Ma petite kuhinjica: Princes Krofne /Choux à la Crème/Cream Puffs With Raspberry Filling And About Serbia

Princes Krofne /Choux à la Crème/Cream Puffs are all names for the single wonderful pastry dessert that so many of us love. My relationship with it brings me, of course, back to childhood. My mom used to make them for us often, because we loved them so much! She has couple of different recipe versions for them too: with white cream or classic yellow (custard) cream. I remember my brother and me didn't agree with this one either (like with many other food related matters): he liked custard cream and I always liked white cream because it was lighter. And so we would never get bored of Princes Krofne because my mom would alternate between the two versions. Here is the photo, along with her beautiful cursive writing, of the recipe:

One of the greatest memories when mom used to make Princes Krofne was to, of course, watch them puff in the oven! And eating the cream strait from the bowl while she was making it! Just about the same things my two nine year old daughters like to do. Some things never change as well as the love for this classic dessert which I made many times...and...many times it was not successful ...but every time they would get better and better as I would learn more and more tricks.
The second part of this story starts with my nine year old daughter's Nadja essay about Serbia and her perception of it, mostly thru her summer vacations over there. When it comes to culinary experiences one can have while in Serbia, one of the big flavors would be that of a Raspberry flavor! And so in all of the art in that longest last sentence of her essay, she basically says: We eat everything made of raspberries in Serbia!! This was the inspiration for the recipe but I didn't know it yet!

And did I mentioned how much both of our girls love to eat raspberries and everything made of them!!! So from that, couple of weeks later comes this great idea and the birth of this recipe I am very proud of. Lets make Princes Krofne with the Raspberry cream filling I said!!! That would be refreshing and delicious! I looked for a few recipes online but didn't quite find one that I will follow. So I used my moms original recipe (with a few adjustments on sugar and more detailed explanation on baking-something my mom assumed one should educate yourself with before baking such thing), the one with the white cream, of course (haha!) and added the raspberry flavor.

Nadja's Princes Krofne With Raspberry Filling

All the measurements are in metric system so please convert to one that suits you

Ingredients (for puffs):

150 g sunflower or canola oil
500 g water
300 g flour
6 large or 7 eggs
pinch of baking powder

Ingredients (for filling):

1 l milk
7 tablespoons sugar
6 full tablespoons flour
250 g butter or margarine (unsalted)
One bag Trader Jose's Freeze Dry Raspberries (see recipe note*)

You will also need:

Powder sugar for dusting
Raspberries seeds for dusting (see recipe note**)

Preparation (Puffs):

Bring water and oil to a boil in a medium sauce-pan. Add flour all at once; reduce heat. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until a dough forms and pulls away from sides of pan, 1–2 minutes max but probably less. Let it cool halfway. Add 1 egg while mixing with electric mixer until egg is incorporated and dough looks dry again. Repeat with the rest of the eggs, adding one at a time. Dough should be smooth. Spoon dough into pastry bag or use a spoon to make a little meringue looking puffs of dough on parchment paper lined baking sheets, spacing apart (they look prettier if you use pastry bag but spoon is just fine). Small but useful tip I read somewhere, do not leave big spikes of the dough as they will burn while baking, round it with a spoon or your finger. This is important -- leave some space between them to bake all over without burning on tops so they stay puffed when you get them out of the oven! Preheat oven to 250 C (this should have happened before so oven is hot and ready when the puffs are)

Now fun part-baking! Yes, you can open oven and peek! But after initial 10 minutes! And you should peek! One of the tricks I learned :)

Transfer baking sheet to oven (I do this one baking sheet at the time but depending how big your oven is and how confident you are that the bottom baking sheet won't result in bottoms of your puffs burned, you can do it more than one baking sheet at the time) and then turn oven off. After 10 minutes, heat oven to 180 C (it will already be at that temperature most likely) and bake for 10 minutes longer. After that it is time to peek (what a sight!) and rotate the pan, continue baking until deep golden brown all over, about 10 minutes or longer if needed (puffs will deflate if removed from oven before fully baked- lesson number two I learned). Let the puffs cool completely on or off your baking sheet while you work on the filling.

Filling:

Boil all but 300 g of milk and sugar in a medium sized pot. In separate small bowl whisk together 300 g of milk with 6 tablespoons of flour until smooth. Add the flour mixture to boiling milk and sugar. Cook on a low heat steering constantly until the cream is not ruining off to the sides once cooled completely (test this on the small plate). This depends on your stove but it can take anywhere from 5-10 minutes or more. Let it cool completely. Add 250 g butter or margarine and mix with an electric mixer until smooth. Taste for sweetness and adjust to your taste (use powder sugar if need to adjust for sweetness).

Here comes the Raspberry flavor you were waiting for! In a food processor powder one bag of Trader Jose's Freeze Dry Raspberries*. Place the raspberry powder in a tea strainer to extract and save the raspberry seeds for dusting the puffs**.(they are too heavy to stay in the filling). Never before in my life I separated raspberry seed from a raspberry!!! But they give such a cute touch and crunch!

Finally! Using a serrated knife, gently slice the top quarter off each puff and fill each puff with cream. Dust tops of cream puffs with powdered sugar and raspberry seeds!

* Note: This is one thing I do not like about the recipe: Since Freeze Dry Raspberries are not available for purchase in Serbia (not that I know at least) this recipe needs to be adjusted to make in Serbia. I will make sure I bring the supplies of freeze dry berries on my next trip there but in a meantime I know someone who is already working on finding a different way to do it. No one tried but I think adding fresh raspberries strait to the filling would not work here as they would make the filling too liquid. If you try and succeed let me know!

** Note: Kids would love to do this. It is fun and tasty!