On se prepare pour Paris

"Hey, what do you want to bake this week?"
"How about something French-inspired"
"Why?"
"Because I'm going to Paris!"
"What?! You lucky bastard!"

So to celebrate Paul getting ready for a short séjour to Paris, we decided to make choux à la crème (cream puffs). Light, fluffy, heavenly cream filled puffs of deliciousness.  Paul thought this would be so difficult... but I convinced him that it was easier than he thought; and of course I was right.

To make the mood even more French, Paul turned on his BRAND NEW record player and we listened to Edith Piaf and ate chocolate (can I tell you the Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations Jelly Popping Candy is all kinds of awesome/the worst idea for diets ever).

The cream puffs are surprisingly easy to make with few ingredients.  First you need to start with the choux paste:

Choux Paste

250 ml of water
1/2 cup of butter
5 g of salt
185 g of all purpose flour (or bread flour)
6 eggs

1.  Preheat your oven to 400F
2.  In a saucepan place the water, butter and salt and bring to a boil. Don't put a lid on the pot when bringing to a rolling boil; the butter will turn frothy.
3.  Add the flour and stir until the paste is formed and it pulls away from the sides of the pot. Take the saucepan off the heat.
4.  Place the dough in a mixing bowl and mix to cool.  When no more steams comes out of the choux paste, you can move to step 5.
5.  Add eggs one by one until fully incorporated. 
6.  Pipe using star shape and bake for about 30 minutes until golden.

Yes, 30 minutes seem like a really long time but if you pull them out sooner, the puffs will have an eggy-taste and no one wants that!

Once all your Choux Paste have been baked, it's time to start the filling. We decided to stick with the classic and made a whip cream filling.

Whip Cream

500 ml of  cream
40g of icing sugar
a splash of vanilla extract

Mix all the ingredients together with a whisk until stiff peaks form. 

Cut the puff pastries in half using a seraded knife and fill with the whip cream filling (we used a star shape pipping tip again).

Once finished, you can dust icing sugar like we did or make a chocolate ganache (we wanted to make the ganache but it was 9:00 pm and we both have to work tomorrow). These will probably not make it to work tomorrow!