How to express my love to strawberries? I would love to add strawberries to 99% of the desserts!

These strawberry cream puffs are filled with creamy sweet homemade pastry cream, topped with fresh and juicy strawberries, and featured by the elegant crunchy pink craquelin layer.

How to make the craquelin crunchy topping?

The literal translation of craquelin is “cracker” – “a dough that is used for topping muffins and choux buns for a distinctive crackly finish“.

You can make a craquelin dough within 5 minutes by simply mixing butter, powdered sugar, and cake flour all together. 

Then you will just cut the craquelin dough into disks using a cookie cutter, and lay them on your choux pastry.

How does craquelin work?

Since there is almost no water in the craquelin dough, as it’s heated up in the oven, the butter will melt quickly, then the craquelin layer will break up and form a beautiful crackly top on the choux pastry.

Again, since there’s no water in the craquelin dough, the sugar and flour mixture is going to add an extra crunchy texture and a nice caramel color to your choux.

If you want your craquelin topping to be pink, I’d suggest using powdered sugar and a little bit of red food coloring.

If you want your puffs to have a natural brownish color, simply skip the food coloring and substitute the powdered sugar with light brown sugar.

3 different ways to fill strawberry cream puffs

Check out my Pastry Cream Recipe post if you want to fill your puffs with creamy and sweet homemade custard pastry cream.

If not, you can also whip 300g heavy whipping cream with 30g powdered sugar until stiff peaks form as the puffs’ filling.

Put the pastry cream/whipped cream in a piping bag with a small star piping tip, wash some fresh strawberries and cut them into halves, then you can assemble your strawberry cream puffs in these 3 different ways:

Method 1: Use a piping tip to poke a hole in the bottom of each puff case. Fill the puff case with pastry cream/whipped cream.

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Method 2: Horizontally cut a puff case at its 3/4 height to create a container with lid, do not cut off the lid. Fill the puff case with pastry cream, put half strawberry (or any other fruits you like) on the cream.

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Method 3: Vertically cut a puff case into halves. Fill each half of the puff cases 70% full with pastry cream. Press half strawberry to the center to create a strawberry mochi like looking. 

Which method do you like the most? Leave a comment and let me know~ 😆

Choux pastry troubleshooting

1. why does my choux crack?

• The choux pastry could be too wet.

When baking, the moisture in the dough turns into water vapor, forming a strong steam pressure and propping up the dough, which is the key to the expansion of the puffs. Therefore, when the dough contains too much water, the choux will crack due to the high steam pressure.

– How to prevent?

1. Cook the dough on the stove long enough to ensure that enough moisture get evaporated from the dough. You will have to wait until the butter water mixture is fully boiling (instead of simmering) then add in the sifted flour quickly.

After mixing flour with boiling water, the starch will start to gelatinize, and the gelatinization is complete when the dough reaches around 96°C.

However, since the choux dough contains a great amount of butter, we will need to control the dough temperature to stay at around 80 °C, otherwise the butter will start to separate from the dough. 

Use a stainless steel pan (instead of a nonstick pan) to cook the dough, so that you could observe the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring and cooking the dough over medium low heat, until there is a film of dough on the bottom of the pan. At this point of the time, the gelatinization process should have been  completed.

• Initial bake temperature could be too high.

When the baking temperature is too high, water vapor will generate rapidly inside the puff, then the puff will be cracked before the puff shell is completely formed.

– How to prevent?

Keep it in might that every oven could have a temperature difference of 5 to 10 °C. You should always be flexible enough to adjust the baking temperature based on your observation. 

It took my oven 15 minutes at 410°F (210°C) to expand the puff shells about thrice of their original size. The whole process should happen gradually and smoothly. If your puffs grow too fast or too slow, you should rise or lower the oven temperature for 5 to 10 °C.

2.  Why my puff pastry didn’t rise?

As we’ve mentioned above, when baking, the moisture in the dough turns into water vapor, forming a strong steam pressure and propping up the dough. Therefore, sufficient moisture is the driving force behind the puff expansion.

However, if the puff pastry contains too much water, the puff shells will crack due to the high steam pressure. 

Therefore, we will have to adjust the amount of eggs to carefully to make sure that the water amount in our puff pastry is JUST RIGHT.

– How to prevent?

1. Use room temperature eggs. The warm gelatinized dough will turn hard when mixed with cold eggs, which could cause us to add in more eggs than it actually needs to make the batter smooth. We can just take out 3 eggs from the fridge before we start to make the puffs.
2. Add in eggs gradually. Once the gelatinized dough feels warm to touch (instead of hot), add about ¼ cup of eggs, mix well, then add another ¼ cup of eggs mix well. Then gradually add in eggs (½ tbsp at a time) until the batter becomes smooth and pass the 2-inch V Shape Test.

