon real vanilla
4 egg yolks
DIRECTIONS: In saucepan heat milk to a simmer. (Use a moderate heat, about halfway up on the burner control. Too high is not going to go well for this cornstarch-thickened food item because it will get ahead of your stirring abilities and turn to crap.) In another bowl, whisk together the sugar, starches, and egg yolks. When milk is simmering, temper the sugar/yolk mixture by pouring in a very thin stream of warm milk while whisking constantly. Then, add tempered yolk mixture to warm milk in saucepan while whisking constantly. Whisking constantly (there is a lot of whisking for this component), continue to heat until mixture is boiling. Like, just barely boiling. A boil, just one, is plenty. This mixture will get pretty thick and you will experience sticking if you are not diligent about stirring/whisking. I use a whisk and also a silicone “spoonula” to move the pastry cream around because I probably need therapy.
Once it’s boiled, remove the pan from heat, toss in your vanilla, and whisk to combine thoroughly. Put cream into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap pressed down to the top surface (prevents gross pudding skin from forming), and chill in fridge until fridge-temperature.
Using: Once it’s cold, you can use it. I pipe the pastry cream where I want it using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off and a large round frosting tip (pinky finger should almost fit into frosting tip, the hole is really quite large) jammed into the corner of the ziplock bag from the inside. If your pastry cream seems to have set up “too much” or if you want a slightly softer set, you can thin it with a small amount (like a teaspoon or two) of milk or cream and a handheld mixer before using it. Be very careful about thinning the pastry cream, as extra moisture will make your choux pastry too wet and nobody wants soggy pastry.
Because pastry cream is mostly eggs and milk, it needs to be kept cool for food safety.
3. Black Raspberry topping. (This can also be sour cherry topping, blueberry topping if you like blueberries which I do not, but you do you, blackberry topping, apricot topping, mango topping, strawberry topping, etc. It’s good on mini cream puffs but it’s also good on crepes and pancakes and ice cream and in the middle of lightly sweet pastry dough as “faux poptarts” and honestly it has a fair amount of utility when you want to add some manageable fruit flavoring to things without having it be messy or overly wet.
INGREDIENTS
fruit (fresh or frozen will work great, doesn’t matter)
sugar
cornstarch (not a whole lot, maybe a teaspoon?)
Make as little or as much as you want. I don’t use a recipe. I start in a smallish frying pan (easier to assess/stir/crush fruit) with fruit, on low heat. Here, it’s raspberries. Add as many raspberries as you want to use. Smush them with a fork. Raspberries break down easily, you may want to use a more aggressive smushing / cutting with other more sturdy fruits. I’d dice strawberries, peaches, chop cherries, etc. Add some sugar. Be careful here, the sugar is to bleed the fruit a little and brighten/stabilize the color but you definitely don’t want it to be too sweet, that’s not the goal or point of the sugar.
These fruit toppings are usually added to blander, sweeter food items, so you want them to be more “natural” tasting, with some clean sharpness to balance the blander/sweeter food item. Taste as you go, do not over-sugar. If you’re not sure, err on the side of not-sweet-enough. Too sweet is cloying. And, before things get too hot, add about a teaspoon of cornstarch unless you’re making huge quantities of this. A teaspoon will do ya for a cup+ of fruit glop. (I think of this as “fruit glop” but probably better to call it “topping” in front of other people.) You have to stir the cornstarch into the fruit juice before it gets hot, lightly warm is OK but not hot.
Continue heating, stirring, until your fruit glop is fruit glop. The fruit will break down a little with the heat and thicken as you hot up the cornstarch. Once it’s kinda thickened and gloppy, you’re good. It needs to get hot enough to take off the raw cornstarch chalky flavor, but that does not require boiling. Once it’s thickened up and looks clear and glossy and like fruit glop, take it off the heat. It’ll set up a little more as it cools but you don’t want a solid because that’s gross.
Put in fridge, allow to cool thoroughly before putting on things that don’t like heat (whipped cream, pastry cream, ice cream). Serve warm/immediately without cooling on things that like heat (pancakes, crepes).
If you are using your fruit glop to make filled pastries (faux pop tarts) chill before making your faux tarts because hot things are not a good fit for pastry dough.
Assembling your mini puffs:
Take empty choux pastry shell. Pipe full of pastry cream until just below level full. Add about half a teaspoon to a teaspoon of black raspberry glop on top, smoothing it out to edges of the puff to make it look nice and stuff. I just did the glop arranging with a spoon.
Repeat with a new pastry shell until you run out of pastry cream. (I always run out of pastry cream first. sigh)
Things you need to make mini cream puffs with black raspberry topping. Please read through directions first to make sure you have all the stuff and understand what is going on for each of the components.
1. Choux pastry. This is the flour-based shell that you are going to fill up with pastry cream and/or fruit stuff. It is not, by itself, especially super tasty but it exists to transform pastry cream into finger food, so taste is not as important as structural functionality.
INGREDIENTS:
½ cup water
½ cup whole milk
1 stick nice butter, cut up
1 cup white flour
4 eggs
DIRECTIONS:
Bring water, milk, butter to a boil over medium heat.
When that is boiling, then dump in the flour. Just dump it in there. It’s gonna look like a mess and this is OK.
Then, stir and mash the flour mixture with a large spoon/spatula until it kinda makes a smooth ball. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll kind of solidify into a mass. Do your best.
Remove from heat, cool 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. (This is to bring the temperature down enough that it won’t be able to cook the eggs you’re going to add here directly.)
Add the 4 eggs, one at a time, stirring the mixture until each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one. At first it will not look like the egg is going to stir in, but be persistent. The egg will stir in. Four eggs will stir in. It’s gonna be fine, trust the process. I use a spoon to stir.
Once eggs have all been added and stirred in, you’re ready to use your choux pastry.
Make your shapes (you can use a large round piping tip with piping bag or a cookie scoop or a regular spoon) on a parchment-paper lined cookie sheet. The entire point and purpose of choux pastry is to make hollow food items that can then be filled with deliciousness. So, these shapes WILL EXPAND and become hollow on baking. Leave room between them when setting them out on the cookie sheet.
Shaping: Eclairs are kind of a strip. Cream puffs are a reasonable-sized dollop. Mini cream puffs (like I brought to the DLB thing in June) are formed with a 1 Tablespoon cookie scoop (like an ice cream scoop but smaller). Take a wet finger and smooth the surface of the shape you make to generate smoother, nicer-looking finished items.
Baking: 15 minutes at 400F oven, then 15 more minutes at 350F oven. Remove from oven when hot, if doing cream puffs large or small, cut off tops (pretty high up) using a serrated edge bread knife and a gentle sawing motion, and scoop out any excess material from insides using spoon or chopstick, then allow to dry in the turned-off oven as it cools. I do not retain the “tops” for minipuffs, but it’s a nice high-fat dough that a pupper would probably love. If doing traditional full sized creampuffs, the tops are retained and set back on as jaunty lids. For eclairs there is no cutting off of a top, you poke a hole in one end with a chopstick and then just dry them in the turned off oven.
The choux pastries should be room temperature before they are filled.
2. Crème patisserie. Pastry cream. This stuff is the filling in eclairs, in cream puffs, in (if you live right) proper Boston cream donuts. I have also been known to layer it in a pint glass with piped whipped cream and black raspberry topping (see below) for a wonderful dessert option that requires no oven. You can also just eat it with a spoon, if you want. It’s stupidly easy for how good it is.
INGREDIENTS:
1 & 1/3 cup of whole milk
1/3 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
¾ teaspoon real vanilla
4 egg yolks
DIRECTIONS: In saucepan heat milk to a simmer. (Use a moderate heat, about halfway up on the burner control. Too high is not going to go well for this cornstarch-thickened food item because it will get ahead of your stirring abilities and turn to crap.) In another bowl, whisk together the sugar, starches, and egg yolks. When milk is simmering, temper the sugar/yolk mixture by pouring in a very thin stream of warm milk while whisking constantly. Then, add tempered yolk mixture to warm milk in saucepan while whisking constantly. Whisking constantly (there is a lot of whisking for this component), continue to heat until mixture is boiling. Like, just barely boiling. A boil, just one, is plenty. This mixture will get pretty thick and you will experience sticking if you are not diligent about stirring/whisking. I use a whisk and also a silicone “spoonula” to move the pastry cream around because I probably need therapy.
