Cream puff topped with a crunchy chocolate cookie top, filled with sweet pastry cream

This is pretty much an upgrade to your day to day cream puffs. Easy to make and tastes incredible.

I have always been a big fan of choux pastry because you can literally do anything you want with it – there are thousands of filling combination you can try out and you can also top them with whatever you want. The pastry itself is quick to make and watching it rise so dramatically in the oven is always soothing to watch. In its most basic form, cream puff / choux buns are basically a plain profiterole filled with whipped cream – and occasionally topped with a chocolate sauce. As much as I like them, I always feel that there need to be more crunch to it – and thus this recipe. The cookie top, or chocolate craquelin, is, again, quick to make but also gives an an extra crunch and sweetness to the whole thing. If you haven’t had it before, really worth trying out!

Recipe (15 cream puffs)

Ingredients:

Cream Puff / Choux bun
65ml water
65ml milk
65g unsalted butter cubed
6g caster sugar
80 plain (all-purpose) flour sifted
1g salt
125g whole egg (around 3 small eggs/ 2.5 large eggs), beaten

Cookie topping / chocolate craquelin
40g plain (all purpose) flour
5g cocoa powder
45g caster sugar
35g unsalted butter

Pastry Cream / Creme Patissiere
250ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
60g egg yolks (3 eggs)
50g caster sugar
25g plain (all purpose) flour sifted

Method

For the pastry cream: put the milk in a saucepan, add vanilla extract and bring to boil. In mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar, then add the sifted flour and whisk again until smooth
Pour half of the hot milk into the mixture and whisk until there are no lump. Pour mixture back into the remaining half of the hot milk in the pan and continue to whisk. When the mixture comes to boil, reduce the temperature to a simmer and continue to stir for around 5-6 minutes until you have achieved a thick texture. Then pour the pastry cream into a shallow dish, cover with cling film and refrigerate
For the cookie topping: rub all the ingredients together until the mixture forms a dough. Roll out between 2 sheets of baking parchment and leave to rest in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.
Preheat oven on to 200 C
For the cream puffs: heat the water, milk, butter, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to boil. Take the pan off the heat and then add the flour & sale all in one go (don’t add them bit by bit!). Stir until completely combined.
Return pan to hob at a low heat, and continue stirring the mixture with a spatula until the dough leaves the side of pan (this step is very important as it effectively dries out the surface of the pastry)
Gradually add beaten egg into the dough and beat with a spatula until the mixture is smooth. The consistency should be neither too soft or too hard – it should drop of the spoon leaving a smooth “v” shape (p.s. this could be a bit tricky to get at first go – my advice is to add less egg rather than more… if the dough is too wet you will need to start again!)
Put the mixture into a pipping bag fitted with a 8mm nozzle (or just snip the end off the bag), pipe 15 2cm bulbs onto the baking tray lined with a non-stick baking parchment, leaving gap in between
Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the cream puff has risen and started to brown. Take out and leave to cool
Assemble: once the cream puffs have cooled down, put the pastry cream into a pipping bag and fit with a 6mm nozzle (it is important that you have a nozzle here otherwise it won’t easily insert into the puffs). Poke a whole a the bottom of each puff and fill it with the pastry cream. Be careful not to over-fill otherwise it might ‘explode’!