These strawberry cream puffs are such a gorgeous and simple dessert. If you follow my instagram, then you may have seen my videos of making this beautiful pastry on my IG stories last week. If you missed it, you can still check it out in my IG stories called “choux pastry and berry puffs”. I love making choux pastry. Whether it’s classic choux pastry, chocolate choux pastry, chocolate eclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, paris-brest etc., these are a guaranteed crowd-favorite, and one of my favorite French pastries and desserts to bake. And I realized I hadn’t made them in a while. So I decided to make these strawberry cream puffs that are a simple yet beautiful dessert, perfect for any occasion, any celebration. Here’s what I’m sharing in this post.
Strawberry cream puffs components
Choux pastry – We’ll be following a basic choux pastry recipe. I won’t go into too much detail about this in the post, but you can find my detailed troubleshooting post on choux pastry in the linked article. Craquelin – Colored in red to complement the strawberry puffs. This will be a crispy cookie-like topping for choux pastry, like in this choux au craquelin recipe. Completely optional, and only recommended if you are an advanced baker or prefer a challenge. Strawberry cream – Strawberry flavored whipped cream stabilized with gelatin. This will be the filling. A simple strawberry compote – This will also be in the filling. But you can leave it out if you prefer.
This cream puff recipe can be adapted in three ways. You can choose whichever option you like. I’ve marked the recipe below as EASY because of the easiest option available. So make sure to read the whole recipe before making these strawberry cream puffs.
Why I love these strawberry cream puffs
As noted above, this recipe has three different difficulty levels. So depending on time and your level of comfort, you can adapt this recipe to your preference. The easy version is perfect for beginners. With this detailed choux pastry guide, even a beginner can perfect these pastries. You can make these with frozen strawberries or fresh strawberries. It’s a light dessert, so perfect for any occasion. And they look so damn gorgeous!
How to make strawberry cream puffs
Choux pastry puffs
Choux pastry is really simple to make, but many people get it wrong because they stumble over a few key steps. However, with my step by step choux pastry guide, you can absolutely perfect it. The trick is to identify the different stages of the choux dough, rather than relying on strict times and amounts given in most recipes.
Here’s a quick rundown of the choux pastry recipe
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter, salt and sugar with the water, and bring it to a boil.
Add flour (sifted) in one go to the water-butter mixture, and stir until you have a smooth dough with no lumps. The flour should have absorbed all the water.
Cook the dough for a couple of minutes until you have a smooth dough. I use a rubber spatula or wooden spoon for this. If the dough splits into oil and clumpy flour – then you’ve gone too far! Let the dough cool for a little in a bowl.
Whisk all the eggs in a jug or bowl. Make sure the yolks and whites have mixed well.
Add this egg mixture in 4 – 5 additions, into the dough, while whisking each addition well before the next. You don’t have to wait until the dough is cool completely, but just a little cool so it doesn’t “cook” the eggs.
Add enough eggs to form a glossy, pipeable choux dough. It should NOT be runny. That’s why you have to check the consistency after each addition of eggs to make sure you’re adding just enough. I usually only have to add about 3 1/2 eggs for this recipe.
Some recipes add eggs one at a time. You can do this, but always whisk the last egg and add it a little at time to avoid a runny choux pastry dough.
When the choux pastry is ready, it can be piped onto a baking sheet with parchment paper and baked in a preheated oven until golden brown.
If you want to make strawberry craquelin cream puffs, then place a cookie disc on top of each piped choux pastry mound. This will spread as the choux dough cooks and expands below it.
Make sure to prick the baked cases as they cool to get nice, puffed up, crisp profiterole cases. Then let them cool completely before filling.
Craquelin topping for the cream puffs
You can make Strawberry craquelin choux pastry with a cookie topping. The cookie topping is a great way to add a sweet crunch to cream puffs. Plus, you can color it for a pop of color and jazz up your cream puffs. Craquelin dough is really easy to prepare. Butter and white sugar are creamed together, and then red food coloring and flour are added to form a soft, red colored dough. Once you have the craquelin dough ready, roll it out to a thickness of about 3 mm. You can do this by placing the dough between two pieces of parchment paper, OR cut the dough in half and roll out each piece inside a gallon ziploc bag (that’s about 11 x 10 inches). Freeze the rolled out dough on a flat tray until completely hardened. When the dough has hardened, use a 1.5 inch cookie cutter to cut as many circles as possible. I can get about 40 cookies with one recipe. Transfer these cut cookies back into the freezer until needed.
Filling for the choux pastry
The main part of the filling is the strawberry whipped cream. To make this, I macerate frozen strawberries with sugar (i.e. let it sit overnight in the fridge), and then blend it into a smooth liquid. The whipping cream is whipped to a soft peak with a little sugar, while adding dissolved gelatin (as a stabilizer). Then finally, the blended strawberry is added and whipped further to thicken. It’s important not to over-whip the whipped cream because it can curdle. This filling for the strawberry cream puffs can be kept in the fridge overnight too. So you can make it ahead of time. Just whisk it lightly before using it again, to make sure the cream is nice and creamy. Another optional add-in for the filling is some fresh, macerated strawberries. This adds a fresh fruitiness to the filling. A pastry bag fitted with an open star tip is filled with the strawberry cream and set aside until you’re ready to fill your choux pastry cases.
Filling the cases
You can fill the choux pastry cases in two ways. As you can see in the pictures, the second method is how I filled the choux pastry for this post. The first method is easy (no need for fancy piping tips), and will also use less of the strawberry cream. The second method uses more of the filling (since you are overfilling the cases), but looks more fancy. To make these strawberry cream puffs even better, add a little of the macerated strawberries in the middle, over the filling.
My best tips to perfect this dessert
Choux pastry is one of the key components for this recipe. And perfecting it easy! Just read my post on how to make choux pastry for a detailed breakdown of all the techniques for choux pastry. Make sure all the ingredients for the choux pastry and craquelin are at room temperature. The flour should be sifted and ready to be added as soon as the water-butter mixture is ready. Keep the craquelin discs in the freezer until needed. Whipping cream (35% fat) whips up better when completely chilled. So make sure the cream and the blended strawberry are nice and chilled when making the strawberry cream filling.
I documented the WHOLE process of making this recipe on my instagram too. So if you want to check it out, you can do so on my IG story albums named “Choux pastry and Berry puffs“.
When to serve these
Valentine’s day – The red and pink make these one of my favorite valentine’s day desserts. Weddings – These are really cute and gorgeous for weddings or bridal parties. Baby showers – Change strawberries to blueberries and top with blue colored craquelins, so you can make either pink or blue cream puffs for baby showers! Dinner parties – These would be perfect for a cocktail party!
The light and airy strawberry cream puffs with a berry packed cream filling are the perfect light dessert or snack. But with the added sweet crunch of a strawberry craquelin cream puff, these are even more irresistible.
They are light enough for everyone to want one for dessert, and delicious enough for everyone to want more than one! 🙂
With three different difficulty levels to choose from, you can adapt this recipe to your preference and comfort level. The results will be just as gorgeous and delicious!
