So today during school I decided to attempt one of my favorite desserts. Cream Puffs. Now normally, I would think this to be a ridiculous task that is only meant for those baking gods, who have have many years even decades to perfect their sweets. However today I was feeling cocky for no particular reason, head in the clouds i suspect, and attempted this once again. I have tried in the past but it didn't work out correctly. So I set out to make the Pastry cream first. not a particularly hard ordeal, though I did have to strain it post-production to get it the consistency i wanted. I already had some wonderful Praline Powder on hand. (Praline Powder is a fine dust of caramelized sugar and roasted pecans.) So that went into the Cream, which turned out lovely. Next is presumably the easiest part; Choux pastry.
My brother convinced me to use All-Purpose flour, like the recipe stated. Up until this point I had been using Bread flour since I thought that was all we had. So I did everything as usual. Total disaster when I tried to bake them. They didn't puff up like they're supposed to, they stayed flat disks. Which got me quite upset. So I threw them away and started over (Though my mom fished them out later and ate them....weird I know.) This time I used bread flour and Voila. they worked like magic. So I stuck the bottoms with a chop-stick (A cheap but effective way to make a whole to pipe the cream into). I used my mom's paper cake decorating bags with a plain circle tip, to pipe the cream into the bottoms of the puff shells. Wonderful, Then I placed them as neatly as i could onto a plate, dusted them with powdered sugar and cocoa powder. And that's it. easy, fairly time consuming, but so worth it in the end.
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