Cream Puff Craquelin

Choux au craquelin, commonly known as craquelin cream puffs, are pate a choux (the base for cream puffs, eclairs, profiteroles, crullers, Paris-Brest, St. Honore) topped with a thin crunchy cookie topping before baking. It adds a nice contrast in textures, an extra sweetness, and helps the puffs keep their round shape in the oven.

My favorite flavor is earl grey. The first time I tried an earl grey cream puff was when I visited Bibble and Sip, an Asian bakery-cafe in NYC. They had gigantic cream puffs for about $4 each.

The recipe below is my version of their earl grey cream puffs. It was an experimental project, so some of it was guesswork (like how intense the earl grey flavor should be).

If you want to change the flavor, just omit the orange and earl grey components from the recipe. Skip the steeping and re-weighing milk steps for the cream. You can use your own flavorings, including chocolate, coffee, other teas, matcha, something fruity or nutty! You can use the below recipe as a guideline. This recipe uses diplomat cream as the filling, which is a combination of pastry cream and whipped cream. It has the richness and intense flavors of pastry cream, but the lighter texture of whipped cream. It's what Bibble and Sip uses for their cream puff fillings. I also talk about making whipped chocolate ganache at the end of the post, as they're easier than making the diplomat. You can use ice cream or whipped cream as the filling too!

Craquelin (cookie) topping:

100 g unsalted butter, softened
75 g sugar
25 g brown sugar
Zest of one orange
Leaves from 2 earl grey teabags, ground up finely
100 g all-purpose flour
Pinch salt

Cream together the butter, sugars, zest, and tea leaves until light and fluffy
Add flour and salt and continue to mix just until combined
Chill dough at least 1 hour
Roll dough to about 1/8-inch thickness
Cut circles using a cutter that’s about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter (you may re-roll and cut out the scraps), and set aside in the fridge
- Alternatively, I've cut the topping like slice-and-bake icebox cookies as well.

Choux pastry (yield 24):

125 g water
125 g milk
125 g unsalted butter, cubed into 1/2-inch pieces
3 g sugar
3 g salt
175 g bread flour (all-purpose works too, but bread flour is better because it has higher protein content - thus more structure in the baked choux)
200-250g eggs (about 4-5 eggs)

Boil the water, milk, butter, salt, and sugar together in a saucepan. Once at a rolling boil, turn off the heat and add flour. Stir until a dough forms, then turn the heat back on low and continue to stir around (preferably with a wooden spoon) until a skin or “fond” forms at the bottom of the pan (the dough will be kind of like a ball now).
Either by hand or with a mixer (paddle attachment), mix the dough until cooled enough that the eggs won’t cook, then add eggs a little at a time until when you lift your spatula or the paddle attachment, a V shape drops down. If you pinch some dough between your forefinger and thumb, an hourglass-like shape should form when you separate your fingers.
Transfer the dough to a piping bag with a large circle tip. On a parchment- or Silpat-lined baking sheet, pipe 1 1/2 inch circles, spacing at least 2 inches apart from each other.
Top each choux with a craquelin cookie circle
Bake at 400°F for 5 minutes then (without opening the oven) lower heat to 375°F and continue baking for about 25-30 minutes, or until choux is puffed and completely golden brown.
Let completely cool then poke holes in the bottoms of the cream puffs with a knife

Earl Grey Cream

391 g milk + more for replacing lost weight in steeping
Tea leaves from the bags of 4 [earl grey] teabags
3 g vanilla extract
95 g sugar
44 g cornstarch
Pinch salt
100 g heavy cream
68 g egg yolks
450 g heavy cream, for whipping

In a small saucepan, heat together milk and tea bags/leaves just until boiling. Turn heat off, cover, and let steep 15 minutes
Press tea bags/leaves to extract as much milk and flavor as possible. Then supplement the weight with extra milk until 390g again. Add vanilla extract
In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, cornstarch, and salt so lumps will not form. Slowly whisk in the first cream, then the yolks. Temper in some of the hot milk mixture, then pour the whole mixture back into the saucepan.
Bring mixture to a boil while whisking constantly, then boil for about 2 minutes (still whisking) until thickened and starchy flavor is cooked out.
Push mixture through a sieve and spread out on plastic wrap to let cool quickly, then refrigerate pastry cream until needed (or set it on an ice bath if needed quickly).
When needed, smooth out pastry cream so no lumps are present. Whip the heavy cream to stiff peaks, then fold into the softened pastry cream. Place in an airtight container in the fridge. Cream will keep in the fridge for up to 3-5 days.

Assembly

Put cream into a piping bag with a medium-large round tip. Choose a tip that the cream can travel through without deflating or needing to squeeze too hard.
Insert the tip into the bottom of the cream puff and squeeze until cream just begins to ooze out the bottom.
Clean off bottoms of cream puffs, and sift the tops with powdered sugar. You can use non-melting doughnut sugar as well if you prefer.
Enjoy the same day!

An easier filling that's less steps than the diplomat cream is a whipped chocolate ganache:

Have a 1:1 ratio of chocolate to heavy cream. Boil the cream and pour over the chopped chocolate. Whisk to fully emulsify. (I added black sesame powder in the ones pictured below.) Refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours. Whip ganache to soft peak, and fill the cream puffs.
- You don't want to whip the ganache to stiff peak because the cocoa butter in the chocolate will continue to set and make the ganache harden.