We sure do seem to go through a lot of flat breads in this house. Sometimes, it’s to go with Middle Eastern food, sometimes Indian or Sri Lankan, sometimes Mexican. I have a few different types of flat breads I make, depending on what else I’m making, and this is one of my favourites.

The curd (you can use yoghurt) and oil makes this into a very soft naan with an understated taste.

Here you can see the naan with Greek eggplant dip, hummous, beet & feta cheese pizza, and blackened grill seer fish.

It’s easy to make and, better yet, tastes better than anything you could ever buy.

Wild Yeast Naan

Ingredients

• 130 grams (1/2 cup) sourdough starter (100% hydration)
• 50 grams (1/4 cup) oil
• 110 grams (1/2 cup) yoghurt or curd
• 220 grams ( 2 1/4 cups) flour
• 8 grams (2 teaspoons) sugar
• 5 grams (1 teaspoon) salt
• 4 grams (1 teaspoon) baking soda

Directions

1. Mix the wet ingredients. Mix the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix.
2. Let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes for the flour to absorb the liquid (autolyse).
3. At this point, you can do the knead bread thing for 5 minutes or until it’s smooth and elastic, or you can be lazy like me and knead it for 10 strokes, let it rest 15 minutes, knead for 10 strokes, let it rest 15 minutes, and so on for a total of 4 kneads. It’ll still pass the window pane test and I won’t kill my joints.
4. Let it rise to double in volume (for my starter, that’s usually 2-4 hours).
5. Divide into 6 equal-sized pieces and form into balls. Let rest 20 minutes.
6. Roll out into circles (or, if you’re like me, vague amoeba-like shapes) about 6 or 7″ in diameter.
7. Dry-fry until golden brown, then flip and fry the other side until it’s also golden brown. At medium, that’s around 30-45 seconds per side. You can also bake them.

If you want to make the naan with commercial yeast instead of wild yeast (sourdough), you can.

Naan

Ingredients

• 50 grams (1/4 cup) oil
• 110 grams (1/2 cup) yoghurt or curd
• 65 grams (1/4 cup) water
• 285 grams (2 7/8 cups) flour
• 4 grams (1/3 packet or 1/2 teaspoon) instant dry yeast
• 8 grams (2 teaspoons) sugar
• 5 grams (1 teaspoon) salt
• 4 grams (1 teaspoon) baking soda

Directions

1. Follow directions as for the wild yeast naan. Add the yeast to the dry ingredients.

You can also fry them in oil, but it’s unnecessary. There’s enough flour on the naan from rolling them out that they don’t stick, even when I use el cheapo aluminum lids (two, one stacked on top of the other, to reduce burn points from the flame) because that’s all I had to work with at that time. And also because I usually make a double or triple batch of these with two burners going – when I get into a good rhythm, I can even do three burners, but two is easier and less stress.

As I mentioned above, I use curd–water buffalo curd, to be more specific. Water buffalo curd is a cultured dairy product similar in taste and texture to yoghurt and is higher in fat than full-fat yoghurt since water buffalo milk is higher in fat than cows milk. If you’re using a yoghurt, especially if it’s low-fat, then you may have to increase the flour needed to around 300 grams, possibly more.

These can easily be frozen. I do this frequently, and I then warm it up in the microwave and it’s just as good as the day I made them.

I’ve also used this dough – the equivalent of two balls for naan – for a 10″ pizza crust. Turned out very nice indeed.

If you give this a try, please let me know how it works for you.

I wanted something a bit different from my usual repertoire of fish dishes and, in my search across the Internets, came across this recipe. Since we’d accidentally walked away from the grocery store with a couple of extra bell peppers (oops! sorry!), I figured this would put those wandering bell peppers to good use. Even though the original recipe was for salmon, I figured it would be fine for my seer fish, which is part of the mackerel family. Seer doesn’t have a strong flavour, so it’s pretty adaptable.

I added lemon and lime juice to the recipe since I thought it would go well. You can use one or the other – I used both because I had both.

