Day 4: The One with the Pâte à Choux

Another whirlwind of a day working on pâte à choux to make cream puffs and eclairs. We made two different choux recipes, one for the eclairs and one for the cream puffs/profiteroles. Both recipes are pretty much the same except the eclairs called for salt and were cooked out longer on the stove before being piped out. We also froze the eclairs before baking them, whereas we put the cream puffs straight into the oven.

In class we used molds for the eclairs to make them uniform and professional however you can just pipe them in lines at home. For both the eclairs and cream puffs we made a few different fillings. We started by creating an almond praline for the almond praline pastry cream. To make the praline you just need to add a caramel on top of some almonds sort of like making brittle. Then when this is cool you blitz it using a food processor until smooth.

We then made a classic pastry cream and mixed this with some of the almond praline to get the final product. Along side this filling we made a cocoa pastry cream and a vanilla cream using fresh vanilla bean from the pod. Tomorrow we will make a mousseline and the toppings such as a chocolate ganache and fondant icing.

For the cream puffs we made a craquelin  for the tops to give a caramel taste but also to get a larger puffier shape. I learned that with the craquelin the cream puffs actually puff larger and come out more uniform than without.

Finally we finished by filling the coconut macarons from yesterday. We added a white chocolate and coconut flake top and then filled with the coconut chocolate ganache from yesterday. Tomorrow we will finish our eclairs by filling and topping them. Based on the schedule we will be done around 2:30 so I will have lots of time to explore cheltenham over the weekend!