Cream Puff Recipe

After a week of hard work it would be so nice to watch something sweet and simple while drinking tea and eating treats. Today we would like to suggest you to bake cream puffs and watch a romantic “dorama” (Japanese テレビドラマ — “TV drama” — a Japanese TV series) about a girl, who dreams to become a pastry chef and meet her true love.

 

Absolute Boyfriend / Zettai Kareshi: Kanzen Muketsu no Koibito Robot / 絶対彼氏 〜完全無欠の恋人ロボット〜, 2008

“— There’s only home appliances and me.
— So how about a kiss?”

IMDb ranking: 7.4

Genres: comedy, drama, fantasy, melodrama

Certificate: 16+

Riiko Izawa is very unlucky when it comes to love. One day she meets a mysterious man in a bar, who offers her a perfect boyfriend. Imagine her surprise when the next day she “receives” an ideal man meeting all her requirements! The tiny detail that’s bugging her is that her new boyfriend is a robot. Exactly at this time she draws attention of her rich young boss. Riikos love story turns upside down while she is trying to achieve her dream — become a world-class pastry chef.

Several interesting facts about the show:

• Dorama is based on 6 bands of shoujo manga (comics for girls) “Absolute Boyfriend” (2003-2005) by Yuu Watase.
• Taiwanese adaptation of it was aired in 2012, a Korean one — in 2019.
• Manga and TV series differs from each other in several aspects: for example, the main character in manga is 16 years old high school student and not a grown up young woman working in a cake shop.

History of the Treat

The history of these treats, the most known of which are choux pastry, profiteroles and éclairs began already in XVI century. In 1533 Catherine de’ Medici moved from Porto Verne to Marseille to marry King Henry II of France. She brought her chefs with her. At that time France wasn’t leading in culinary traditions and the first place in this branch was taken by Italy. The marriage of Catherine and Henry changed the cooking traditions at the royal palace fundamentally and became a starting point for development of French cuisine.

In 1540 a chef named Panterelli, who arrived to France together with the Queen, invented his own dough recipe, which was named after him — pâte à Panterelli. The pastries made out of this kind of dough became famous all over France. Jean Avice, a French pastry chef, created cakes out of that dough, which he named choux (choux means “cabbage” in French) in XVIII century. The cakes got their name because of the cabbage-like shape.

In that same century another French chef — Marie-Antoine Carême created another treat based on that dough recipe — a popular éclair cake (éclair could be translated from French as flash or lightning). A perfect éclair in France is considered to be a cake of 14 cm length and symmetrical shape.

An interesting fact: this treat got different names in different countries around the globe. For example in US éclairs are called “Long John” and in Germany they are known as Liebesknochen, Hasenpfote or Kaffeestange (love bone, hare’s paw and coffee stick). By the way the word “éclair” is also used to describe a method of creating an animation movie scenes. It’s an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage with real actors and decorations, frame by frame, to produce realistic action.

Cream Puffs Recipe

Ingredients:

• 100 ml water
• 60 g unsalted butter
• a pinch of salt
• 120 g flour
• 3 eggs
• 400 ml milk
• vanilla extract to taste
• 4 egg yolks
• 100 g sugar
• 2 Tsp corn starch (could be replaced by a potato starch as well)
• 100 ml whipped cream
• 50 ml orange juice
• 1 tsp orange zest
• rum or brandy to taste (optional)

1. Let’s prepare the dough for puffs first. In a medium pot mix together 100 ml of water, 60 g of butter and a pinch of salt. Bring it to a boil on medium heat. Turn off the oven when the butter is melted.

2. Sift the flour right into the pot. Stir it quickly until homogeneous mass and let it cold for a while. Gently whip eggs and add them to the dough little by little in 3-4 steps. Be careful and check that the dough is not too hot, otherwise the eggs will get boiled.

3. Use backing paper to cover the baking sheet. Take a small coffee cup around 5 cm in diameter, dip its top into the flour and then press it against the backing paper. You will get a circle on it. Make around 12 circles. We will use them as forms for the dough to make it more symmetrical.

4. Put the dough into a pastry bag. If you don’t have one, use an ordinary plastic bag instead, just cut one of its edges with scissors. Fill in circles with the dough. Wet a teaspoon under cold water and use it to make the surface of the dough more smooth.

5. Preheat the oven on 200 C. Bake puffs around 30 minutes. Right after they are ready remove the puffs from the backing sheet so they cool faster.

6. Let’s make a cream while the puffs are cooling. Place milk on a low heat, add vanilla extract and stir. Take it off the heat right after it starts boiling.

7. Whisk 4 egg yolks little by little adding sugar to them. Keep whisking until sugar is melted and the yolks get lighter in colour. Add 60 g of flour and corn starch to the mixture. In TV series the main character added some orange liqueur food flavouring into the cream. If you don’t have it at home and don’t want to buy it, you can easily replace it with orange juice and zest and some rum to taste, but be careful and do not add too much.

8. Put together yolks and one third of vanilla milk. Then add this mixture to the rest of milk. Put on the low heat and stir carefully until cream gets thick. When there are bubbles on the surface, take it off the stove.

9. Take a small bowl and put it inside a bigger one filled with ice. Put the cream in the small bowl and cover it with the food wrap to prevent air get inside.

10. When cream is cold transfer it to another bowl and give it a gentle stir again while adding whipped cream to the mixture.

11. Put cream into a pastry bag. There are two ways how to add it to the puffs. First one: cut the puffs in halves but be sure that they are still attached to each other and put cream inside. Second one: use a syringe instead to put the filling inside. Your cream puffs are ready! You can also cover them with chocolate icing if you want.

 

Take a sit on a sofa, grab your favourite tea (or another drink) in one hand and a cream puff in another and enjoy simple but funny and fascinating story about adventures of Riiko and her “absolute boyfriend”.