Gluten-Free Cream Puff Swans #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

 

 Libby Klein I used to make cream puffs all the time back in the days before gluten was viciously cut out of my life due to my auto-immune disease. They’re a dessert that WOWs people because they look so fancy and complicated. I’d see frozen ones at functions and parties all the time and sigh with self-pity that I couldn’t have them anymore. Why it never occurred to me to just try to make them gluten-free I’ll never know. I finally gave into temptation after watching a cooking show where the pastry chef made a tart with vanilla pastry cream, mmm - Pastry cream, and I’m so glad I did. These are wonderful for a Mother's Day Brunch, or a fancy Shower or Tea Party. And they're easier than they look.

Disclaimer - Read all your labels to make sure your ingredients are gluten-free. Gluten can be sneaky.

Gluten-Free Cream Puffs

Yield: 12 large cream puffs

 Choux Paste (sounds like Shoe paste) – a most intimidating sounding recipe - is actually very easy. I recommend using a big wooden spoon for this. And if you are making the swans, you'll need a piping bag with a number 8 or 10 circle tip.

 

INGREDIENTS:

1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter

1 cup water

Hefty pinch salt

1 cup gluten-free flour blend that has xanthan gum already added

*if your gluten-free flour blend does NOT have Xanthan gum already added (like Bob’s Red Mill does not) add ½ teaspoon xanthan gum to the recipe

4 eggs

Vanilla Pastry Cream:

 INGREDIENTS:

¾ cup sugar

¼ cup cornstarch

Heavy pinch salt

1 ½ cups whole milk – Not skim milk. 

    If you’re making pastry with skim milk you don’t deserve cream puffs.

6 egg yolks

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract - or scrape one vanilla bean

Later:

1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream

 

DIRECTIONS:

 Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. In a heavy saucepan, add 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of water and bring to a boil. 

When the butter is melted, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the flour all at once, mixing quickly (the mixture will form a ball). Let it stand for a couple of minutes to cool a few degrees.

Add the eggs to the flour mixture, one at a time, mixing well with a wooden spoon after each addition. 

Transfer a large scoop of dough into your fitted pastry bag. Pipe 8 question marks onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. On a separate cookie sheet, drop the rest of the dough by large heaping tablespoons forming 6-8 mounds. I usually pipe a couple extra swan necks just in case things get hinky in the assembly.

Dip your fingertips into cold water and smooth the mounds of dough into pretty balls. They will puff us as they bake but they won’t smooth out like dinner rolls.

Bake the necks at 375° F. for 10-12 minutes, or until nicely golden. Bake the domes for 30-35 minutes until golden brown. Poke a hole in the side of each one with a knife and put them back in the oven for 2 minutes. Take them out and let them cool.

Make the pastry cream filling.

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the sugar, milk, cornstarch, and salt to a simmer. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks.

Bring the mixture in the saucepan to a boil while stirring continuously. Continue to simmer until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk hot milk into the egg-yolk mixture a little at a time to bring up the temperature of the yolks. Add everything back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat while whisking continuously until the custard is so thick it coats a spoon, like soft pudding. 

Now cook it until it boils for one minute. It will be very thick even while hot.

Remove from heat and stir in 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract or the vanilla beans. Transfer the custard to a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap down to the surface of the custard. Chill until the custard is completely cold. The plastic wrap won't even cling to the custard it's so thick.

In a separate bowl, beat the 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream until stiff peaks form.

With a rubber spatula, fold a little of the whipped cream into the custard to loosen it up. 

Then fold all the custard into the whipped cream. Chill again until thick and stiff.

Now there are 2 ways to fill your cooled cream puffs. You can either slice them in half like hamburger buns and dollop pastry cream in the middle, or you can transfer the pastry cream into a piping bag – and using the hole you poked into them at the end of baking, squeeze pastry cream into the shell until it won’t take anymore. (Yikes.) You’ll know it’s full because the shell will swell and the pastry cream with start to push back out. In my opinion, this is the best way to fill gluten-free cream puffs because the doughy center will absorb the cream. But today, we are making swans.

If you're making the swans, cut the top off each cream puff round. Cut that top in half longways. That makes the wings. Fill the bottom with pastry cream like it's the swan boat to the tunnel of love. Set your swan neck into the pastry cream and butterfly out your wings.

Top your cream puffs with a dusting of powdered sugar if desired. Then pose them in front of a Swan Princess background like this.

 

B&B owner and gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister, along with her saucy Aunt Ginny, is on the case at the annual Cold Spring Village antique show in Libby Klein’s seventh deliciously witty, paleo-themed Poppy McAllister Mystery.
 

When vintage items go up for auction, gluten-free baker and B&B owner Poppy McAllister discovers some people will pay the ultimate price...
 
It’s peak summer season at the Butterfly House Bed and Breakfast in Cape May, with tourists fluttering in and out and wreaking enough havoc to rival a Jersey Shore hurricane. Also back in town is Courtney Whipple and his family of antique dealers for the annual Cold Spring Village antique show. Courtney’s son Auggie has a unique piece he believes will fetch them a fortune if he can get it authenticated in time—a piece rival dealer Grover Prickle insists was stolen from his store.
 
Poppy and her Aunt Ginny attend the auction, hoping to bid on an armoire for the B&B, and discover a veritable armory for sale—everything from ancient blades and nineteenth-century guns to such potential killing devices as knitting needles and a blacksmith hammer. Strangely, they don’t see either Auggie or Grover—or the mysterious item they both claim to own. Then during the auction, a body falls out of the very armoire Poppy was hoping to acquire, stabbed through the heart. Now, surrounded by competitive dealers and makeshift weapons, she must find out who turned the auction house into a slaughterhouse…
 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/