Moroccan Spiced Fish

Ingredients

Serves: 6

• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 1/4 cup lemon or lime juice, freshly squeezed 
• 2-4 green chilli peppers, minced
• 5-10 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 kg (2 pounds) fish
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups red, yellow, or orange bell peppers, chopped
• 1 large tomato, chopped

Directions

1. Mix together the salt, pepper, turmeric, lemon or lime juice, chilli peppers, and garlic, then marinade the fish in this mixture for at least a half hour.
   
2. On high heat, sauté the bell pepper in the oil until semi-soft, about a minute or two. Add the tomato, and sauté for another minute or two.
   
3. Add the fish mixture to the pot and add water if necessary.
   
4. Lower the heat to low, cover, and let simmer for half an hour or so. The sauce will be thick when done. The photo below was about halfway through the simmering. At then end, the liquid level was much lower, about 1" deep in the pot compared to about 3" deep with fish.
   

Remove the seeds from the green chillies if necessary, or use fewer of them, if you want a dish that’s less spicy.

Happily, this turned out to be a great experiment. Both Fahim and I loved the flavours in this dish and thought it complemented the seer fish wonderfully. I would love to try this recipe with salmon as well.

When Fahim’s parents come for a visit, they sometimes bring things with them, usually food items of one description or another. It might be sweets like muscat or jellabies, or fruit from their trees like mango or papaya. Sometimes, it’s green chillies or other vegetables. This last visit? Awara.

Awara look a bit like snap peas, only bigger, badder, and on way more steroids. But are they a pea or a bean and what the heck are they?

As it turns out, awara (in Sinhalese) is the immature common jack bean (in English).My mother in law confirmed that the leaves and flowers are the same as a picture I found, although the plants she’s seen have darker purple flowers.

At Fahim’s parent’s house in Kurunegala, they have a plot of land behind the house that Fahim’s mom uses as a garden. She has all manner of plants growing in there, including banana plants, papaya plants, a curry leaf tree, and teak trees. Other vegetables come and go as she feels like growing them and the crops get rotated. Along the back fence, a neighbour woman apparently has grown awara, using the fence to support the bean’s vines. The neighbour gave my mother in law permission to pick some of these beans. They are apparently edible when eaten immature, but don’t eat too many as they can be mildly toxic.

I wondered what we would do with this bean thing, and, as it turned out, Fahim’s mom wanted to make it into a mallung. I love mallungs.

Here, the Awara Mallung is shown along with a carrot curry and Tamarind Fish Curry.

Awara Mallung

Ingredients

• 3-4 cups awara, sliced finely and in half lengthwise
• 5-6 curry leaves, torn
• 2 teaspoons Maldive fish flakes
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water
• 100 grams coconut, freshly shredded
• 4 green chillies
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 small onion
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 t turmeric

Directions:

1. Put the awara, curry leaves, Maldive fish flakes, salt, and water into a pot over medium heat. The water should be not quite covering the awara.
2. Simmer until the awara is tender and the water is mostly gone.
3. Grind together the coconut, green chillies, garlic, onion, pepper, and turmeric, then add to the awara.
4. Stir to combine and cook another couple of minutes, stirring constantly.

If you don’t have curry leaves, omit. There is no substitute.

Maldive fish flakes are flakes of dried tuna. I’ve heard that dried shrimp can be substituted, but have not tried this myself.

It’s possible in some areas to buy freshly shredded or frozen freshly shredded coconut from Asian markets or restaurants. If you don’t have either, you can use desiccated shredded coconut and add some hot water, then allow it to rehydrate. It won’t taste as good, but it’s as close a substitute as there is.

So. The big question. How’d it taste? Not entirely like beans, but pretty close. And it was pretty darn good.

Have you had jack beans before? If so, how do you prepare them?

Rich Cake is another variety of fruit cake (or, as I would call it, Christmas fruit cake ) that is commonly served at weddings and at Christmas in Sri Lanka. Since I’d recently made a coconut fruit cake, Fahim had been begging me to make a Rich Cake.

So I did.

Here it is served with whipped cream. Yeah, I know, no marzipan topping – what’s wrong with me? What can I say? We like whipped cream.

