Earl grey tea adds floral flavour to these white chocolate ganache cream puffs, filled with a blueberry whipped cream. Topped with a pretty blueberry glaze, these little choux pastries will knock your socks off every time.
Based on the amount of choux I have made in the last little while, I could start a blog dedicated to cream puffs. Maybe I could include an eclair or Paris-Brest recipe in that blog to keep things interesting.
I could call the blog Choux Corner, If the Choux Fits, or some other terrible pun involving the pronunciation of ‘choux’ (which actually sounds a lot like ‘shoo’ than ‘cho’).
Choux pastry is extremely versatile and is the base of many great pastries. For our recent Tutorial Tuesday, we shared a basic choux pastry recipe and craquelin recipe which would work as a great starting point for cream puffs, éclairs, or if you’re feeling ambitious, a croquembouche (a tall impressive tower of profiteroles).
Today we will be focusing on a cream puff — a cream puff filled with the dreamiest whipped earl grey chocolate ganache and blueberry whipped cream.
I steeped earl grey tea in the heavy cream before combining it with a 36% Caramelia chocolate from Valrhona, which you need to get your hands on if you have not tried it before. It is then whipped into a lush ganache and filled inside the base of the choux. The whipped cream is coloured and flavoured by a simple stove top blueberry syrup.
If you had any extra blueberries, you can whip a simple blueberry glaze for the little hats of your chocolate ganache cream puff. I topped mine of with a few gold sprinkles for good measure. That last step is completely optional but a little gold never hurt.
Recipe
Blueberry Whipped Earl Grey Chocolate Ganache Cream Puffs
Description
Equipment
- Mixing bowl
- Rubber spatula
- Rolling Pin
- 2 inch circle cookie cutter
- Saucepan
- Stand mixer
- Piping bag
- Round piping tip
- baking sheet
- Wooden spatula
- Sieve
- Whisk
Ingredients
Blueberry Whipped Cream
- 1 ¼ cup heavy cream
- 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
- 1 cup blueberries
- 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
Whipped Earl Grey Milk Chocolate Ganache
- 4 oz. 36% milk chocolate, I used Valrhona Caramelia
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 3 earl grey tea bags
Instructions
- FOR CRAQUELIN
- In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients and mix with rubber spatula until smooth.
- Roll out the craquelin dough to ⅛ inch (0.3 cm) in thickness. Use a cookie cutter and cut out twelve 2 inch (5 cm) circles. Set aside.
- FOR CHOUX PASTRY
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
- In a saucepan, combine the water, milk, sugar, salt, and butter. Bring to a boil, remove from heat, and immediately add in all the flour. Quickly stir in the flour, using a rubber spatula, and return saucepan back over medium-high heat.
- Continue to stir the mixture, without stopping, until the paste is smooth and shiny, about 1-2 minutes. It will pull away from the sides of the pan and leave a thin coating of cooked paste on the bottom when ready. The texture should resemble mashed potatoes.
- Transfer the paste to a stand mixer bowl fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low for the choux to cool down.
- While the mixer is running on medium, gradually stream in the lightly beaten eggs. Mix until well combined.
- Transfer the pâte à choux to the prepared piping bag with a round tip.
- Pipe out 12 choux mounds onto the prepared baking sheet, leaving roughly 2 inches (5 cm) between each puff.
- If you are making choux with a craquelin top, this is when you want to add the craquelin to the choux mounds.
- Place the baking sheet in the oven and immediately bake choux puffs for 35 minutes.
- Rotate the baking sheet and turn down the oven to 325°F (160°C), then bake for 10 minutes more until choux are deeply golden.
- Remove from oven and set on wire rack to cool.
- FOR BLUEBERRY WHIPPED CREAM
- In a sauce pan over medium heat, combine blueberries and sugar.
- Carefully mash blueberries with a wooden spatula and allow mixture to boil.
- Boil until mixture reduces to approximately ¼ cup of liquid. Strain mixture, set liquid aside, and let cool.
- With a whisk attachment, whip heavy cream until medium-stiff peaks.
- Add vanilla bean and blueberry syrup.
- Mix until incorporated.
- FOR WHIPPED GANACHE
- Finely chop the milk chocolate and place into a bowl.
- In a saucepan, bring the heavy cream with tea bags to a boil. Once mixture has boiled, allow tea bags to steep for at least 30 minutes.
- Pour milk mixture over the chopped chocolate and let sit for 1 minute.
- Whisk the chocolate mixture until thoroughly melted and combined. Set in the refrigerator to chill, at least 4 hours.
- Once chilled and ready to use, transfer the ganache to the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment. Whip ganache to medium-stiff peaks.
- Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a medium round pastry tip to pipe into choux pastries once baked.
Lily says
Hi, I’d like to make these but I don’t see ingredients or measurements listed for the pate a choux dough? I think your ingredient list may have gotten a little messed up when this was being formatted or something
Alexandra Daum says
Yes there’s a mistake, we’ll fix it – but this is the choux pastry recipe it should be linking to.
Natalie says
Hi, there is a problem with this recipe? I see you’ve linked to the choux recipe elsewhere, but the ganache instructions also don’t seem to match the ganache in the pictures. For one, the ganache in the pictures is pink, and more importantly, it’s the topping on the choux whereas the instructions say to pipe it into the choux.