How to Make Profiteroles au Craquelin! | Cream-Filled Pastries Recipe

Recipe below for Anna Olson’s eye-catching cream-filled profiteroles! Topped with a thin biscuit wafer, a.k.a. a craquelin, which melts and then breaks into a crackle pattern as the choux paste expands and bakes. It adds a subtle sweetness but a delectable crunch to your profiteroles, a lovely contrast to the smooth pastry cream filling.

——–

Makes 48 profiteroles
Prep Time: 90 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes

Filled profiteroles will keep, well wrapped, in the fridge for up to 2 days.

——–

• Ingredients •

Craquelin:
5 Tbsp (75 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¼ cup (50 g) packed light brown sugar
¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup + 2 Tbsp (93 g) all-purpose flour
Food colouring (optional)

Choux Paste:
¾ cup (175 mL) water
¼ cup (60 mL) 2% milk
½ cup (115 g) unsalted butter
2 tsp granulated sugar
½ tsp fine salt
1⅓ cups (200 g) all-purpose flour, sifted
4 large eggs, at room temperature
Medium egg wash (see p. xx)

Crème Mousseline (Pastry cream with added butter):
WATCH ANNA MAKE PASTRY CREAM [link]
⅔ cup (140 g) granulated sugar
¼ cup (30 g) cornstarch
2 cups (500 mL) 2% milk
6 large egg yolks
3 oz (90 g) baking chocolate, chopped
¾ cup (175 g) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 tsp vanilla extract

——–

• Directions •

1. Mix the craquelin dough. If mixing by hand, cream the butter and sugars together until well combined. Stir in the vanilla. Add the flour and stir until the dough comes together. If using a small chopper or food processor, pulse the butter, sugars and vanilla together until combined, add the flour and continue to pulse until a dough forms. Shape the craquelin dough into a disc. It can be rolled immediately or wrapped and chilled until ready to roll later (soften on the counter first).

2. Roll out the dough. Cut two sheets of parchment paper and place the craquelin dough between them. Using a rolling pin, roll them as thinly as possible, to ⅛ inch (3 mm). If you are not ready to cut the craquelin, freeze rolled sheets until ready to use.

3. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) and line two baking trays with parchment paper.

4. Make the choux paste. Bring the water, milk, butter, sugar and salt to a full simmer in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the flour with a wooden spoon, stirring vigorously until the dough “cleans” the sides of the pot (no longer sticks). Scrape this mixture into a large bowl.

5. Cool the paste slightly. Using electric beaters or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the paste at medium speed for a minute or two to cool it a little.

6. Add the eggs. Break the four large eggs into a bowl and whisk them just to blend a little. Add a third of the eggs to the flour mixture while beating at medium speed, and mix until blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining eggs in two more additions, blending and then scraping the bowl after each addition, until you get a smooth paste.

7. Pipe the profiteroles. Spoon the choux paste into a large piping bag fitted with a large star or plain tip (I used a ½-inch/12mm tip). Pipe the paste into shapes about 1½ inches (4 cm) across, lifting up the piping bag and leaving 2 inches (5 cm) between each puff to allow for expansion.

8. Top with craquelin. Use a small cookie cutter (1 ½ inch/36 mm) to cut circles of the same diameter as the choux paste or slightly smaller, and gently set them on top of each profiterole.

9. Bake the profiteroles for about 20 minutes, open the oven door for 15 seconds, then close and continue to bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the profiterole pastry is a rich golden brown.

10. Cool the profiteroles. Tip the pastries onto a cooling rack to cool to room temperature before filling.

11. Make the pastry cream. Whisk the sugar and cornstarch together in a large saucepan, then whisk in the milk, followed by the egg yolks. Place the butter and vanilla in a medium heatproof bowl and set a strainer on top.

12. Cook the pastry cream. Bring the milk mixture to a full simmer at just above medium heat while whisking constantly (but not vigorously) until it begins to bubble and is very thick, about 10 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the chocolate until melted. Pour the custard through the strainer, using the whisk to push it through. Remove the strainer and whisk the custard in the bowl until the butter has melted.