I made some modifications to the recipe – we don’t use alcohol at all, so traded cream for the brandy, for example – but you can see the original here. I also halved it since, honestly, we don’t need a huge amount of cake. And because we don’t have a Bundt pan – I didn’t know they even existed in Sri Lanka since I haven’t seen one here – I’m using an 8′ x12" pan. And I converted the recipe to metric since, well, I’m a metric girl.

There’s also a question about the semolina flour that’s listed in the original recipe. Do they mean semolina, which is a wheat product that is commonly in small little granules like cream of wheat? Or do they mean that that’s supposed to be ground fine into a flour? Cuz I haven’t seen it in flour form here. Ah well. As it turned out, I didn’t have any semolina, so used regular all-purpose wheat flour instead. Worked fine.

I’ve also switched out dark raisins for blackcurrents since that’s what I have on hand. Honestly, if you don’t like a particular type of fruit, switch something else for it. It doesn’t matter.

I omitted cardamom since Fahim doesn’t like it and cloves since I react badly to it. Instead, I added 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon mace since that I have on hand.

And seriously, why use ounces in a recipe without specifying whether you intend it as the volume or the weight type of ounce? Cuz 8 ounces, the weight type of ounce, is 226 grams. But 8 ounces, the volume type of ounce, of raisins is 151 grams. That’s a HUGE difference. So I’m going with these ounces being weight and hoping for the best.

Of course, that means this cake will be hugely fruit-dense. Hugely. But we’re okay with that.

Traditional Christmas Cake of Sri Lanka

Ingredients

• 110 grams (4 ounces) seedless dark raisins
• 170 grams (6 ounces) seedless golden raisins
• 110 grams (4 ounces) mixed glace fruit
• 110 grams (4 ounces) preserved ginger, drained
• 225 grams (8 ounces) chow chow preserves or melon and ginger jam, drained*
• 55 grams (2 ounces) mixed citrus peel (no pith)
• 110 grams (4 ounces) glace cherries

Fruit = 890 grams total

• 110 grams (4 ounces) raw cashews or blanched almonds

Fruit + nuts = 1000 grams total

• 30 grams (2 T) cream
• 85 grams (6 T) butter
• 190 grams (1 cups) granulated sugar
• 6 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
• 1/2 teaspoon mace
• 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
• 1 teaspoon rose essence
• 175 grams (1 cup) semolina flour
• 3 egg whites

Directions

1. Generously grease an 8"x12" or 9"x13" cake pan and set aside.
2. Chop raisins, mixed glace fruit, preserved ginger, chow chow preserves and citrus peel into small pieces. Cut glace cherries in halves. Chop nuts very finely.
3. Combine fruits and nuts in a large bowl, sprinkle with cream, cover and set aside. 
4. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add grated lemon rind, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla extract, almond extract, and rose essence and mix well. Add the semolina and beat until well combined.
5. Add the chopped fruit and nuts to the cake batter, stirring until fruit and nuts are dispersed evenly.
6. In another mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff.
7. Gently fold the beaten egg whites throughout the cake batter.
8. Turn into prepared cake pan.
9. Bake in a 180C/350F/gas mark 4 oven for about 45 minutes.
10. Cool in pan on wire rack for 15 to 20 minutes, then remove cake from pan. Allow cake to cool completely, preferably overnight.
11. Serves 12 or more.

If you don’t have or don’t like a certain type of fruit or nut, sub it with something else. As long as the weight of all the fruit and nuts add up, it’ll work. You can use desiccated coconut instead of nuts if you prefer, or another type of nut altogether.

I used regular all purpose wheat flour since I didn’t have any semolina.

And how’d it turn out? Fahim said that it tasted just like Rich Cake should, but mine wasn’t dark enough and the fruit was too large to be authentic Rich Cake, ie, the way it’s made here in Sri Lanka. The reason the cake wasn’t dark enough? I cut the fruit into small pieces only, not absolutely minced them to death like the original recipe called for. More specifically, the chow chow we bought, which came in a jar in a heavy syrup, is dark dark brown when it’s like that, and it’s also got a rather gelatenous kind of texture. If I’d chopped that even finer, it would have fallen apart more in the cake to the molecular level, and that would have made the cake look even darker. Or, at least, that’s my theory.

