I’ve enjoyed some electric spikes of optimism and even some exhilaration over the past many months, but they’ve ended like junk-food highs; generally, I’ve found myself feeling uncommonly bleak. I try to tune it out, look to the light, but even the food pages have grown heavy. Where there used to be lively essays about delicious and interesting foods, you now find recipes asked to carry great freights, the poor little plate of food and the dinner table itself working overtime to fix the earth, the children, the wars, addiction, drinking water, wildfires, earthquakes, obesity and family dysfunction. I’ve been guilty of this myself.
Maybe now is the time to send in the swans. Pudding. Éclair pastry. Powdered sugar. If that doesn’t crack open the grim, gray sky and send big beams of light into your world, you might be made of something I’ve never met.
The swans are made of the same components as an éclair — choux paste and pastry cream — but rather than piping out straight batons, you pipe plump teardrops that swell during baking into the ample bodies of what will become these custard-filled majesties.
Even though I was born without a sweet tooth — double anchovy on my salad for my dessert, please — I have some baker’s dozen of custard recipes in my back pocket that I can’t resist plunging my spoon into and sucking clean no matter what. From a barely sweetened, pourable crème anglaise pooled in the bottom of a bowl of sugared blackberries to a firm and deep yellow lemon pastry cream doing its work in a tartlet shell — and with every variation in between, from semifreddo to eggnog and quiche and plain butterscotch pudding — custard brings mirth. Even a cold glass of malted whole milk shaken and frothy lights me up.
Diplomat cream, the variation here, is a true wonder. It is tender and supple with a backbone you can’t even believe — it simply will not break down or collapse. The base uses both cornstarch and gelatin, and you could rightly expect it to be stiff and unappealing. But the cold butter whisked in while the base is still warm creates silkiness, and the whipped cream folded in once it has cooled brings the elegance; this diplomat cream — like good diplomacy itself — is a perfect reminder that to be both firm and tender is how the very best work gets accomplished.
Pâte à choux plays to both sweet and savory sides — for éclairs and profiteroles, as well as gougères and canapés — and incredibly, it’s freezable. The dough yields shells that are sturdy enough to hold jam and pudding or scooped ice cream, or even soft scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and chives, without caving in or sogging out, while still light and thin enough to not be a chore to chew. You can store the baked shells and pull them from the freezer as desired. But the infallible delight here is in the long, arcing necks of the sweet éclair swans, piped through a tiny plain tip into great exaggerated question marks, their beaks blackened by quickly running through a flame after baking. Every single person giggles with joy when they see them, swimming in on a mirrored tray, ringed by drifts of powdered sugar snow. Their pastry wings arc up behind them in an unmistakable triumph of strength and elegance. Two virtues, like these creatures, that should be mates for life. To behold these regal beauties fully assembled on a tray, you would have to have tar in your veins and stones in your chest to not grin wide with delight.
Recipes: Pâte à Choux | Diplomat Cream
