Today I explain my recipe for cream puffs without butter, a delicious and tasty variant if you want to quickly prepare a dessert at home but don’t have butter available or don’t want to use it. To prepare excellent cream puffs, you need to make a good choux pastry. Choux pastry made without butter is ideal both for baking and frying.
If you like butter-free dessert recipes, don’t forget to read
- Difficulty: Medium
- Cost: Economical
- Rest time: 30 Minutes
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 2
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All Seasons
- Energy 695.83 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 45.12 (g) of which sugars 1.06 (g)
- Proteins 18.08 (g)
- Fat 50.95 (g) of which saturated 14.00 (g)of which unsaturated 34.66 (g)
- Fibers 1.38 (g)
- Sodium 462.68 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 200 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for 2 people
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup vegetable margarine
- cup water
- 3 eggs (medium)
Steps
First, put the water and margarine in a saucepan and bring to a boil; the margarine should melt completely.
Add the sifted flour to the dough and mix well with a spoon until the dough detaches from the sides of the pot forming a single ball.
Once you have obtained the dough ball, let it cool; you can remove it from the pot to speed up the process. This is to prevent the dough from cooking the eggs we will add to get the classic cream puff dough.
Once cooled, add the eggs one by one to the dough and mix them well into the mixture; you should obtain a thick cream that is not too liquid, pouring and creating a ribbon.
If the dough is too hard or dry, you can add a 4th egg.
When your cream puff dough without butter is complete, put it in a pastry bag and create round balls of the desired diameter.
The balls will puff up in the oven at 356°F (static mode), creating the classic cream puff.
Be careful with cooking; if you open the oven too soon, you risk the cream puff collapsing. It’s always better to let the cream puffs rest in the oven once cooking is complete so they stabilize. Cooking should last about 30 minutes but varies with the size of the cream puff, so it’s always better to keep an eye on them.
The cream puffs are ready when they detach from the parchment paper they are resting on, and when they are well puffed and golden with a nice hazelnut color.
Another way to know if they are ready is the external surface must be dry; the liquid component should have evaporated. If you see the cream puff frying with bubbles on the outside, it’s not ready yet; if you open, it will become soft.
Your cream puffs without butter are ready!
Plating Tips
I recommend filling your cream puffs with fig compote, delicious custard, chocolate ganache, or salted caramel. You can also use these cream puffs to serve as a savory appetizer with creams or compotes.
