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Thursday, March 24, 2011

Profiterole or Cream Puffs

Profiterole, or cream puffs if you make them biger, are delectable French pastries made out of choux pastry and pastry cream(or some other filling).
Cut them, or fill them with a filling tool without cutting them, fill them any way you like, but you are always bound to have an ellegant dessert, and one much loved by kids! OK, kids all ages! Fine!!! :)))

I have been making these beauties since I was 14 years old. I started out with a recipe that called for oil, to then switch to margarine, and now to butter, so the choice is yours, you can substitute butter in the following recipe with margarine, or oil.

For the pastry:½ cup water
½ cup milk
100 g butter (7 Tbsp) (if you chose oil, put 1/3 cup)
½ Tsp salt
1 Tsp of sugar
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
4 eggs
½ Tsp of baking powder

For the pastry cream (updated):1 liter milk
5 egg yolks
4 Tbsp all purpose flour
3 Tbsp corn starch
10 Tbsp of sugar
½ Tsp vanilla extract
1 stick of unsalted butter or margarine

Combine water, milk, butter, salt and sugar, and bring to a boil. Take it off heat, quickly add baking powder, and flour, return to heat, and mix it vigorously. Lower the heat, and mix for a minute, no more.

Transfer to a bowl, add 2 eggs, and mix until well blended then add, one by one, the other two eggs, and mix until you get nice, silky texture. Now it’s ready to use, so you can pipe it onto a baking sheet, making sure they are separated about 1 1/4 inch, and bake @ 400 F until golden.

To make the cream, take 150 ml of the liter of milk, and mix it well with egg yolks, sugar, flour, corn starch, and vanilla extract. Bring remainder of the milk (850 ml) to boil, and then add the cream mixture to it, stirring continuously for few minutes. When it is separating from the sauce pan, transfer to a bowl, and let it cool down mixing it occasionally. Mix in butter, fill the pastries, and serve them cooled, dusted with sugar or drizzled with chocolate.
Note: Most other recipes I have seen don’t call for baking powder, but I have been doing it this way for soooo long, and I hate to exclude it, because I always get great results : )