These cream puffs are gluten-free and the whip cream is actually lactose free. Both choices I made because there was no way I was baking something for theJOURNAL if I wasn’t going to be able to eat it! This tea-infused recipe series wasn’t an easy thing to commit to. I am in no way a baker and I really don’t like failing. But, I love experimenting with tea, so that’s what I thought of this experience: it was to be my tea experiment.
Decision #1: What tea?
I was looking for subtle and special. We had just received our new supply of Honey-scented black teafrom Oollo Tea, so I thought I’d give it whirl. I clearly wasn’t thinking “a Taiwanese black tea made from an oolong varietal, that seems like an easy starter tea”.
Decision #2: What treat?
I called Jenny, the owner of Oollo Tea, and asked her what might work well with the tea and she recommended anything that uses icing, cream or butter. I chose them all. I love cream puffs because they’re small, so I can eat a lot of them :) Like my decision process?
Decision #3: How do I add alcohol to this?
Seriously though, doesn’t an amazing honey aroma and a rich, smooth black tea flavour sound like it would go well with a quality bourbon? It did to me. And it does in whip cream. Grab the Bulleit.
All said and done, my cream puff tea experiment turned out more to be delicious little whip cream mini biscuit puffs.. I wasn’t vigorous enough with the dough (check out the recipe below) so it wasn’t quite airy enough. Still tasted great if you ask me though!
Do you bake with tea? Send ideas my way!!
What I happily added to the whip cream :)
Gluten-free!
Gluten-free Cream Puffs with Tea & Bourbon-infused Whip Cream
Start with the whip cream.
For the Tea & Bourbon-infused Whip Cream:
- 1 cup heavy cream or heavy whipping cream
- 4 tsp honey scented black tea (or another smooth black tea)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- ½ tsp of vanilla extract
- metal bowl and handmixer (or a stand mixer with whisk attachment)
- In a small saucepan bring the cream just to the boil. Turn off the heat and add your tea (or add your tea first if you want) and sugar.
- Cover and steep for 5-10 minutes. Taste the cream periodically after 5 minutes to see when you like the flavour. Too long and it will get bitter.
- Pour the cream through a strainer into your metal Chill for at least 5 hours in the fridge. Or overnight if you can. This is SO important. Your whip cream will not whip if it’s not cold enough. My impatient self learned this the hard way. A further tip: sit the bowl in a bowl filled with ice. This keeps the cream cold and really helps!
Make the cream puffs while the whipping cream is cooling in the fridge. Unless your skill level is that of mine, you should have lots of time.
- Whisk the cream until you have stiff peaks. So, if you take your whisk out of the cream, the peaks will be pretty stiff and hold their shape. This might take about 8 minutes. You can store in the fridge for up to 10 hours. Re-whisk if you don’t serve it up immediately.
For the pastry:
- ½ cup of butter
- 1 cup water
- ¼ tsp of salt
- 1 cup of gluten-free flour blend**
- 4 eggs
** I used Cloud 9 gluten-free all-purpose baking mix (because it has xanthum gum in it and a bag of that stuff is $14.99!) If you have xanthum gum, mix ¾ tsp with 1 cup rice flour.
- Preheat the oven to 400˚ F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a saucepan over medium-high, heat the butter, water and salt until they begin to simmer.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and vigorously stir in the gluten-free flour blend. I learned that this must happen quick or the batter gets lumpy.
- Return the saucepan to the heat, keep stirring until the mixture begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. After a couple of minutes it should be forming into a ball.
- Let the mixture stand for at least three minutes.
- Transfer to a bowl and then beat in the eggs one at a time until smooth. You can use a hand mixer, stand mixer or even a blender/food processor. Mix until smooth.
- Transfer the dough to a piping bag fitted with tip about 1 inch in diameter. You can use a big Ziploc with the corner cut!
- Pipe your dough into small rounds about 1 ½ inches tall and 1 ½ to 3 inches apart.
- Use a wet finger to smooth the tops of the pastry balls. This will also help avoid burning.
- Bake for about 30 minutes. The dough will be golden brown and the puffs will have risen quite a bit.
- Let the puffs cool completely.
- Fill with the tea-infused whip cream and serve right away.
Optionally, you can dust with icing sugar or drizzle chocolate on the puffs.
Inspired by Flippindelicious.com