Easy Cream Puffs in the microwave for the novice baker!!

Easy Cream Puffs in the microwave for the novice baker!!

Hello everyone! Thank you for stopping by on my blog. You are about to witness the most creamy and beautiful light slices of heaven when you bake these cream puffs and wow your friends and family away!

I am a novice baker. By novice, I mean…I am literally cooking this for the first time in my life and I am on the wrong side of 25 :D. But I believe in learning every day and I would love for you to learn with me! This recipe is mainly for all such people like me who haven’t practiced a lot but would love to show off their baking skills to their loved ones. Because baking is the biggest stress buster, am I right? And the feeling of your husband stuffing himself silly with your food while he loosens his pants…ah…nothing sexier! 

This recipe does NOT use an oven. It instead uses a microwave on a convection (oven) setting.  So the temperatures are based on my own experience Feel free to add any suggestions or comments below.

Puffs

These kind of puffs are known as Choux pastry apparently, which sounds difficult but it really isn’t! It is a really unique kind because it doesn’t use a chemical agent to rise. It rises solely because of the air trapped between the eggs and water, and the steam. However, it WILL rise. Only if you trust your pastry will it trust you back. :D

Ingredients

½ cup water

½ cup milk (full fat is best)

8 Tbsp melted butter

4 Tbsp sugar

¼ Tsp salt

1 cup white flour

½ tsp vanilla essence

4 eggs

Instructions. 

In a deep bottom saucepan, add the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt. Stir continuously while at medium heat and bring to a boil.  Then remove the pan from heat, and add in your flour all at once.

Continue stirring until all the flour is incorporated into the mixture. Place the pan back over the stove for a minute while stirring continuously to release the moisture and make a firm smooth dough. Eventually, your dough should come together into a firm, smooth, creamy ball. 

Transfer the dough into another bowl and wait for it to cool for around 15 minutes. After it has cooled, add 1 egg at a time and mix the dough thoroughly each time. (A lot of recipes at this stage advice you to use an electric whisker to mix your dough well. If you don’t have an electric whisker (like me again!), just mix it vigorously with a wooden spoon each time you add the eggs). 

The more you whisk your batter, the more your puff will rise up since it depends on the air you manage to incorporate into your batter. So get those arms working as hard as you can! Or you can simple use your electric whisker and pooh pooh at me from up there :D

Once you are done with this, you should have a mixture having a ribbon like consistency i.e when you raise your spoon, the batter lifts up like a ribbon. It basically stands for soft, creamy, buttery consistency. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it looked! Add vanilla essence at this point.

At this stage you would need a piping bag to pipe the pastry onto the baking sheet. Again, something I don’t have! So take a part of the batter with your small spoon, grab another spoon, place the batter in the middle and use them both to make a smooth ball. Too complicated?! Just simply take the batter with a small spoon and place it on your baking tray one at a time. Keep a distance between the spoonfuls as shown in the picture! 

Now, in a routine oven you would preheat it to get it to the right temperature before placing in your pastry. But since this is a microwave, simply place your pastry inside, and turn the setting of your microwave to convection at a temperature of 170 degrees Celsius for a period of 20-25 minutes.

Open your microwave and check if done be observing the golden brown color of your puffs! They should by now be amazingly golden, light, airy and perfect! If they aren’t, then just keep them in your microwave for 5 more minutes and then take them out. (timings might differ based on different brands of microwaves or so I’ve noticed)

After you’ve gotten them all out, place them in a proper serving tray to cool down. Smack your hand away as it sneaks up to eat the delightful puffs. Or don’t. I once ate an entire batch of cookie dough before I could bake any, so no judgement here. Let’s move on to the filling.

Cream Filling. 

Since this is a classic French dessert, most of the recipes advice you to fill it with whipped cream. Whipped cream requires heavy cream to start with, and then you whip that to get to the consistency of whipped cream peaks. Heavy cream is not easily available in India, so I had to make another alternative filling for the cream puffs. Don’t worry! These are just as delicious, and slightly healthier too since it uses milk and not cream!

Ingredients 

2 cups milk

6 Tbsp sugar

½ Tsp salt

3 Tbsp corn flour

½ tsp vanilla essence

3 egg yolks

1 large egg

3 Tbsp melted butter

Instructions

Add the sugar, full egg, egg yolk, cornflour, vanilla essence and salt in a bowl and whisk together. There should be absolutely NO lumps in the mixture if you want smooth cream filling!

Place the milk in a saucepan on medium heat and bring to a boil. As soon as the milk starts to bubble up, pour half of the milk slowly into the egg mixture while CONSTANTLY whisking. This step will temper the eggs. Once that is done, add the whole mixture back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk. 

This filling is essentially a custard, so continuously stir the mixture to avoid clumps forming. Heat it until the custard comes to a boil, after which you should lower the heat and cook for a further two minutes at low heat.

Hollow Centre for the cream

Remove the saucepan from heat, and add in the butter. Whisk it continuously until it is completely incorporated into the custard mix.Pour the custard into a bowl, and cover it with a plastic wrap to prevent the film of fat forming on the top. 

Let it cool to room temperature, and then set it in the refrigerator for chilling. This filling is going to thicken as it sets. So don’t worry if it seems a bit liquid to you in the beginning.

Once, its cooled…just open your pastry puffs by slicing off the top, place the cream inside and cover up the top again. Again, this step is for people who don’t have a piping bag. If you do have one, just pipe your cream into your puffs easily. The cream puffs will be hollow from the middle so that you can fill the cream in. Either way, you end up with cream filled puffs sitting exquisitely on your serving tray.

Cream filled Puffs!

Your magical little drops of beauty are ready. I see the gush of praises making way down your winding lane. And here they come knocking at your tiny kitchen door!

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