Houston, We Have Cream Puff!

Connie and I met over thirty years ago while folk dancing at a little Greek coffee house in Southern California. Within a year, I think, Connie made a batch of cream puffs and let me try one. I was in love. Well, I was already in love with Connie, but now I had another love in my life. Cream puffs.

Cream puffs aren't exactly dietetic, and they take a lot of work, so it wasn't very often that Connie would bake cream puffs. But I didn't know how to cook (other than omelettes and French toast and steak), so I didn't get cream puffs as often as I'd have liked (breakfast, lunch and dinner).

Eventually I learned from Connie how to make cream puffs. Fortunately, they're a lot of work, so I didn't make them very often, otherwise I'd be looking like the Michelin man. At some point, I discovered that cream puffs weren't exclusively a Connie concoction. In fact, any baker worth their salt probably knows how to make cream puffs, and sooner or later I found a professionally made cream puff. The main difference with a professional cream puff is that they're filled with custard rather than whipped cream like we make them, and they're puffier.

When we made cream puffs, they'd blow up like little balloons of tasty goodness, and then we'd take them out of the oven, and all the air would go out of them like a beach ball with a big leak. Which didn't matter much to us, because when you shot the whipped cream in, they would expand again. But still... it bothered me. A professional puff you can cut open and stuff with stuff. Ours needed power injection.

So, over the years, I've been experimenting. More eggs. Less eggs. Less yolks. You name it. And still, our cream puffs were more like cream sacks.

And then, one fateful day, the goddess from Hurricanes smiled upon me, and suggested that I use bread flour and cook them longer.

Tonight, we tried this new method. And lo, our cream puffs stayed puffed! One thing that pleases me immensely about learning to make crepes and tortillas and cream puffs is their versatility. So you learn to make pastilla. Fine. Then you can make pastilla. But if you can make puffs and crepes and tortillas, you can fill them with marvelous things. A cream puff doesn't have to have whipped cream. You could put in devilled eggs, spicy chicken, fresh fruit, cheesecake filling, the possibilities are endless. We haven't just learned to make cream puffs, we've learned to make a whole catering tray of different yummies.

Now if only we could catch Osama.


Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Chatter