Cream Puff
Ingredients
1 cup boiling water
½ cup butter
1 cup sifted flour
¼ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
Process
Add butter to the boiling water, and when it has melted, add the flour and salt. Stir vigorously until mixture leaves the sides of the pan and forms a cohesive mass. Remove pan from heat and allow mixture to cool one minute. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well (by hand) after each addition. Drop from tablespoon onto greased cookie sheet about two inches apart. Bake in a 400°F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 325°F and bake 25 minutes longer. Remove from oven and prick a small hole in each cream puff. Return them to the oven (which has been turned off) and allow them to stand there for 10 minutes. Then remove and place on a wire rack to cool.
Custard Filling
Ingredients
3 Tablespoons cake flour
1/3 cup sugar
Dash salt
1 cup milk
2 Tablespoons orange juice
1 egg yolk, slightly beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon grated orange rind
Process
Combine flour, sugar, and salt in top of double boiler. Add milk, egg yolk, and orange rind. Place over rapidly boiling water and cook 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Add orange juice. Cool. Add vanilla.
Notes
I made just a few alterations: Instead of baking the puffs on a greased cookie sheet, I put them on parchment — I assume any pastry baked on a greased cookie sheet will burn. And I left the grated orange rind out of the custard recipe. I find the flavor of orange rind to be overwhelming and cloying.
Review
My overall reaction to this recipe is, “Holy cow! I can’t believe this worked.” The puff recipe seems to have far too high a ratio of liquid to flour. The custard depends on a double boiler, which history has taught me means that the sauce will never warm, let alone thicken. And yet everything worked out, just as Carson Gulley said it would.
The puffs’ dough formed a perfect choux pastry. I don’t know who invented choux — apparently some French person stood in the kitchen one day and said, “What if we made a great, big roux, and then baked it like cookies?” Whoever that person was, they were a genius. (I also don’t know why they named this pastry choux,which is French for cabbages. Cabbage might be the thing that this pastry resembles least.) Baked according to the instructions, the dough puffed up into little balls with a delicate crust and a nearly hollow center.
In spite of my concerns about the double boiler, the custard thickened rapidly — in three minutes, it was sticking to the spoon, and by 10, it had the texture of yogurt or pudding. I wasn’t confident about the orange juice in the custard, either, but it actually gave a subtle complexity to the sweet goo.
The one change I would recommend to this recipe is to make half the puffs or twice the custard. The amounts here make about 18 puffs, but each gets just a small scoop of filling. But together, they’ll give you a taste of the state fair. Pour a chocolate ganache over the top, and you’ll have a respectable éclair.
