What a puff week!

I had been sooooo busy last week. My ESL lesson ended its run last Monday, and we decided to have a small potluck party, where each of us will bring some food for everyone.

CH has a group meeting every Friday, and everyone will take turns to bring food for the group. It was his turn last week.

I decided to make the same food for both events. What should it be? Browsing my recipe collections, I chanced upon this: Curry puff! Yeah, I should be able to do this. It shouldn't be that difficult right? I guessed I was too excited to think about the possible failures.

So happily we got the ingredients for the filling - chicken curry. CH even volunteered to help me fill the puffs. Making the fillings was easy, but I don't have the right curry powder. So I tried the canned curry paste from Yeo's, boy it was so bland. I resisted the urge to use the ready curry paste from Thailand, 'cos I really want this to be solely SG flavour, puff and all.

Finally, we got down to making the dough. I kneaded it, rolled it out, and place my round cutters on it. Then we tried to crimp the edges, which was pretty tricky. We didn't know how to make the twist, CH had to "decipher" from the photo I showed him on some food blog.

We made about 14 puffs and I opted to bake them, instead of deep frying for health reasons. The result? Not good at all, the skin was too dry and hard, but my lesson was due, and I didn't have time to "research" on the pitfalls. I brought these to the class. Only half was left. And I noticed some didn't finish the crust. I was devastated.

Determined to succeed, I made another round with just 4 puffs the next day. This time making sure the dough is only kneaded lightly just to get all the flour sticking together. But I made the mistake of refrigerating it, 'cos I got confused with another puff pastry. The dough was hard, I had to use my hands to soften it. I chose to bake them, this time, the texture is better than the first batch now, but still not good.

I was feeling discouraged and thinking of doing something else, but I decided to give it a last shot. This time, my dough was right, maybe a bit dry - the water estimation is really pretty tricky. I made 4 puffs - 2 to bake, and 2 to deep fry. Verdict? Frying is still the best. It does crisp the crust, with the palate focusing on the fillings only. Simply unbeatable.

For CH's meeting, I thought of making 2 types of puffs - chicken curry and sardine, both deep fried. But I was worried his colleagues may not take these for health reasons. So I thought I could use the same fillings to make the second type of puffs which I'd use pastry for the crust, similar to those sold by Delifrance back home. Which means I got to make 4 types of puffs! Boy this is way too much work for me. That was when I decided to make something else.

Cream puff, maybe? Before making the same mistake of plunging in, I consulted my friend JH's advice on the difficulty level. Sounds good, only ingredient missing was custard powder, the only ones available here were those instant ones for pudding from Jello. That might do, I thought to myself.

Making the puff was pretty easy, just got to make sure the batter is well mixed. However, making the custard cream wasn't so. It refused to solidify even after chilling in the refrigerator overnight. What did I do wrong? I was on the verge of going downtown to get the Bird's brand custard powder from a specialty market, which I wasn't even sure if its sold there. I re-read the package instructions over and over again, they were different from those in the recipe, then I decided to try it out. And it finally worked! It solidified within minutes! Turned out there I shouldn't use so much liquid and should boil the custard mixture. Phew! Am I so glad everything finally worked just a day before the actual event.

Don't they look delicious? I had been craving for them since last year.

They were a big hit with CH's colleagues. The only negative feedback was the small size due to my amateur piping skills. But I was glad everything came out right.

Guess what? In the midst of this expediture, I actually figured out how to make the dough for bread and noodles, which I put to practice for our dinner on Friday.


If you are interested, here's the recipe for cream puff (Thanks to JH for the original recipe):