A sweet lady bought me super sweet and giant size of strawberries last week. Normally I find big size of strawberries would not be so sweet however these package of strawberries really super sweet. I need four big bites to finished a strawberry and imagine how big it is and I love strawberries crazily.
To appreciate her lovely thought, I quickly tuck into my kitchen to make some cream puffs to sandwich the strawberries and some leftover blueberries for her. The berries cream puffs was very refreshing in this hot and humid weather.
Recipe for 20 puffs:
For the Puff: 70g plain flour/3 beaten eggs/100g water/60g unsalted butter/Pinch of sugar and salt
For the custard: 3 egg yolks/200ml milk/60g sugar/20g plain flour/10g unsalted butter/1 tsp vanilla extract
How I made it:
- For the puff, boil the water, butter and pinch of sugar and salt in a cooking pan until its bubbling. Off the heat, add in all the plain flour and mix with a wooden spoon until well combine and become a smooth dough.
- Add half of the beaten eggs and mix (this stage is a bit hard work but please patient and keep stirring until the egg mix into the dough.) Once the eggs completely mix with the dough, you will find it quite dry and hardly to mix. Add the beaten eggs little by little into the dough and continue mixing. You might not finish using the beaten eggs. You will need to have a smooth and silky consistency of the mixture. When you spoon up the mixture, it should drop back to the pan very slowly. The mixture should not too dry or too wet.
- Once you get the right consistency of mixture, transfer it into a piping bag and pipe out about 20 dollops of mixture on a baking tray with baking paper.
- Dip your fingers with some water and gently touch the top of the mixture. This is to prevent it over burning while it's baking in the oven. Then spray some water on the mixture surface. (Not too much)
- Bake at 200'C preheated oven for 15 minutes until it puff up then turn the temperature to 170'C and bake for another 15 minutes. Transfer the puff on a wire rack to cool down.
- For the custard, boil the milk with sugar until sugar dissolve but not boiling. Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and flour a thick paste but no lumps. Add two tablespoon of milk if you find it too dry to mix.
- Pour the dissolve warm sugar milk into the egg yolks mixture, pour little by little and mix with a hand whisk until everything combine. Then, pour back the mixture into the cooking pan. Cook in very low heat and keep stirring until it thicken.
- Once the mixture thicken, remove from the heat and keep stirring until the heat slightly cool down but slightly warm. Then add in the butter and vanilla extract. Continue stirring until well combine.
- Transfer the custard into a plate and cover with cling film. Make sure the cling film touch on the mixture, this is to prevent it from skin forming on its surface.
- To assemble the berries cream puffs, squeeze in some custard then sandwich some strawberries and blueberries. Chill in the fridge before serve.