On the other hand, Fahim didn’t care that the fruit was recognizable and the cake wasn’t as dark as authentic. Since it tasted the way it should, it was great.

Yay! Success!

If you like fruit cake – and I do recognize that there are some weirdos in the world who don’t, so if that’s you, why are you reading this anyway? – then you’ll love this. Tell me what you think after you try it out.

I honestly didn’t think of eating chickpeas for breakfast, but then, I previously hadn’t considered eating mung beans for breakfast, and yet mung beans work well for breakfast – Fahim loves it. So when Fahim’s mom suggested making these, I was excited.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t realize at first that Fahim’s mom intended the chickpeas to be for breakfast. I thought they were going to be a lunch and dinner curry. Then the next day, when Fahim’s mom starts cooking it, that’s when I figured out – finally! – that this was meant for breakfast. That, and I think it might be because someone pointed it out to me.

Tempered Chickpeas

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

• 2-3 tablespoons oil
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 1 sprig curry leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons crushed red chilli peppers OR
• 5 dried red chillies, broken into pieces
• 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 300 grams dried chickpeas, cooked and drained (or about 600 grams cooked chickpeas)
• 200 grams coconut, freshly shredded (optional)

Directions

1. Put the oil into a hot pot. Add the onions and fry for a minute, then add the curry leaves and fry another minute, stirring constantly.
2. Add the mustard seeds and continue to stir constantly.
3. A minute later, add the crushed red chillies or dried red chillies. By this time, the onions will be browned.
4. Add the salt and chickpeas and continue stirring while it cooks for another 2 or 3 minutes, then remove from heat.
5. The chickpeas can be eaten as is, or can be mixed with the freshly shredded coconut.

Personally, I love freshly shredded coconut, so I opted for added coconut to my chickpeas. Fahim and his father prefer theirs as is. Fahim’s mother prefers coconut added, but much less than I would add.

I was surprised at how much I liked these chickpeas for breakfast. Very surprised. I even liked them without the freshly shredded coconut, which I happen to love, although the freshly shredded coconut definitely added to my love for them. Love love love. Yup.

This is another way we like our chicken. It’s one part Mama Farook’s recipe, one part mine. In other words, inspired by her cooking with some tweaks.

The biggest tweak is the use of Dijon-style mustard.

We’ve only recently discovered that we love Dijon-style mustard in our curries. I make my own, mixing mustard powder with vinegar and a bit of salt, then letting it sit at room temperature until it’s ready, which for us is two days since that still gives it a bit of bite, which we like. Then it goes in the fridge and the jar I made lasts less then a month.

And happiness reigns.

And this chicken dish is one of those little happinesses.

Spicy Chicken Curry

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons oil (we use coconut)
• 4-5 curry leaves
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 3 green chillies, sliced lengthwise
• 5-6 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon cayenne
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons prepared mustard (Dijon or the like, not ballpark mustard)
• 750 grams chicken, cut into pieces (about 1 1/2 pounds)

Directions

1. Put oil into a hot pot, then add curry leaves and onions and temper for a minute or two.
2. Add the green chillies and temper another minute.
3. Add the garlic, seasonings, and mustard and mix well. Add the chicken and a little water if necessary to prevent sticking and cook until the chicken is done, stirring occasionally, about 30-45 minutes.

Notes

If you don’t have curry leaves, omit – there is no substitute. Adjust salt to taste. Use any hot chillies you like, seeded or not as you prefer, or omit if you don’t want to add them. If you want to tone down the spice levels further, replace some or all of the cayenne with black pepper.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Pound cake is so named because it contains a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Although, in practicality, it’s just a ratio by weight of the main ingredients, so it can be quantities that are more or less than a pound. As well, small amounts of vanilla are usually added.

For ease of use, it seems that bakers would usually weigh the eggs first, then make the rest of the ingredients match the egg weight. Seems practical.

There are also variations on the theme – lemon pound cake, chocolate pound cake, pound cake with fruit added, and so on. Other variations include the addition of vanilla extract, baking powder, salt, and so on. Oil or sour cream might be substituted for a portion of the butter.

At first, I thought I’d never made pound cake. Turns out, I’ve made plenty of cakes called pound cakes (yes, I do have that bad of a memory), as evidenced by the recipes I’ve got kicking around, but none were true pound cakes in the original proportions.