Once it’s boiled, remove the pan from heat, toss in your vanilla, and whisk to combine thoroughly. Put cream into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap pressed down to the top surface (prevents gross pudding skin from forming), and chill in fridge until fridge-temperature.
Using: Once it’s cold, you can use it. I pipe the pastry cream where I want it using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off and a large round frosting tip (pinky finger should almost fit into frosting tip, the hole is really quite large) jammed into the corner of the ziplock bag from the inside. If your pastry cream seems to have set up “too much” or if you want a slightly softer set, you can thin it with a small amount (like a teaspoon or two) of milk or cream and a handheld mixer before using it. Be very careful about thinning the pastry cream, as extra moisture will make your choux pastry too wet and nobody wants soggy pastry.
Because pastry cream is mostly eggs and milk, it needs to be kept cool for food safety.
3. Black Raspberry topping. (This can also be sour cherry topping, blueberry topping if you like blueberries which I do not, but you do you, blackberry topping, apricot topping, mango topping, strawberry topping, etc. It’s good on mini cream puffs but it’s also good on crepes and pancakes and ice cream and in the middle of lightly sweet pastry dough as “faux poptarts” and honestly it has a fair amount of utility when you want to add some manageable fruit flavoring to things without having it be messy or overly wet.
INGREDIENTS
fruit (fresh or frozen will work great, doesn’t matter)
sugar
cornstarch (not a whole lot, maybe a teaspoon?)
Make as little or as much as you want. I don’t use a recipe. I start in a smallish frying pan (easier to assess/stir/crush fruit) with fruit, on low heat. Here, it’s raspberries. Add as many raspberries as you want to use. Smush them with a fork. Raspberries break down easily, you may want to use a more aggressive smushing / cutting with other more sturdy fruits. I’d dice strawberries, peaches, chop cherries, etc. Add some sugar. Be careful here, the sugar is to bleed the fruit a little and brighten/stabilize the color but you definitely don’t want it to be too sweet, that’s not the goal or point of the sugar.
These fruit toppings are usually added to blander, sweeter food items, so you want them to be more “natural” tasting, with some clean sharpness to balance the blander/sweeter food item. Taste as you go, do not over-sugar. If you’re not sure, err on the side of not-sweet-enough. Too sweet is cloying. And, before things get too hot, add about a teaspoon of cornstarch unless you’re making huge quantities of this. A teaspoon will do ya for a cup+ of fruit glop. (I think of this as “fruit glop” but probably better to call it “topping” in front of other people.) You have to stir the cornstarch into the fruit juice before it gets hot, lightly warm is OK but not hot.
Continue heating, stirring, until your fruit glop is fruit glop. The fruit will break down a little with the heat and thicken as you hot up the cornstarch. Once it’s kinda thickened and gloppy, you’re good. It needs to get hot enough to take off the raw cornstarch chalky flavor, but that does not require boiling. Once it’s thickened up and looks clear and glossy and like fruit glop, take it off the heat. It’ll set up a little more as it cools but you don’t want a solid because that’s gross.
Put in fridge, allow to cool thoroughly before putting on things that don’t like heat (whipped cream, pastry cream, ice cream). Serve warm/immediately without cooling on things that like heat (pancakes, crepes).
If you are using your fruit glop to make filled pastries (faux pop tarts) chill before making your faux tarts because hot things are not a good fit for pastry dough.
Assembling your mini puffs:
Take empty choux pastry shell. Pipe full of pastry cream until just below level full. Add about half a teaspoon to a teaspoon of black raspberry glop on top, smoothing it out to edges of the puff to make it look nice and stuff. I just did the glop arranging with a spoon.
Repeat with a new pastry shell until you run out of pastry cream. (I always run out of pastry cream first. sigh)
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Date: 2024-06-22 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-26 03:02 am (UTC)