Who you callin’ Cream Puff?

 

There’s a great Vietnamese restaurant in Austin called Tam Deli.  When the French left Vietnam, they left behind a lot of their food (they were sooooo lazy).  It seems odd, but the Vietnamese really know how to make good French bread and pastries.  As a result, after I have my Bahn Mi sandwich, I can get one perfect cream puff for dessert, for like 75¢.  Awesome!

We followed the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated.  Made from humble ingredients, they pack a big punch.  They seem like they would be ridiculously complicated to make, but it turns out that it’s not so hard! 

The first step was making the dough, called “pate a choux”…. sounds like Pat achoo!  God bless us.

It’s a standard pastry dough used for things like éclairs and beignets (Note to self… make éclairs next.)  This is water, milk, butter, and sugar heated until the butter melts.

Then you add some flour…

And then you stir it around for a few minutes until it forms a nice dough….

And then you add it to a food processor and spin it around for a minute or so to cool down a bit.

And then you add the eggs while the mixer is running.

And you end up with something like this.  It’s a little sticky, but not too sticky.  It’s silky smooth.  Just how I like my…pastries.

At this point, you take the warm dough and put it in a pastry bag and start piping out the little puffs.  Now, we don’t own a pastry bag, so we just took a Glad bag and cut off one of the corners.  It’s sort of ghetto, but it works!  Plus it’s economical!

Pastry bag perfection is not required.  Look how weird and sloppy they all came out!  You can take a spoon dipped in warm water and even them out so that they are all the same shape.

Fresh out of the oven.  Look how pretty! 

We took a small knife and cut slit in each one to release some of the steam.  These guys are just full of hot air (like most Frenchmen…burn)

Then comes a neat trick.  You turn off the oven, put the puffs back inside, and then prop the door open with a BIG WOODEN SPOON, so that they can crisp up and dry out.

So that’s basically it in terms of making little puff pastries.  But wait, there’s more!  You can fill them with all sorts of crazy concoctions.  We went a classic pastry cream.  This is basically a thick and creamy vanilla custard. 

We put it in another makeshift pastry bag and went to town filling these guys up.  We actually have a pastry tip in the bag this time.

Light and flaky crust, smooth and creamy filling.  So small, but so delicious.  A little bit size piece of yumminess!