Cream Puffs

The only things needed to make cream puffs are butter, water, flour, sugar, and eggs. Salt is not required, but we added it to our dough. When the cream puffs are put in the oven, the water turns to steam and acts as a leavener and causes the puff to rise a little bit, although it collapses after you pull them out of the oven.

Cream puff dough is very sensitive- it is very important that you do not add too much egg to the dough. Although it can be fixed, it's a hassle. The proper way to check if the dough has enough eggs is to take a bit more than a pinch of the dough between your thumb and index finger, press down on it, and then slowly pull your fingers away from one another. You should be able to extend your fingers pretty far from each other before the dough will "break," or the dough separates in the middle. If you can't get your fingers far from each other without the dough breaking, then you don't have enough egg in it. 

Cream puffs are kind of tricky to make if you don't have some help. Unlike a lot of other doughs, you make it first on the stove top by combining butter and water, and then eventually adding flour. The ingredients will form a ball, and once that happens you'll need to transfer the dough to a mixing bowl and add in your eggs. Once you've tested your dough and it's at the proper strength and consistency, you'll make your puffs and put them on a baking sheet. You bake them until they're golden brown on the top. After that, you'll stuff them with your cream, either by poking a hole in the bottom and filling it, or by breaking it in half and putting the cream in the middle, like you would a sandwich. It is very important that you aren't the only one making these- or rather, it's much easier if you have help. As I said earlier, adding eggs to your dough can get kind of tricky, so do it slowly so you don't add too much. Also, once your puffs are in the oven, don't open the oven to look at them! All the steam in the oven will escape, and the puffs will fall flat. 

The temperature of your oven must be above 212 degrees Fahrenheit, otherwise your water won't turn to steam, and your cream puffs won't rise. We set our oven at 450 degrees.

If you were eating a cream puff at a fancy restaurant, if they gave you a bigger one (bigger than the ones we made), they might put it off to one side on a square plate, and maybe drizzle some chocolate or something else over the top of it, and maybe add some on the empty side of the plate. They could add some fruit on top, and maybe put a mint leaf on the side. If it was a smaller cream puff and there was more than one, perhaps they would lay them out in a line with different fruits on each one. Maybe each one would be a different flavored cream puff as well. . . either way, they would add a little bit of height to the cream puff and would also add some color, like drizzling, fruit, or mint leaves. The fruit, if they did add any, would also provide a different texture from both the cream and the puff.

Recipe can also be found here, courtesy of the Food Network.

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 4 eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In 2 quart pot, combine the butter and water. On a piece of wax or parchment paper, sift together the flour, salt and sugar. Bring the water and butter to a rolling boil, remove from heat and dump the flour mixture in all at once. Stir with a wooden spoon or paddle to incorporate.

Return the saucepot to high heat and cook, stirring, for about one minute. The mixture will form a ball and coat the pan with a thin film.
2. Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl or standing mixer equipped with the paddle attachment. Mix the dough for a minute or so, on low speed, to release some of the heat. Add the eggs, one at a time, completely incorporating each one before adding the next. Beat until the dough gets thick and ribbony.
3. Fit a pastry bag with a round #5 tip and fill with the warm dough. Line a heavy cookie sheet with parchment paper and anchor it to the tray with a little dab of the dough at each corner. Pipe about forty to forty five 1 1/2-inch mounds about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden and puffed. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 minutes or until they are golden brown and there are no droplets of moisture in the crevices. Turn off oven and leave the choux to dry for another 10 minutes. Use when cool, or freeze, wrapped in a plastic bag, for 2-3 months.

Cream puff cream is mostly milk, sugar, egg, and flour. To make it, first the milk and sugar must be put in a pot and boiled. Before your milk boils, whisk your eggs, flour, and other ingredients together. Once the milk begins to boil, you slowly add in your egg yolks, beating the mixture quickly so that your eggs don't cook and get all scrambled- that wouldn't be any good. Keep stirring it and eventually the cream will thicken and turn into cream. Although the cream isn't hard to make in general, adding in the egg part without it scrambling might be a challenge, so I strongly suggest having someone else pour it in while you stir the cream very quickly to prevent that from happening. After your cream has thickened, put it in a bowl and cover it in saran wrap with some holes poked in it so that the cream can chill and can be added to your cream puffs. Another tip would be to maybe make your cream before you make the puffs, because when we made ours our cream hadn't cooled down too much and so it was a little bit too runny. It's like pudding, and needs to cool down before it can get to the proper consistency. Lastly, I would suggest breaking the cream puff in half and filling them up with cream rather than trying to fill them up through the bottom. It's easy to break your cream puffs if you try filling them up through the bottom.


This recipe can also be found here, courtesy of allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

2 cups milk 1/2 cup white sugar 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise 6 egg yolks

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 pinch salt

Directions:

1.	Place the milk, half the sugar and the vanilla bean in a saucepan over medium heat.
2.	Combine the egg yolks and the remaining sugar in a bowl and whisk until light in color. Add in the flour and the salt, mix to combine.
3.	When the milk just begins to boil, remove from heat and remove vanilla bean. Very slowly dribble the hot milk into the yolk mixture, stirring all the time. When about half of the milk has been added, place all of the yolk mixture into the saucepan over medium heat. Using a spatula or a whisk, mix the pastry cream as it heats, making sure to reach all of the corners of the pan when you stir. Bring the mixture to a boil. Let boil for about 1 minute, stirring constantly. The mixture will be thick.
4.	Remove from heat and add the butter. Strain if you wish for a smoother cream. Place into a bowl and cover directly with plastic wrap to stop a skin from forming on the cream. Chill and use within a few days.

Chicken Noodle & Potato Soup (plus a snow day)

Mirepoix is made of carrots, onions, and celery. These are boiled in water as part of a stock for soups. We used mirepoix along with chicken to make the stock for our chicken noodle soup. When the stock is done being cocked, the veggies are thrown out and new ones are added in for the rest of the soup.

I did not think that making the soup was very difficult. For the first part, all we had to do was put our chicken and mirepoix (chopped veggies) in water for a while. After the stock was done, the chicken was separated from the vegetables and added back into the stock along with some fresh carrots, celery, and onions. Making the noodles was more difficult, because they had to be very thin before we could cut them up and add them to the soup. I think ours were too thick, because they absorbed all of the stock and we didn't really have soup so much as noodles with pieces of chicken and vegetables.

For our potato soup, before we could blend it we had to make sure that the potatoes (and onions) were soft. I checked to make sure they were soft my squishing several of the chunks with a fork. If you don't have to press hard into the potato for it to turn to mush, then it is soft enough to mash up (easily, anyway). If the potatoes weren't soft, it would have been really hard to blend them up and the soup probably would have been pretty chunky.

I'm very comfortable in the kitchen for the most part. There are still some things that I don't know the location of, but I'll figure it all out in time; I'm not worried about it. I've always kind of had a fear of knives, but this class is just making me suck it up and deal with it, haha. I think that things have improved a little bit since last week as well, with the group being a bit more informed of what everyone else is doing and helping more with cleaning things up.

I've always loved cooking and I've cooked things at home and at my grandma's house before taking this class. I have wanted to try some of the things we've made in this class at home, though, however my mom just looks at me in an exasperated manner and says, "That sounds like it will be a mess." Which is basically her way of saying "no," so I actually haven't done much cooking at home since taking this class. Sad face, I know.