13. Cool and chill. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard, let cool on the counter for an hour and then refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

14. Fill the profiteroles. Spoon the mousseline cream into a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip or doughnut tip. Use a bamboo skewer to make a small hole in the bottom of each profiterole. Insert the piping tip and fill the profiterole until you feel resistance, then pull the tip out gently, wiping away any cream that might leak out. Chill the profiteroles until ready to serve.

hi everyone It’s time for a really big how-to lesson on bakealongs I am making profiteral occlan I’ll walk you through all the steps to make that crispy sweet topping that you bake onto a traditional shoe paste based prerolal Oh fill it with whatever you want It is going to be delicious You’re going to be so proud of yourself once you’ve mastered making Pridol or Crackklland The first part of this recipe is to make the Kklan dough So it’s a thin sweet wafer cookie that you you place the raw dough disc on top of the piped shoe paste and then bake everything together It’s a simple little preparation which is why I find using a mini chopper is sufficient Or you can also mix the dough easily together by hand I’ve got my softened butter In you go And two types of sugar A little light brown sugar and a little regular granulated sugar I might as well add my vanilla at the same time And I’ll just give this a little blitz to combine everything All right When you see it starting to come together or if you’re doing it by hand when the sugar and the butter come together then you simply add your flour I treat kala as flavor neutral It’s such a small component of a perfereral It’s the filling where the flavor resides So I don’t bother beyond the little vanilla You could add a little zest or a pinch of cinnamon if you had a related flavor in your filling but there’s really no need here It depends on the tool you’re using Sometimes it won’t if you’re using a chopper come together within the bowl But if you can pick up some of the crumbs and bring them together with your hand then you know you are well mixed and ready to roll Literally just pop the blade out here and I’ll just finish bringing the dough together by hand True to a professional baker’s kitchen each of the components in profideral okra clan can be made ahead of time So in a baking kitchen if sorry in a baking kitchen in a professional kitchen you would make big batches of the cracklan roll it out have it ready to go and then you bake off what you need each day If you want to get ahead of this you can shape your crackland dough into a disc wrap it chill it or freeze it Just pull it out a little bit before you want to roll it because it is easier to handle when it is slightly soft But when it comes time to cut the little rounds to place on each perfitteral before you bake it I find it easier to fit in my freezer if I break the dough into three pieces and then roll them That way they take up less space So you want to roll your crackland dough between sheets of parchment We don’t want to add extra flour to the dough itself and it rolls easily I find using these 9 in parchment rounds is easy because it’s easy to gauge how thinly I should roll it when it almost reaches the edges of the parchment almost So I’m trying to roll this as thin as possible About an eighth of an inch thick Let’s take a look Yeah it comes away easily It will be delicate and a bit fragile but that’s thin enough And now I’ll continue rolling Actually while I’m rolling let’s talk a minute about coloring your cracklant because you can see now it’s just a neutral natural beige color and it turns a nice even golden brown when you bake your perfider Whoops forgot the parchment on top So cracklant takes food coloring very easily If you’re making a raspberry filling for your perfidal to tint your crack a nice rose pink would be beautiful Um you could tint it Um I have made a pistachio cream filling and tinted it the my Crackland green I’ve made a saffron white chocolate filling and tinted my crackland yellow So really it is up to you Just note that because of the beige color because crackl has the brown sugar in it a subtle addition of color can sometimes get lost So it’s one place Don’t be afraid to be bold when it comes to your coloring if that’s the direction you choose to go I wanted to show you what this looks like in its natural state So then you can decide Oh and one last tip Recipes like this have so many little extra tips to include and I’m happy to share them with you If you want to make a chocolate crackl pull out two tablespoons of the cocoa from the flour measurement I spoiled the surprise To make a chocolate crackland dough measure out your flour pull out two tablespoons of the flour and replace it with 2 tbsps of cocoa And that will give you a nice rich dark cocoa colored crackl Think I can go a little thinner on that Just a little bit And now for the last of the three pieces If you’ve never seen how KClan has been if you’ve never seen before how KClan’s made it’s a bit surprising how simple it is It’s not that complicated but it makes such a difference and it gives your perfider such an elegant look You can do the same to eclair’s too Basically any shoe paste preparation Let’s take a look Almost there Okay So to make these easier to cut I’m going to pop them in the freezer while I make my shoe paste All right Now to make one of my favorite pastries Seriously it is so fulfilling to make shoe paste and pipe it into the shapes and watch it double triple quadruple in size in the oven So unlike pie dough or sweet dough or puff pastry that is a dense dough that’s rolled shoe paste you work with while it’s warm and it really does have a softer consistency to it So what I have to do is heat up my liquids I have a combination of milk and water And you’ll see if you start looking at different