Strawberry Cream Puff

We had a potluck last weekend at our apartment and one of the guest brought fresh strawberries, which plenty of them still left at the end of the day. Then I started to think what I was gonna make with the leftover strawberries. I already made strawberry milkshake yesterday and we still had some more strawberries left.

I searched for a delicious recipe in my favorite baking website, Joy of Baking, and I found an interesting recipe of this cream puff, in which I could add the strawberries to the cream. So here is the recipe:

Strawberry Cream Puff
(Makes 9 puffs with diameter approximately 5cm)

Ingredients:
Pastry
65 gr all purpose flour
1/2 tsp granulated white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
57 gr unsalted butter
120 ml water
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Glaze
1 egg, lightly beaten

Cream Filling
240 ml heavy whipped cream (35-40% butterfat)
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 tbsp granulated white sugar
3 pcs of large strawberries

Garnish
Powdered sugar

Methods:
Pastry

1. Prepare and weight all ingredients.
2. Preheat the oven to 200 Celcius for 15 minutes.
3. Place a baking sheet on a pan.
4. In a bowl, sift of whisk together the flour, sugar and salt.
5. Place butter and water in a saucepan, over medium high heat until it boils. Make sure the butter melts before the water boils to reduce the amount of evaporation.
6. Remove from the heat and add the flour mixture all at once and stir until combine.
7. Return the sauce pan to the heat and stir constantly about 1 - 2 minutes until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan and form a thick smooth ball.
8. Put the dough to electric mixer and beat to low speed about 1 minute to release the steam from the dough.
9. Once the dough is lukewarm, start adding 3/4 portion of the eggs and continue to mix until you have a smooth thick paste (dough will fall from a spoon in thick ribbon). If your dough still too thick, add the rest of the eggs.
10. Spoon the dough onto baking sheets, spacing about 5 cm apart, try making a round form with the spoon.
11.  With a pastry brush, gently brush the top of the dough with lightly beaten egg.
12. Bake for 15 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 180 Celcius for another 30 - 35 minutes or until the shells have nice amber color and almost dry inside.
13. If you open the puff and find moist dough inside, cut the puff in a half, turn the oven off and put back the puff to the oven with the door slightly ajar.

Cream Filling

1. In a mixing bowl, place the whipped cream, vanilla extract and sugar, and stir to combine.
2. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and put the bowl and whisker in the refrigerator to chill them up for at least 15 minutes.
3. When chilled, whip the cream until reach stiff peaks form
4. Chop the strawberries into small cuts and combine them to the cream.

Before serving, fill the puffs with the cream and garnish the top of the puffs with powdered sugar.

Here is the result of my strawberry cream puff:

It's not 100% perfect as the puff should be more crispy and I guessed I didn't whisk the cream long enough as the cream still a little bit sloppy, as I'm afraid that the cream will be lumpy if I over beat the cream. Apparently the trick to check whether the cream has reached its stiff peak is if you lift up the beaters from the mixing bowl, the peak should stand straight up and if you tilt the bowl, the mixture should not slide around. However, it tastes good and looks really tempting on the picture after all, so next time I'll just need to make sure not repeating the mistakes :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady