Mystery Dessert

Have I mentioned before that Tool Lady likes to cook?  OK - Have I mentioned she likes to throw things together, combine recipes and flies by the seat of her pants?  Right.  Have I mentioned that everything she makes is fabulous?  Yep, everything.  I'm not sure how she does it, but she always makes the yummiest things, with random recipes, with no recipe, with random ingredients, at the spur of the moment.  Me, I need a recipe, all the ingredients and a plan. 

So, the other night she asked if I would help her in the kitchen, but said I couldn't know what we were making, it was a secret.  What?!  Ummm...OK.  So, she put me in charge of stirring a pot on the stove full of random things as she threw more things into it while she was working on another pot of random things (I tried to keep track of what she was doing, but that didn't happen).

Once one pot was finished, it's contents were put in a bowl and put in the fridge.  The other pot was mixed with something else and then spooned onto cookie sheets and put in the oven.

Are you wondering what the heck she was up to?  Yeah...so was I!  It wasn't until the first batch of baking goodness started puffing up that she finally told me...we were making Lemon Custard Cream Puffs!  Oh. My. Goodness!!!

So, now you might be wondering what recipe she followed.  Well, she was actually following 2 separate recipes and then adapting them so Fish Girl could enjoy the yumminess as well (no dairy for Fish Girl)!

The Cream Puffs themselves came from Fuji Mama and her recipe is below with Tool Lady's changes in red.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter (4 ounces) sub 1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.

3. Bring the water to a boil in a medium-size saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the butter coconut oil. When the butter coconut oil has melted, add the flour mixture all at once and stir vigorously. Cook and stir until the mixture forms a ball that doesn’t separate.

4. Remove from the heat and cool slightly (about 1 minute). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each one until the dough is smooth.

5. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough about 2-inches apart onto a greased baking sheet. Or transfer the batter to a pastry bag with a round tip and pipe circles about 2-inches in diameter and about 1-inch apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake the puffs for about 30 minutes until they are golden brown and puffy. If the puffs are medium-size, bake for about 22 — 25 minutes, and if the puffs are mini-size, bake for about 17 — 20 minutes. Remove the cream puffs from the oven and cool on a cooling rack.

What was I feverishly stirring on the stove?  A variation of the custard she found at Casa Veneracion, which is below (again, with Tool Lady's changes in red).

INGREDIENTS
1/2 c. of sugar
2 tbsps. of corn starch arrow root starch plus enough all-purpose flour to make 1/3 c.
a generous pinch of salt
2 c. of milk almond milk
4 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 tsp. of vanilla lemon extract

In a pan, mix together the first four ingredients. Stir until smooth. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.

Pour half of the flour mixture into the beaten egg yolks, beating to incorporate. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the pan, mix, and continue cooking for about 10 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom constantly, until the mixture is thick and coats the back of a spoon.

You now have your custard filling. But you have to cool the filling completely before using it. Otherwise, it will create steam and make the pastry shells soggy. So, give the filling an hour or
so to cool.

Once the puffs were all baked and the cream was chilled, she cut a little hole in the side of each pastry and piped in the custard filling (we use sandwich bags with the corner snipped off as piping bags).  In total we got 28 pastries of a few different sizes (not intentionally, sometimes it just happens).  We ate a few and stuck the rest in the freezer for quick snacks/desserts although I don't think they'll last very long.  

Check out both  Fuji Mama and Casa Veneracion for each of their individual (and I'm sure very yummy) recipes.  

In the meantime, I (we) hope you enjoy these!