Daring Bakers August - Pate a Choux Swans and Stabilized Whipped Cream

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild! 

I've made choux pastry before and went from being very intimidated by the thought of this dough to realizing it's quite easy to make and work with! My previous and only use of the dough was used in creating a delicious Croquembouche so I was looking forward to using it again in making a bevy of swans. My only concern was that the final result might look more like ugly ducklings than beautiful swans!  

I'll let you be the judge as to whether or not I succeeded!  

I kept it simple and used stabilized whipped cream as my filling.

Click here for a pdf of all the recommended recipes and look below for my stabilized whipped cream recipe.

Stabilized Whipped Cream

Using stabilized whipped cream will prevent it from separating - especially useful on warm days!

Ingredients

1/4 c water
1 tsp unflavoured gelatin
1 c heavy or whipping cream
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla

What to do

• Chill your bowl and beaters in the freezer for 20 minutes.
• Place water in a deep microwave safe bowl and sprinkle gelatin over the water.
• Let sit for 5 minutes.
• Microwave the the gelatin mixture for three minutes making sure you you stir every 30 seconds or so or it might bubble over and make a mess!
• Let it sit for about 10 minutes so that the mixture is liquid but not warm.
• Remove your cold beaters and bowl from freezer and pour in cream. Beat until soft peaks form.Add vanilla and sugar and whip for 10 seconds more.
• Add gelatin mixture and whip until stiff peaks form.