Cream and Custard Filled Choux Buns

Makes 12 Buns

---

*Drool*

When someone first made a choux pastry in front of me, I genuinely thought I'd never be able to do it.

But.

IT'S ACTUALLY SO EASY. As long as you work fast, you're unlikely to screw it up, and that has been very comforting over the years. Skip to 2017 when I was interning in Singapore and found a French-Japanese bakery of some sorts that sold these custard buns half-filled with cream and half-filled with custard. Recently I was craving one so bad that I decided to try and mimic it. I knew I'd have to make a choux and then just hope the fillings made sense.

It came out so perfectly that I wanted to fill a bath with the buns. You have been warned, you will eat all of them, feel all of the guilt, and then make another batch.

PRO TIPS

1. When making the choux pastry, you need to be quite quick with everything - so make sure everything is measured out before you start making it. Same goes for the custard but it isn't as important - it's more forgiving.

2. Try not to open the oven as much as you can, you don't want the heat to escape whilst making your pastries

3. You can leave the fillings and choux mixture in the fridge overnight as long you cover them, the pastries will still turn out great!

Recipe

Ingredients

Custard filling

• 2 cups of whole milk

• 1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste

• 2/3 cup of sugar

• 1/4 cup of cornstarch

• 5-6 egg yolks (depending on how large your yolks are) - don't stress, you can save your custard easily by folding cream into it when it comes out of the fridge.

• 1.5 tablespoons of cold, unsalted butter

Choux pastry

• 1 scant cup of slightly softened unsalted butter

• 1 cup of water

• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

• 2 teaspoons of sugar

• 1 cup of plain flour

• 3 large eggs (4 medium-sized eggs)

• 1 egg for egg wash

• 1 tablespoon of water for egg wash

For Serving

• 600ml double cream

• 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste

• 1/4 cup of icing sugar for dusting

Method

For the Custard Filling

1. Whisk together the sugar and egg yolks until the colour lightens and the mixture becomes fluffier. Add the cornstarch until there are no lumps. Set aside.

2. Heat up your milk on a medium heat until just starting to simmer. Then, immediately turn the heat off and whisk in your vanilla bean paste. Leave to cool for a minute or two. Then take 1/4 cup of the hot milk mixture and quickly whisk it into your egg yolk mixture - this is to temper the eggs so they don't cook and ruin your custard. Then slowly pour in the rest of the milk whilst whisking.

3. Put the egg and milk mixture (it should be very thin don't worry, trust the recipe and use all the milk!) back in the pot and heat it on a medium heat. Continually whisk the mixture until it starts to thicken and turn into a custard. Once the mixture has thickened to a custard consistency, turn off the heat and fold in the cold butter.

4. Put the custard in a bowl in the fridge and cover with plastic wrap. Make sure the plastic wrap is touching the custard so that it doesn't form a skin. Leave in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours.

For the Choux Pastry

1. Preheat the oven to 220℃ (428℉).

2. On a medium heat, melt together the butter, water, sugar, and salt, once they have reached a rolling boil immediately remove from the heat and dump in the flour and quickly mix to combine. Once combined put back on the heat for 30 seconds and keep stirring.

3. Once off the heat, vigorously stir in the 3 eggs one at a time. The dough should be smooth and easy to pipe through a piping bag.

4. Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe out 5cmx5cm spirals. Then add a smaller spiral on top of the flat spirals.

5. Whisk together the egg for egg wash and add the 1 tablespoon of water. Brush the egg wash over the choux pastry. Put it in the oven for 15 minutes then reduce the heat to 190℃ and leave in the oven for another 20 - 25 minutes (until golden on top and cooked through).

• Take out of the oven and leave to cool down.

For the Assembly

1. Whip your double cream until soft peaks emerge - but don't over whip until stiff!

2. Take the custard out of the fridge and fold a quarter to a third of the cream into it (depending on the thickness). Fill the cream and custard into two separate piping bags or ziplock bags. Snip a small bit off at the end of the bag (corner of the ziplock). Make a small incision in each choux bun and pipe them half full of custard, then finish filling them with cream.

3. Lightly dust with icing sugar and serve!!

Stay Salty,

Romy xx