Makes about 30
Choux Pastry
Ingredients 95g Milk 95g Water 1/4 Tsp Salt 3/4 Tsp Sugar 113g Plain Flour 165g (Roughly 3) Eggs 70g Butter
Method Preheat your oven to 220°c Add the milk, water, butter, salt, sugar into a saucepan and bring it to a boil Add the flour to the liquid in one go and use a wooden spoon to combine everything together Cook and mix for a few minutes to cook the flour and till the dough has all come together into a ball. Turn the heat off and let the dough cool for about 5 minutes, it should be around 50°c. Whisk in the eggs a little at a time and use the wooden spoon to make sure it's all combined. The mixture should be a sticky and a glossy consistency. Pipe (or spoon) your mixture onto a lined tray, leaving about 4 cms between each one. Wet your fingers and press down on any peaks, this will give you a perfect round top. Put the tray into the oven and cook for 15 minutes, then turn your oven down to 180°c and cook for a further 20 minutes. Remove the pastries from the oven and poke a hole (the same size as the piping tip you'll be using for the cream) into the bottoms of the bigne. Put them back on the tray upside down and then back into the oven, which should be off.
Leave the door a little open and let them dry out while the oven cools, this will make sure you get a crispy shell.
Crema Pasticcera
Ingredients
500ml Full Cream Milk 4 Egg Yolks 1 tsp Vanilla 50g Flour 70g Sugar Peel of a whole lemon *For this Chocolate version add 2.5 tbsp good quality cocoa powder Method
Heat the milk and lemon peels in a saucepan In a separate bowl whisk the yolks, sugar, vanilla, (cocoa) together then add the flour and mix until smooth. Add the milk little by little and whisk to temper the egg mixture.
Put the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on a lowish heat till thickened, keep stirring as it won’t take long, less than 5 minutes Turn off the heat, remove the rinds and if you want a stronger lemon flavour grate in some fresh zest Let it cool with some cling film on top of the crema to stop it from getting a skin.
Give the crema a final whisk to make sure its smooth. You can also, and should, run it through a fine sieve to make sure there are no little lumps, like flour, egg etc.
Pipe the crema into the bigne and dust them with icing sugar. Enjoy x
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