• V Shape Test

Use a spatula to pick up some batter (picture 1). A portion of the batter will slowly fall down (picture 2 and 3). When the remain of the batter can be maintained without falling, it should naturally form a 2-inch V shape on the edge of the spatula (picture 4). At this point, the batter has reached the desired texture.

3. Why did my puffs go flat?

It is super disappointing when your puffs rise perfectly in the oven while go flat as soon as they cool down.

Unfortunately, it happened to me😫! I was too sad to take a picture of these deflated puffs.

The reason why our puffs deflate is because 1. there’s too much moisture inside the shell, 2. the puff shells are not cooked enough.

– How to prevent or fix

I tried to send my deflated puff shells back to the oven to bake for a longer time. They did grow back a bit. However, the beautiful pink craquelin layer turns brownish after being baked for so long. 

On my second try, I left my puff shells in the oven after I turned off the oven, and allowed them to cool down gradually inside the oven for 10 minutes. None of them went flat this time, yayyy! 😁

According to Kristina Razon from Serious Eats, you can also try poking holes in the baked puffs to allow the steam to escape faster.

Now lets’ start!😘

How to make Strawberry Cream Puffs

EQUIPMENT

• Kitchen Scale

• Small saucepan

• Round cookie cutter

• Oven 

INGREDIENTS

– Craquelin Layer

• 40 g unsalted butter (Softened at room temperature for 1 hour)
• 25 g powdered sugar (Can be substituted with cane sugar)
• 60 g cake flour (Can be substituted with all purpose flour)
• 1drop red food coloring

– Puffs

• 50 g unsalted butter (No need to be softened)
• 100 g water
• 5 g sugar
• 1 g salt
• 3 large eggs (May not use all. I used about 125g egg liquid. See “V Shape Test” above.)
• 70 g cake flour (Can be substituted with all purpose flour)

– Strawberry Cream Puffs Filling

• 8 fresh strawberries
• 300 g pastry cream (See my pastry cream recipe here; Can be substituted with heavy whipping cream)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add 40g softened butter and 25g powdered sugar into a bowl, mix well with a spatula.

2. Sift in 60g cake flour, roughly mix with a spatula, then use hands to mix all the ingredients into a dough.

3. Optionally, use a toothpick to add a little bit of red food coloring to the dough. Use your hands to knead the dough until it looks evenly pink.

4. Fold a piece of parchment/wax paper in half, place the craquelin dough in between. Use a pin roller to roll the dough into a 6X8 inch rectangle. Keep it in the freezer.

5. Beat 3 large eggs (about 150g liquid eggs) in a bowl. Sift 70g cake flour onto a piece of parchment/wax paper (in this way you could add the sifted cake flour to the boiling mixture fast).

6. Add 50g butter, 100g water, 5g sugar, and 1g salt to a saucepot. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

7. Turn heat to medium-low, quickly add in 70g sifted cake flour.

8. Use a spatula to mix well. Blend and cook the mixture over medium-low heat for about 2 minutes, until the mixture turns into a smooth dough.

9. Transfer the cooked dough to a large mixing bowl, spread up the dough in the bottom of the bowl so that it cools down faster.

10. Once the mixture feels warm to touch (instead of hot),add about ¼ cup of eggs, mix well, then add another ¼ cup of eggs mix well.

11. Then gradually add in eggs (½ tbsp at a time) until the batter becomes smooth and pass the 2-inch V Shape test (See article above about the test).

12. Put the batter into a piping bag with a ½-inch round piping tip.

13. Preheat the oven to 410°F (210°C).

14. Line a baking pan with a nonstick baking mat or parchment paper. Optionally, dip a 2-inch cookie cutter in flour, print 8 flour circles on the parchment paper.

15. Keep the piping tip vertical to the parchment paper, leave about ½-inch distance between the piping tip and the parchment paper.

16. Pipe the batter in the center of each circle without moving the piping tip. Pipe until the batter expand into a 2-inch-diameter mound, gently lift the piping tip.

17. Take out craquelin dough from the freezer, use a 2-inch cookie cutter to cut out 8 circles.

18. Place a craquelin circle on top of each piped dough. Do not press the craquelin circle.

19. Bake at 410°F (210°C) for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 355°F (180°C), bake for 15 more minutes. Don’t open the oven door to peek.

20. Take out puffs from the oven to cool on a rack. Fill with pastry cream (see recipe; or whipped cream), decorate with strawberries or other fruits of your choice. See article above for “3 different ways to fill strawberry cream puffs“.