shoe paste recipes some will have more milk than water and others will have more water than milk or even all water And the water can really make a difference in how crisp your proffer or eclair’s bake up depending on what you’re doing with your shoe paste Of course I favor more water than milk but I do like a bit of milk in there for the tenderness of the shoe paste I add just a touch of sugar a little salt and my butter So now I’m going to bring this up to a simmer just until it starts just barely bubbling a little bit but you want to have your other ingredients ready So I’ve got my flour measured That’s going to get stirred into the liquid And I have my eggs on reserve So four large eggs and they’re at room temperature This is very important because we’re going to be adding them to our hot paste base Now that I’ve got a simmer I can add my flour all at once Stir quickly I I want to combine this Turn this into a thick paste And you want to give the flour a moment to cook out And it’s hydrating right now which means the protein is developing If you’ve ever made cinnamon buns using the tangzong method where you make this cooked flour water paste it’s more liquidy than this It’s the same principle We want to give our paste structure so that it holds in the air when it hits the heat of the oven There we go It’s cleaning the sides of the pot I’m making sure there are no flowery lumps and that the paste cleans the pot easily so I can lift it out in one big piece Pop that off And you want to have your mixer ready or you can use electric beers When I first went to cooking school I was taught to make shoe paste by hand And that is a good exercise in what not to do It takes so much elbow grease to make shoe paste by hand And I’m so glad we don’t have to do that anymore Now this is a very important step And if it’s your first time making shoe paste don’t skip this step We actually have to blow off some of the steam in the shoe paste Otherwise look at that steam coming off of that That’s excess moisture that if we didn’t do this step beating your paste base for a minute or so until you see this steam start to disappear you would have perfidals that are too wet and too heavy and you wouldn’t get the volume that you want Because what we want out of a perfidal is a crisp shell with a hollow center An easy step and such a critical one While that’s mixing I’ve got my four whole eggs And I like to give them a little whisk first That way it’s easier to add them in small increments to the dough You add the eggs a little at a time There’s another reason to let this cool down for a moment because if you add your eggs to a boiling hot paste it’ll start cooking the eggs and then they won’t have any room to move when they hit the heat of the oven Okay I’ve just got mere wisps of steam now so I can start adding the egg It’s a moderate speed And before you add more egg let the last addition fully work its way in Make sure it’s nice and smooth And that strange mixture is your shoe paste And this is a dough you want to work with while it’s still warm It can cool to room temperature So I don’t want you to worry if with your oven you have to do bake your shoe pastry in batches It’s not going to be compromised But definitely you want to work with this freshly made so it’s nice and soft and pliable Just making sure it’s smooth right from top to bottom It’s also just such a gratifying dough to play with I really do love it Okay now to get yourself ready for the piping stage For this recipe I’m making 48 perfiderals So you’ll need two baking trays lined with parchment I’ve got my piping bag fitted with a large plain tip This is half an inch across You can do a star tip of course but putting the crackl is going to hide any detail of the perfitteral so it’s not really needed here [Applause] All right Now the first thing I do before I even start piping is because of the paste consistency of the shoe if I start piping it’s going to pull up the parchment So I just pipe a couple of dots on my tray and that locks the parchment in place And then I start piping So I’m going to get 24 per tray So I’ll do 4×6 And a little tip when it comes to piping your shoe paste you want to hold your piping tip basically at the top of where you want to stop piping your little proffer So the temptation sometimes is to hold the tip too low to the tray and you’ll end up with the paste spreading out instead of up Now I can continue on And an exercise like this is why baking with kids is so great because it’s applied math and science and then you get something sweet and delicious at the end So whether it’s calculating how to fit 24 evenly spaced pererals on your tray the measurements doubling a recipe cutting a recipe in half so many different elements [Applause] [Music] So there [Music] [Music] All right Now even though I’m putting a cracklon disc on top of each perfider if you wanted to you could just bake them up without it Two things you need to do You notice how my shoe paste has nice little kisses at the top little points You don’t want to bake your perfidal with that because that point will stay in place and burn before the rest of the little pastry has baked So dip your finger in cool water and you just press down on it Here I can just show you one to make it disappear and then your peripheral will rise easily Baking them without the crack clay you’ll want to put an egg wash on So just whisk an egg with a tablespoon of water and brush the tops That way you get an even browning and they still will bake up hollow crisp on the outside If you want to make a French little treat called a shuket do that step with the egg wash and sprinkle it with a baker’s sugar It’s like a soule sugar and they’ll become crispy with just a hint of sweetness and you pop them in your mouth and well they’re filled with air so they’re just an easy little sweet treat These are ready to top with the crackland which I’ll grab from the freezer All right I’ll