To that end, I decided that, at least once in my life, I had to have a true pound cake. Well, except I didn’t make it with one pound of each ingredient, but rather, 250 grams, or slightly more than half a pound… </nitpicking>

Pound Cake

Ingredients

• 250 grams butter, at room temperature
• 250 grams sugar, superfine if you can
• 250 grams eggs, at room temperature
• 250 grams flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 177C/350F/gas mark 4.
2. Beat butter until smooth and creamy.
3. Add sugar (superfine works best) and beat until fully incorporated and light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, and fully incorporate before adding the next. Don’t worry if the batter looks curdled.
5. Add the flour and mix until just incorporated.
6. Pour into a greased 9x3x5″ loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
7. Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the baking pan and cool completely.
8. Serve plain, with a dusting of icing sugar, with ice cream or whipping cream, fruit, or anything else your heart desires. Enjoy!

Because superfine sugar doesn’t exist here, I put the sugar into my whir whir and beat it into submission…er, whipped it until it was very fine. Butter and eggs need to be at room temperature to maximize the amount of air that can be whipped into them. And, as with all cakes, cookies, muffins, and so on, you mix the batter just until the flour is incorporated since you do not want to develop the gluten in the flour, which would make the cake/cookie/muffin tough and chewie, and not in a good way.

I contemplated serving this with lemon curd and whipped cream, but I must admit that laziness got to me. We ate it plain and enjoyed it very much that way.

Here in Sri Lanka, we have a type of leaf that’s locally called a cabbage leaf. I don’t know if it’s a close relative to cabbage or not, but it sure looks like it to me, so I’m happy to go along with that assessment. The cabbage leaves are rather tough when raw, but cooked this way, they end up being soft and flavourful.

This is another recipe Fahim’s mom taught me. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of cabbage, but this is another recipe that won me over.

Mama Farook’s Garlic’d Cabbage Leaves

Ingredients

• 1-2 tablespoons oil
• 3-4 curry leaves
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2-3 green chillies, minced
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2-3 cups shredded cabbage leaves

Directions

1. Add oil to a hot pot, then add curry leaves, onion, and green chillies and temper for a minute or two.
2. Add the garlic and salt, mix thoroughly, then add the cabbage leaves and let cook, stirring occasionally.
3. The cabbage is done when the leaves are wilted and dark green, about 3-5 minutes.

Notes

I use virgin coconut oil for an authentic Sri Lankan taste. If you don’t have coconut oil, use any unflavoured oil.

If you do not have curry leaves, omit. There is no substitute.

Use any hot pepper that you like, seeded or not as you prefer. If you prefer it less spicy, you can use less or omit.

I chop up the stems of the cabbage leaves, but not the thick central stem of the plant. I also use other leaves, like raddish, beet, rutabaga, or any other edible vegetable leaf, either in combination with the cabbage leaves or by themselves.

This is an easy dish to put together quickly, and the garlic and green chillies gives the cabbage a great flavour.

I saw tamarillos, or tree tomatoes, at the grocery store a few weeks back. I hadn’t seem them before and had no idea what to do with them, but couldn’t resist picking up a few *coughninecough* and seeing what inspired me.

Tamarillos should not be confused with tomatillos. They aren’t the same. I mention this because *cough* I might have confused them myself a time or two…

The first photo is of the tamarillos the day I bought them. They were still very hard, so unripe. I left them at room temperature for a couple of days, which was all it took for them to reach the point of being soft at slight pressure. Notice that they’re much less yellow, more red.

Naturally, because I had no idea in the world what to do with these tree tomatoes, I turned to Google and this recipe for Aji de tomate de árbol or tree tomato hot sauce showed up.

Hey, we’re always up for hot sauce, so I thought, why not?

It took a while for me to finally getting around to making it. Just when the tree tomatoes became ripe enough to do something with, Fahim’s parents came into town. They’re not as adventurous with their food as I am, so I tossed the tamarillos into the freezer to await a better day.

Today, I took those tree tomatoes out and made my own version of this hot sauce.

