With back to school around the corner, it’s time to recognize some heroes amongst us… teachers! These awesome individuals are so severely under appreciated for all the things they do to shape and mold the minds of children of all ages. So I’m putting my Princess spin on the idea of ‘an apple for the teacher’. Why not present this year’s teacher with an apple cinnamon cream puff that looks like an apple!

How do you make a cream puff look like an apple? There’s a couple different tricks up my sleeve. Beyond flavoring both the pate a choux dough and the filling with flavors of apple, cinnamon, and nutmeg, I add coloring and decorative details to give it an apple appeal. Get it? A peel? I’m hilarious.

First, there’s the craquelin. Choux au craquelin may sound super French and elegant, but it’s simply a fancy way of saying adding some extra flavor and texture. Craquelin very closely resembles a sugar cookie dough recipe, consisting of sugar, butter, flour, and a pinch of salt. It’s rolled out, cut, and placed gently on top of piped choux dough. When baked together, it produces puffed pastry with a crackly-looking appearance plus a crunchy texture.

Apple Choux Decorations
Decorating pate a choux dough isn’t something that most people think of. Cream puffs in and of themselves are already bite sized and cute, and when placed around a cone to make a croquembouche, they’re already decorative. But I love adding color to choux dough as well as extra decorations for an even more eye popping visual appearance. Adding chocolate decorations to these apple flavored cream puffs is the cherry on top, er the apple? Insert apple joke here.

Ingredients
For the craquelin
50 g (3½ tbsp) Butter
50 g (6½ tbsp) All purpose flour
50 g (4 tbsp) Sugar
Red gel food coloring
Pinch of Salt

For the pate a choux dough (the cream puffs)
70 g (5 tbsp) Water
50 g (3½ tbsp) Butter
60 g (8 tbsp) All purpose flour
2 Medium Eggs
Pinch of Salt
Red gel food coloring

For the filling
400 g (14 oz) Heavy cream
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 apple finely chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

 
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 200 °C (400 °F)

For the craquelin
In a bowl, mix soft butter with the sugar, flour, cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Add red gel food coloring.
Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper
Form a ball of pastry, and put it between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll out to for a sheet about ¼ of inch thick.
Refrigerate at least for one hour or freeze for 30 minutes

For the cream puffs.
In a medium saucepan, combine the water, butter and a pinch of salt.
Bring to the boil, and add the flour all at once, stirring until the mixture forms a ball and pulls away from the pot. Add gel food coloring.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating in well after each.
Pipe the chop pastry mixture on to the cookie sheet.
Cut the craquelin pastry into round pieces, same size cream puffs and set on top of each choux bun.
Bake for 20 – 25 minutes until brown and very crispy.

For the filling
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Make sure the apple pieces are small enough to fit through the pastry tip.

To assemble
Pipe the filling into the cream puffs making a hole in the bottom of each one.
Baking time will vary based on the size of the pastry mounds and how many you make. Start checking them after 15 minutes of baking.