start one layer at a time The dough is easier to handle while it’s frozen or at least chilled So don’t worry about keeping it in the freezer When you look at my shoe pipings they’re about an inch an inch and a quarter wide So I’m using a 1 and 1/2 in round cookie cutter So that way when the crackland disc is placed on top and then bakes it sort of as the perfideral bakes up the crack lamb melts and covers it and develops that crackle and crust at the same time And you just set each disc gently on top [Applause] You can use this technique if you’re making eclares as well You just need a longer cutter slightly larger than the length of your eclair’s that you’re piping Any little scraps can be saved and rerolled Here we go These are now ready for the oven What’s different about baking perfiderals with a cracklant topping is you bake them at a moderate oven 350 fahrenheit 180 Celsius and that’s because of the sugar content in the crackland itself Typically you bake eclair or prerol you bake shoe paste at a high temperature more like 400° So what I do is I pop these in the oven I set the timer for 20 minutes Then what I do I don’t change the oven temperature but I open the oven door for 15 seconds This lets out moisture any steam the perfererals let out Then I close the oven door still leave the oven at 350 And then I bake them for another 10 to 15 minutes When they’re an even golden brown brown on top Basically if you pick one up it should be light as air Then you know they’re fully cooked And now it’s time for assembly Look at the beautiful peripherals with the cracklant topping but you still can see the shoe paste on the sides They’re light as could be so I know they’re hollow And now they’re ready to be filled If you are making these ahead of time it’s best to freeze them unfilled And then you can pull them out And I like to pop them in the oven more a 300°ree oven 150 Celsius for just a couple minutes just to dry them out and make sure they’re nice and crisp before you fill them To fill them I have a chocolate creme museline which is simply a pastry cream And you can see the full video for my pastry cream recipe right here on the channel The link’s right below And what I do is while the pastry cream is warm I add 3 oz 90 g of kuvature baking chocolate And I melt in instead of using my typical 60 g of butter for a traditional pastry cream that I would use for a cake or a tart filling I actually add 175 g This creme museline is thicker and richer thanks to the butter but it’s more acet and I like that for a preferral filling So it won’t ooze out even as say the temperature in the room warms up It is my first choice for filling So you have a couple of options If you have just a regular small plain tip to fill your profiderals you want to take a bamboo skewer poke a hole in the bottom open it up a little bit That way your piping tip can fit inside and it can fill just until you feel resistance I happen to have a donut filling piping tip so it can insert into the perfidal and fill it all in one move [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] I think that’s looking good enough to start And so you pipe with the chocolate filling until you feel you do feel the resistance when it starts filling up and you can feel the weight of it And sometimes it takes a try or two and you overfill it and it starts oozing out one side or the other So you’ll get the hang of it soon enough Just checking my pressure gauge as I fill There we go Oh yeah that’s got a full dose of chocolate creme muslin Just like sauces in the cooking world sauces in the baking world have derivatives So a pastry cream is a fundamental sauce or filling But when you add butter like I did today it’s a creme museline If I were to add gelatin while the pastry cream is warm and then fold in whipped cream that would be a creme diplomat a diplomat cream that almost sets up like a mousse And if I were to take that same warm pastry cream add gelatin but then fold in whipped egg whites after it’s cooled to room temperature that is creme shaboost And that makes an airier filling for tarts and for cakes It really is about matching your other textures in your desserts And it makes you realize you have a lot of creativity in the kitchen when it comes to baking I’ll just do a few more of these [Music] [Music] When I find a hole to fill the perfidal I always look for a weak point in the peripheral where there’s a slight crack That way I know the pastry is tender and also because it’s easier to fill and it won’t break through or burst through on another weaker point I’m controlling where it goes This will be my last one I don’t think you need to watch me fill 48 perfidals do you i’ll save that for [Music] later And you can leave the perfalserals in their glory and let that crackling shine through But I find even to highlight the detail a little bit just a the lightest dusting of icing sugar Not a full coating We’re not making jelly donuts Really makes a difference There we go It highlights that beautiful crackle And then you want to keep these in the fridge once they’re filled I tend to like to serve my filled proffer the day I fill them Well I was thinking I was going to make a crocmbbush tower there but I need the caramelized sugar for that There is a video right here on the channel for crocombush if you want to check it out But now you’ve got what it takes to master making shoe paste topped with that crispy sweet cracklan topping that really looks professional I’ve shared my years of experience so that you can get in the kitchen bake with confidence And let me tell you when you make something like Proffer’s Okla you will feel like a pro I love you bakers You’re the best I’ll see you again for another bakealong recipe Enjoy Look at all that space for that chocolate filling Did you hear the crunch just the right amount of crunch but it’s tender too I’m glad I opted for a chocolate I was in the mood for chocolate Bye everyone