Tamarillo Hot Sauce

Ingredients

• 5 tamarillos, fresh or frozen
• 1 small onion, minced
• 12 red chillies, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lime, juiced

Directions

1. Remove outer peel and seeds of the tamarillo.
2. If using frozen tamarillos, mash them lightly. They’ll break apart rather quickly. If using fresh, then dice.
3. Throw all ingredients except lime into a small pot and simmer for a minute or two, then add lime juice.

This many red peppers meant that it had a nice subtle bite for Fahim and I. If you’re a normal human, depending on what kind of peppers you use, you might want to use less.

With half as many peppers or less, it would make a great pasta sauce to be matched with bell peppers, olives, onion, and tomato. Or it would make a great pizza sauce.

A friend asked me to take pictures of the insides of the tamarillo. Because I ended up freezing them, they became really really mushy when I thawed them, and that’s not so conducive to taking pics. But because Fahim and I love this hot sauce, we’ll be getting more tamarillos, and I’ll take more pictures then.

Fahim loves him some cream puffs.

He’s told me that his mother used to make them years ago, so I should be able to make them, too. So, one day, I hunted up a recipe and made them.

My first batch was a flop. It was a recipe from one of those sites where you can leave comments and ratings for each recipe, and this one was highly rated. A few people had problems with the recipe, though, and said as much, but then other commenters broke in with criticisms like “This is so easy. How stupid would you have to be to screw it up?” Which wasn’t exactly, ah, heartwarming, you know?

I looked around some more, and found a better recipe at the Joy of Baking. The list of ingredients was identical in both recipes, but in the Joy of Baking recipe, it said to keep stirring the dough in the pot until the dough forms a thick ball.

Then, beat the dough until the dough becomes lukewarm – this releases a lot of steam.

Considering that I live in a high humidity area, these two steps, which both reduce the amount of moisture in the dough, are probably what makes all the difference in the world from dense awful cream puffs to cream puffs that rise and expand like you wouldn’t believe!

Choux Pastry

Ingredients

• 70 grams (1/2 cup) all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 57 grams (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
• 120 ml (1/2 cup) water
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 205C (400F, gas mark 6).
2. Sift together flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Put butter and water into a pot over medium heat and bring to a boil.
4. As soon as it boils, remove from heat and add the flour mix.
5. Return the pot to heat and stir constantly until the dough comes together to form a thick ball.
6. Transfer the dough to a mixer (or, in my case, food processor that pretends to be a mixer) and beat on low speed until the dough is lukewarm and the steam has been released.
7. Add eggs gradually to the dough while continuing to mix it until it forms a thick paste.
8. Spoon or pipe mounds onto a baking sheet (you can line it with parchment paper if you like).
9. Bake 15 minutes, then reduce the oven to 177C (350F, gas mark 4) and bake an additional 30-40 minutes or until the cream puffs are a nice golden colour and dry inside.
10. Turn the oven off and let the cream puffs dry out another 10-15 minutes.
11. Fill with whipping cream, custard, icing, or whatever your heart desires.

Notes

• I’ve used aluminum bakeware (cream puffs stuck) and glass (got a very shiny, hard texture on the bottom of the cream puffs), and wasn’t overly happy with either. Silicone was fantastic, as was a non-stick baking sheet. I haven’t used parchment paper because it doesn’t exist here.
• Cream puffs can be filled with sweet or savoury fillings.
• Best when made shortly before consuming, especially if you live in a humid area like we do. By the next day, the cream puffs are completely floppy and almost rubbery. They still taste fine, but the texture isn’t, ah, quite what it could be.
• The finished cream puff pastry dough can easily be refrigerated or frozen with no ill effects. I’ve done both quite a few times and there’s been no difference in the quality of the resulting cream puffs.
• The Joy of Baking website adds an egg wash glaze. I’ve been too lazy to do that step and mine still turned out fine.

Cream puffs are a LOT easier to make than you might think. They were a lot easier than I thought they would be.  

Fahim’s mom loves eating them plain. Fahim prefers them stuffed with chocolate buttercream icing. I’ll take them with chocolate buttercream icing, or whipped cream, or lemon curd with whipped cream, or…

What about you? How do you like your cream puffs?