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Learn how to make this French cookie choux or known as choux au craquelin in pandan flavor and filled with creamy coconut gula Melaka pastry cream. A nice twist to this delicious classic French pastry.
I have been wanting to make choux au craquelin for years but never got to do so until now. After successfully making the basic choux pastry several times, I finally mustered up the guts to do choux au craquelin.
What is choux au craquelin?
Just saying the whole name makes you feel all fancy isn’t it? 🙂 Choux au craquelin (shoo-o-krat-ker-lan) is a popular French pastry made with the basic choux pastry (or pâte à choux). Choux pastry is a dough made with flour, sugar, water, eggs, butter. The high-moisture dough combined with the heat from the oven creates steam that puffs up the pastry, making the inside custardy and hollow while the outside is crisp. With choux au craquelin, a piece of flattened cookie dough is placed on top of the pâte à choux and then baked together. The cookie dough will spread and crackle as it bakes, covering the pastry with its attractive crackles.
My twist on the classic choux au craquelin
Craquelin: Instead of using regular white sugar, I use coconut sugar. You can also use light brown sugar. It adds a nice caramel note to it
Pastry cream: Instead of vanilla pastry cream, I use coconut milk and coconut sugar to mimic the taste of Hainanese kaya jam
Choux: I added pandan juice and pandan essence to make pandan choux pastry. So you have pandan, coconut, and coconut sugar flavors in this choux au craquelin 🙂
Pandan Choux Au Craquelin (with Coconut Pastry Cream)
Ingredients
Please weigh ingredients by weight to be as accurate as possible:
Coconut pastry cream:
- 240 g canned coconut milk full fat, not lite version
- 50 g coconut sugar
- 60 g yolks about 3 yolks
- 22 g cornstarch
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 25 g unsalted butter (room temperature)
Coconut sugar craquelin:
- 32 g unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 50 g coconut sugar or use light brown sugar
- 43 g all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
Pandan choux:
- 120 g pandan juice or use water if you don't want to use pandan juice
- ½ tsp pandan essence
- 57 g unsalted butter
- ½ Tbsp coconut sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 70 g all-purpose flour
- 125 g eggs (room temperature) about 2 – 2 1/4 large eggs without the shell, you may or may not need a bit more
Instructions
Prepare the cream:
- Put coconut milk and coconut sugar in a saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Do not let it boil over
- Combine egg yolks, cornstarch, coconut sugar in a bowl
- Whisk to combine until you don't see any more lumps.
- Add about 2 tablespoon of the hot milk into the egg mixture while keep whisking. We are tempering the eggs.
- Then gradually add the rest of the milk mixture while keep whisking rapidly until combined
- Cook over low heat and keep whisking. The mixture thickens and coat the back of your spatula. Add butter and whisk until butter melts. Turn off the heat and add the vanilla extract and stir to combine. It thickens further when it cools down
- Cover with a cling wrap touching the cream directly so it won't form a "skin". Keep chilled in the fridge for at least 2 hours
Prepare the craquelin:
- Cut the butter into small cubes.
- Add coconut sugar, salt, and flour. Pulse a few times until you get a moist dough
- Scrape the dough onto parchment paper and pat to form a disc shape.
- Cover with another parchment paper on top and use a rolling pin to roll into 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) thick.
- Slide it onto a baking sheet and keep in the freezer (not fridge) for at least 30 minutes
- Then use 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter or a round glass to cut out 20 rounds.
- Arrange on a baking sheet and freeze again for at least 30 minutes or until ready to be used. They can be kept frozen and used straight from the freezer
Making the choux pastry:
- 30 minutes before you plan to bake, preheat oven to 425 F (220 C) for conventional oven. For convection oven, lower the temperature by about 20 F / 15 C
- Line one 12 x 15-inch cookie sheet or an inverted half-sheet pan ( 17 1/4 x 12 1/4 inch) with parchment. We invert the pan because the rim of the pan won't block the air flow during baking they bake evenly.
