Vetrnik - Windmill Choux Pastry
If you are Czech, then you know what this is! If you are not, you should definitely try it!
Servings: 20
Ingredients
Choux Pastry
- 500 ml of water
- 130 g of unsalted butter
- 250 g of Gluten-Free flour
- 5 eggs
Pudding ~ yolks Frosting
- 500 ml of a milk
- 100 g of sugar
- 2 vanilla puddings or 90g of plain corn starch
- 4 egg yolks
Caramel whipping cream
- 300 g of sugar
- 1 L of heavy cream (32oz)
Instructions
Choux dough
- Start with melting the butter, add cold water, and melt slowly on low heat. Do not let the water boil. Instead, stirring the water frequently while it warms up, the butter melts before the water comes to a boil.
- As soon as the water mix comes to a boil, please remove it from the heat (but don’t turn off the stove). Add ALL THE FLOUR/SALT IN ONE GO. Mix immediately for about one minute to make sure there are absolutely no lumps. This is important because you need to mix the flour well (flour needs to absorb all the moisture of the butter-water mix), and having a smooth dough means that you won’t have cracked shells later. Then, return to the stove and cook further.
- Cook the dough further on the stove so that enough moisture evaporates to get a good dough. Many recipes will talk of different signs to look for when cooking the dough. Growing up and making this with my mom, she always looked for a film of dough on the bottom of the pan and dough not sticking to a pan. But this rule goes for stainless pots only. If you have a nonstick, you should look for oil droplets forming on the bottom of the pan. Personally, I prefer to use stainless pot for cooking my choux dough.Many times I set a timer for 15 minutes and cook till the timer goes off.
- Cooling the dough is important because you don’t want to add the eggs while the dough is too hot.I prefer to cool down my dough by flattening the top as much as possible and cover it with foil to ensure the top won’t get crusty. That would cause clogging of your piping bag at the end. You can even leave this overnight to cool down completely if you do not have time to wait, but at least an hour will do and take the hot edge off.
- Add 5 eggs one at a time.You can have all the eggs whisked well in a jug first before adding it to the dough, as it is important to add it little by little. I add one egg at a time and whisk well each egg. Check the consistency of the dough as you go, and make sure you don’t add too much egg.
- When piping windmill shells, make double circles. Once you have piped choux dough on one tray, keep the remaining dough in the pastry bag until you’re ready to bake the next batch. The dough will even keep well in the fridge as long as it’s wrapped inside a pastry bag or an air-tight container. If you do not keep it covered, it creates a crusty top, and the dough will become lumpy; when piping, it will get stuck in the piping tip and get uneven.
- Since choux pastry relies on steam to expand while baking, it’s essential not to open the oven door until the choux pastry shells have set properly, this means you should never open the door during the first 20 minutes of baking. Instead, I wait till the shells are golden-colored before opening the door. This prevents steam from escaping too early, which will cause the shells to collapse.
- Bake Choux pastry at 390F for 40 minutes and without opening the oven. Your oven might need extra 5 minutes or less. After 30 minutes of baking, keep an eye on your pastries. They are done when they have a golden color. At this point, you can open the door and even check how they feel on touch, and if they are hard and shallow sounding, they should be done. If you cut one open, they need to be dry inside.Note: If Choux pastry deflates after pulling out from the oven. You need to add more time for baking.
- Pipe your next sheet pan with more pastries. Then, put the next sheet pan in the oven. While still warm, cut the baked pastries open, and make sure you do not mix or lose pieces belonging to each other. Cutting pastries while still hot will allow the steam to escape. If steam is trapped inside of the pastry, it can fall flat. Cut pastries can be store in an airtight container till ready to pipe frosting.
Pudding ~ yolks Frosting
- Whisk sugar and Vanilla pudding into milk till smooth liquid without lumps. Turn heat on medium-low, and while whisking, add egg yolks. Let your pudding come to a very light boil. Till you see one or two bubbles forming and turn off.
- I would not recommend buying instant pudding you can get at the grocery store as it has added sugar already and could get runny, and that way, your frosting won’t be firm. But, like anything else, you can get vanilla pudding on amazon!!! Click here.
- Now the IMPORTANT part of making this frosting. Before you mix butter into pudding, butter and pudding must have a similar (room) temperature. If one or the other is warmer, they will separate and won’t form a smooth and silky frosting.
- After cooking the pudding, cover with foil, set on a rack, and sit till cool down. Keep butter outside of the fridge to have it room temperature as well. Putting foil over hot pudding is to make sure crusty top from cooling won’t happen. If you get the crusty top and mix it into a frosting, it will create lumps, and those lumps will get stuck inside the piping tip. (Do not ask how I know)
- When pudding and butter are at the same temperature and ready to be combined, cream butter is first. Then, slowly add pudding to butter and whisk well. This method is called tempering. Adding spoonfuls of frosting at the time ensures the butter will come to the same temperature as pudding if there is a couple of degrees difference. The frosting should be smooth and glossy without any lumps at the end.
Caramel Whipping cream
- In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the sugar on medium-low heat until it’s completely melted, swirling the pan gently every 20 seconds or so. The sugar will start to form clumps before melting slowly. Be patient and keep an eye on it to make sure it does not burn.
- In a separate saucepan, warm up heavy cream (not boil); when heavy cream is warm, pour into the melted sugar. It will sizzle. DO NOT BURN YOURSELF! Turn heat on low and slowly remelt sugar. When Sugar is all melted, turn off and let cool down completely before storing in the fridge overnight.
Ready to assemble
- Fill piping bags with frosting.
- Whip your Caramel whipping cream into stiff peaks and pipe on one half of the pastry and Pudding frosting on the other half of the pastry. Gently sandwich them together.
- The traditional Windmill should have a glazed top. To me, the glaze is too sweet and a sticky mess. I prefer just powdered sugar for its simplicity after spending a whole day of baking. When you are using powder sugar, sprinkle only before serving, not when storing treats.
- …and this should be all. This recipe is so complex to write, and I hope I covered everything I could remember. If you have any questions, please share them with me, and I will do my best to unswear them.
Notes
Cooking tips
- If you added too many eggs – Whatever you do, NEVER ADD EXTRA FLOUR! Make another 1/3 batch of the cooked dough with water, salt, butter, and flour (with no eggs!). Once you’ve made that part of the dough by cooking it in a saucepan and having the right consistency, let it cool down (covered). Add the cooled-down dough to the runny dough a bit at a time, mixing it into the dough well until you get the right, pipeable consistency. It always works like a charm!
- Too much moisture in the shells – If that is the case, leave them in the oven longer until the shell is a darker brown in color.
- You can bake the shells a day ahead and frost the next day with no problem. Just keep them in an airtight container.
- Once you add frosting, the shell will get moist overnight, losing its crispiness.
- You can also make pudding ahead of time and store overnight in the fridge before adding butter and assembling Choux pastry.
- I make one-day baking and cooking and next-day assembly and serving fresh.