A cruller with a fruity filling — let’s get baking French style

Never mind whether they're the small ones from the deep freeze or the larger ones fresh from the bakery — if cream puffs are one of your favorite desserts, you'll be licking your lips for our French Cruller with Strawberries. This cream-filled creation is essentially not that different from a cream puff, just bigger and more beautiful. Baking it requires making choux pastry, but have no fear — with our recipe this is easily achievable.

You'll need:

For the choux pastry:

  • 15 fl oz water
  • 4.4 oz butter
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 2 cups flour
  • 4 eggs

For the filling:

  • 10 fl oz milk
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 3 tbsp sugar

In addition:

  • 5 large strawberries
  • icing sugar

Here's how:

  1. Bring the water to the boil with butter and salt. Now add the flour and mix it in with a wooden spoon until a dough is formed.
  2. Place the cooled dough in a bowl and mix the eggs in. It may take a while and some effort, but with continuous stirring creates a firmer and more uniform dough.
  3. Transfer the dough into a piping bag with a round nozzle. Now squeeze out five parallel rings of dough around the edge of a springform pan. This will leave a hollow in the middle. The resulting creation will look like a giant donut. As the dough is quite stiff, you will need to use a lot of force. Next, add a layer of four rings, then one of three, then two, then one. Place a glass in the hole in the middle and bake the dough for 15 min at 360°F. Make sure the oven is on a setting where the dough will be heated from above and below. The glass will prevent the rising dough from running into the middle.
  4. For the filling, beat the egg yolks and the sugar together with a hand whisk until they are foamy. Add the foam to the milk and warm it until the ingredients thicken. Take care that the mixture doesn't boil. Pour the cream into an icing bag with a round nozzle.
  5. Cut the cruller in half horizontally. Pipe the cream in a thick zigzags around the lower half of the cruller. Cut the strawberries into slices and lay them in a circle on top of the cream. Now place the upper half of the cruller on top of the strawberries and dust it with icing sugar.

As an alternative, you can fill your cruller with pudding powder mix and a different type of fruit. Expert or experimental bakers might even want to try baking a batch of mini crullers. For that, you can use a muffin pan for shaping your dough spirals. All the other steps are the same, so what are you waiting for? 

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