Making Delicious Choux au Craquelin (Even When My Oven Failed Me)

If my previous two baking experiments were based on recipes by Devina Hermawan, last Saturday I decided to try one from a fellow MasterChef Indonesia graduate. Luvita Ho, the season 4 winner, is widely known as a pastry and bakery guru on her YouTube channel, which has almost one million subscribers. So many people have endorsed her exquisite yet beginner-friendly recipes that I was tempted to test one myself.

As a huge fan of choux pastry, I picked her choux au craquelin recipe to follow. Was it easy? Yes, it was relatively simple. Did mine turn out as good? Well, not quite, but I would say the issues were on my end. I made some mistakes you can avoid by following these extra tips and tricks:

As instructed in the video, I started by making the diplomat cream. It needs to be chilled for quite some time, so it's best to do it early.

Tip💡: Stir the milk while boiling it, or the cream won't be as smooth.

After putting the diplomat cream in the fridge, I worked on the craquelin.

Tip💡: Follow every step in the video. Do not skip a thing.

My craquelin dough went safely into the freezer. I moved on to the choux.

Very Important Tip💡: Please wait for the dough to come to room temperature before mixing in the eggs. I didn't, and my choux didn't puff up the way it should have.

I definitely need to practice piping bags more. My uncooked choux didn't look anything like the ones in the video. (I know what we're all thinking, but let's ignore that, okay?)

Thankfully, the craquelin dough helped hide the imperfections. Overall, it looked pretty decent once I covered up the uneven choux.

My choux au craquelin (or mini version) was done! It tasted really delicious. My only complaint was that I couldn’t bake it evenly—the time it took for the choux to bake perfectly didn’t line up with the burnt bottoms.

I’m pretty sure it had to do with using a gas oven instead of an electric one, but my family said it tasted great, so I was happy.