Cream Puffs – Bigne´

Puffs are delicious pastries: no one resists these small morsels of choux pasta that are filled with cream, chocolate cream, ice cream, …Puffs are a classic preparation of international pastry: they lend themselves to many variants, even salty, you just have to try following your tastes and your imagination! Below you will find the recipe of the bigne ́with the cream. 

 

Ingredients for about 30 bigne´

• 150 Gr.all purpose flour 
• 100 Gr. Butter
• 250ml water
• 4 eggs
• 1 salt outlet

For filling with pastry cream

• 500 ml milk
• 4 egg yolks
• 100 g sugar
• 30 gr. Flour
• lemon peel

Preparation of the pastry cream

To prepare the cream puffs, we start by preparing the pastry cream. The pastry cream is made with a few ingredients: the milk must be fresh and whole, the eggs very fresh and the lemon organic.

In a saucepan put the yolks with sugar and work them with a wooden spoon.

When they start to assemble add the flour little by little and, always continuing to mix, mix the mixture well

Heat the milk with the peel of 1 lemon

Pour boiling milk little by little on the egg mixture always mixing. Place on the fire over low heat and, always mixing, simmer for 3.4 minutes until the cream thickens. The pastry cream must be smooth, shiny and lump-free.

Remove it from the heat, pour it into a bowl and let it cool by placing the surface of the transparent film in contact. The film must be in contact with the cream  surface so that the skin is not formed. Better to prepare the cream a day before and let it cool in the refrigerator all night. 

 

Preparing the bigne´

In a saucepan pour the water, the butter cut into small pieces and add a salt intake.

Put on the fire and melt the butter well by turning with a whisk. When the mixture reaches the boil pour the flour in rain and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon.

When the mixture will break away from the walls of the saucepan turn off the heat and cool

 

Lower the temperature of the impact start incorporating the eggs, one at a time (you must have the speed of incorporating the next only when the previous one is completely absorbed). The compound must be smooth and homogeneous.

 

Coat a baking tray with baking paper. 

Transfer the choux paste to a sac-à-poche equipped with a wide and smooth vent and create small pasta nuts, well spaced one from the other, on the lollipop. Alternatively, make the pasta nuts with the help of two teaspoons.

Bake the puffs in a preheated oven (better if static) at 180 degrees for 30 minutes.

Let the bigne´ cool down.

Take the cream and start filling the bigne ́. The operation can be done by cutting the bigne ́ sideways and filling it, with the help of a teaspoon, with cream or transferring the latter in a sac with a few with a smooth nozzle.

Bigne ´can be decorated with melted dark chocolate or icing sugar.