- If you don't have large pan I mentioned above, you can use 2-3 smaller pans
- Beat the eggs in a bowl with a whisk. It is very important that the eggs are not cold from the fridge. They need to be at room temperature
- Bring pandan juice, pandan essence, butter, sugar, and salt to a rapid boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over high heat.
- Lower the heat to the lowest and add flour and salt all at once
- Continue to stir vigorously until the mixture is well blended.
- Then increase the heat back up to medium and keep stirring for another 3 minutes to cook the flour.
- The dough should be smooth and shiny and you can see a layer of dough that coat the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat.
- Without scraping the bottom of the pan, transfer the dough to a mixing bowl. Use a spatula to smear the dough a few times to release some heat. Let it cool down for about 3 minutes so it is just warm without cooking the eggs that we are going to add later
- Add 1/4 of the egg and keep mixing. They will appear separate and look like big blob of mess.
- Just keep stirring and add another 1/4 and continue to gradually add as you stir until you get a paste consistency.
- If you lift the dough with a spatula, it should be too soft to hold peaks. If it is too stiff, add a tiny bit of water and mix again and check the consistency again.
- You don't want the dough to be too runny or too thick. Runny dough will make flat choux that won't really puff up or worse deflate. This is the tricky part with making choux and if you get the consistency right, the choux will turn out as it should.
Pipe the dough:
- You don't have to do this, but I draw about 1 1/2-inch circles about 2 inches apart so i can pipe the dough within that circle. This is optional
- Transfer the dough to the piping bag. Pipe the dough about 1 inch apart
- Place one craquelin on top of each dough
- I made a horrible mistake in the video by piping too close and they all stick to each other during baking, but luckily they turned out okay, but some weren't perfectly round! oh well! learned from my mistake 🙂
- If you are not ready to bake the next batch within one hour, coat them lightly with a non-stick cooking spray and cover lightly with plastic wrap. Keep them in the refrigerator.
Baking:
- I recommend baking one tray at a time. I have tried baking two trays but the results weren't good. Some choux didn't puff up as they should. Put the baking sheet on the positioned rack. Bake for 15 minutes and DO NOT open the oven door during this time
- You will see the choux balloon up. DO NOT open the oven door at any point. Then lower the temperature to 325 F (160 C) for conventional oven. Lower temperature by 20 F/15 C for convection oven, and continue baking for 40 minutes or until they are golden brown.
Release the steam:
- Quickly open the oven door and use a small knife to poke the bottom of the choux to release the hot steam. This is very important to prevent the choux from deflating
Return back to the oven for baking:
- Close the oven door and and lower the oven temperature and bake at 275 F (135 C) for conventional oven and bake for another 20 minutes.
- Turn off the oven, use a wooden spatula to crack the oven door slightly to release pressure and let the pastry dry in the oven for at least 30 minutes or 1 hour if you want them to be really dry and stay crispy longer
Cooling:
- Remove from the oven and let them cool down completely on a cooling rack before piping the filling inside
- Then you can turn the oven bake on to let it reheat to bake the next batch
Pipe the filling:
- Only pipe the filling into the choux pastry when you are ready to serve them. Transfer the filling to a piping bag fitted with 3/4-inch star tip nozzle or regular round nozzle. Pipe the filling inside the choux and serve immediately
RECOMMEDED TOOLS
*Nutrition facts are just estimates and calculated using online tools*
How to store the pastry cream
The pastry cream can be stored in the fridge for 3-4 days. Simply put the cream in an air-tight container, cover with a cling wrap touching the cream directly, and then cover with a lid.
How to store the choux au craquelin?
Choux pastry is the best on the same day it is made, but leftover happens of course. I recommend wrapping the choux au craquelin with plastic wrap and put them in a freezer-friendly container or bag and keeping them frozen. Simply reheat at 350 F (180 C) for about 5 minutes and then let them cool down before filling with pastry cream or the cream will melt.
Did you make this pandan choux au craquelin recipe?
I love it when you guys snap a photo and tag to show me what you’ve made 🙂 Simply tag me @WhatToCookToday #WhatToCookToday on Instagram and I’ll be sure to stop by and take a peek for real!
