Recipe for choux Chantilly cakes

Jennifer Pogmore’s recipe for choux Chantilly cakes, an iconic French treat, requires precise measurements – but if you want perfection (and I think we all do when it comes to cake!) – then metric scales are essential.

 Ingredients

Makes 12-15 delicious little choux Chantilly cakes

Craquelin

75g plain (all-purpose) flour
75g cassonade or granulated sugar
55g unsalted butter, softened

Choux Pastry

60g whole (full fat) milk
60g water
50g unsalted butter, cubed
3g caster or granulated sugar
2g fine salt
70g plain (all-purpose) flour, sifted
120g eggs

Chantilly with Mascarpone

500g whipping cream, cold
150g mascarpone, cold
60g icing (powdered) sugar, sifted
5g (1 tsp) vanilla extract/1 vanilla pod

How to make Craquelin

In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until well combined. Stir in the flour until a dough is formed.

Roll out evenly between two pieces of baking paper until 3mm (1/8 inch) thick. Place the sheet of craquelin in the freezer.

How to make Choux Pastry

In a medium-sized saucepan bring the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt to a rolling boil, ensuring all the pieces of butter have fully melted. Remove the pan from the heat and add all of the flour in one go. Beat the flour into the wet ingredients immediately with a spatula.

Return to the heat and stir over the heat for 30 seconds until a ball of dough forms. Remove from the heat, tip the dough into a large mixing bowl and leave to cool for 5 minutes.

Break the eggs into a separate bowl and add gradually to the choux pastry mixture, beating

between each addition. Once smooth and glossy, transfer to a piping bag fitted with a 10mm/3/8″ or 12mm/1/2″ round piping tip. You may need a little extra egg or not all of the egg to get this consistency. Pipe 4cm or 5cm/1 ⅔” or 2″ rounds of choux pastry onto the tray.

Remove the craquelin from the freezer and cut out matching-sized circles and place them on

top of each piped choux bun.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160°C/320°F (fan oven) or 180°C/355°F (conventional oven) for

35-40 minutes. Remove the tray of choux once they are golden brown all over and allow to

cool.

How to make Chantilly with Mascarpone

Place the cream, mascarpone, sifted icing sugar and the seeds scraped from a vanilla pod (or vanilla extract) in the bowl of your stand mixer or a large mixing bowl. Whisk until the cream forms stiff peaks. Transfer to a piping bag with a star tip.

Slice the choux buns in half. Fill generously the bottom half of the choux bun with the chantilly cream by piping 3-4 rings upwards in a circular motion. Replace the tops of the choux. You can dust the tops with icing sugar to finish if you like.

The choux chantilly are best eaten the day they are made but will keep for up to two days in the fridge.

Jennifer Pogmore is a classically trained pastry chef and chocolatier (Le Cordon Bleu) who worked in Parisian pastry boutiques before returning to Le Cordon Bleu as a pastry chef instructor.

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