Easy 20 Minute Cream Puff Recipe - Sizzling Eats (2024)

FAQs

Is milk or water better for cream puffs? ›

Milk produces puffs that brown faster, thanks to the milk's proteins and sugars, which can be especially helpful when baking smaller choux puffs that need to brown sufficiently in a shorter amount of time.

By kneading the flour and butter together, the flour particles are coated in butter, preventing the latter from being too sticky when combined with flour later on. From now on, and until the end of the recipe, one rule is king: always work with a cold dough.

There are multiple reasons why cream puffs may deflate. The first cause is undercooking. When preparing dough on the stovetop, be sure to keep cooking and stirring until a film forms on the bottom of the saucepan. Another cause of flat cream puffs is lowering the temperature during baking.

Add in more butter.

Butter is solid when cold. Therefore, the more butter you add to the pastry cream, the more thickened and stabilized it will be once it's cooled down.

The Liquid: You can use water or milk, or a combination of the two. Water allows you to bake either hotter or longer (or both) without as much risk of the choux over-browning, while milk, thanks to its extra proteins and sugars, leads to a more rapidly browned crust.

There are a few reasons your cream puffs might collapse or not puff up properly in the oven. The first is that you may not have cooked out the moisture enough. Make sure you give it a full 2 minutes on the stove. The second is that there is no way for the steam to escape when the puffs are baked.

Egg wash is the most reliable but it can be very thick and sticky. Milk wash will go on more evenly but it can soak into pastry and make it weaker. Melted butter works nicely after the crust has set but it can make the crust greasy and weaker.

Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness. These same acid enthusiasts claim that stopping or at least hindering the gluten makes the dough easier to roll out, and may even prevent it from shrinking as it bakes.

Not necessarily, puff pastry contains enough fat to produce a golden colour without any extra glazing. However, an egg wash (1 egg whisked with 1 tbsp water or milk) will make it extra golden and shiny. Egg wash is also useful if you need to stick pastry pieces together or seal the pastry.

Why did my cream puffs collapse? If the puffs collapse it means there was too much moisture in them. So either you did not dry the dough enough, or they were not cooked enough. To avoid this I recommend drying the dough really well (see below) and cracking the door of the oven open when the choux are baked.

Should I refrigerate unfilled cream puffs? ›

Do the cream puffs needs to be refrigerated? Yes they do. They can stay out for about 4 hours but then need to be refrigerated.

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If your batter ended up being too runny, possibly you have added a little too much eggs. To fix this, cook a paste using roughly half the choux recipe (water, milk, flour, butter similar to how you started).

If the problem is the dough consistency, add flour one tablespoon at a time until the dough is no longer runny. After adding more flour, cook the dough over the stove for a couple of minutes to get rid of the flour taste.

The use of milk gives the choux more color during baking and creates a more tender pastry, whereas water allows for baking at a higher temperature. Generally, a combination of both water and milk will be used. Unsalted butter is typically used for the fat; however, margarine and shortening can be used as well.

Choux pastry has two important stages. First you cook it and then you bake it. For the liquid, you can use water or milk or a combination of both. We choose the combination of both because this way you get a nice color and tender bite, but the extra water also allows for baking at a slightly higher temperature.

Milk brings a softness to the crust, but if you prefer a dough that is harder and crispier then replace the milk with water. If the dough is slightly wet at the end when gathering it into a ball, just sprinkle a little bit of flour on your bench and roll the dough in the flour before kneading the dough.

1 cup 2% milk (you can also use skim or whole milk, but it will effect the flavor and crispness of your cream puff.)