Delicious cake recipes
shu cake recipe
20 pcs.
1,5 hour
265 kcal
5 /5 (1 )
Every year, culinary experts offer more and more new delicacies, which are quite simple to prepare even at home. The “Shu” cake should also be considered one of these products, photos of which undoubtedly prove their uniqueness and attractiveness. Once, my mother saw a friend’s recipe for making these unusual cakes, and after using it at home, I can say that the resulting dessert is truly worthy of the highest praise. I am happy to share it with you.
- Inventory and kitchen appliances: sieve, saucepan, pastry bag, baking tray.
Required Products
Features of product selection
From the list of products above, it is already clear what exactly you will need to create the perfect Shu custard cake. However, in order to get the desired result, it is necessary to take into account the characteristics of individual products. For example, you need to choose the most ordinary flour, without additives or raising agents.
If you want the crust of your products to acquire a beautiful chocolate color. then you should replace 20 g of flour with a similar amount of high-quality cocoa.
Butter, which is also included in the dough for “Shu,” must be cold and hard, but you can achieve a similar result only by purchasing a quality product. You should approach the choice of dye responsibly. In principle, you can take the usual dry food version, but it is better to immediately purchase a gel analogue of the desired color (only a few drops are enough for painting).
The sugar can be whatever you want: fine-grained or coarse-grained, it doesn’t matter, and as for the syrup, I made French “Chou” cakes with raspberry syrup, but you can try some other analogue that you have in the pantry.
History of French cake
“Chou” is a choux pastry, and this is how it is translated from French (“choux”). It is generally accepted that the authorship of the recipe for such a dough belongs to the personal chef of Catherine de Medici - Panterelli, who invented it in 1540.
Naturally, over time, certain changes were made to the recipe (which could not but be reflected in the name of the products, which were transformed from “pate a Popelini” to “pate a Popelin”), although much remained unchanged. In 1760, Jean Avis (French pastry chef) baked the first “Chou” buns, replacing the usual potatoes for such products with brewed flour.
It cannot be said that modern confectioners did not have a hand in improving the recipe, because in those days no one could even think about the possibility of obtaining such a thin layer of sand dough as we see it today.
How to cook “Shu” cake at home: step-by-step recipe
Having familiarized yourself with the recipe and history of the “Shu” cake, you will probably be interested in trying to use in practice one of the modern recipes for this dessert, presented along with photos that describe each stage of the work step by step. Therefore, having prepared all the necessary ingredients, we move on to the cooking process itself, for which we perform the following steps:
First, sift the flour into a bowl and add the same amount of sugar to the measured amount (100 g), thoroughly mixing the two ingredients. 
Next, take cold butter (80 g) and chop it into small pieces with a sharp knife. 
It is the hardness of the butter when stored in the refrigerator that determines its quality, but to prevent it from melting too quickly when preparing Shu cakes, try to touch it as little as possible.
If you want to make a colored dessert, like I did, then you need to add dye to the sugar and flour. As I already said, just a few drops of gel dye will be enough. The color of the finished dessert will be exactly the same as the color of the dough, so you shouldn’t overuse dyes, worrying that they will eventually turn very pale. 
After mixing flour, sugar and coloring, add the diced butter and begin to rub it into the remaining ingredients (just pass the resulting mass between your fingers several times).
As a result, we get a lump that looks like crumbly plasticine. From this “plasticine” I roll a ball and, placing it between sheets of parchment, roll it out with a rolling pin until a layer of 2-3 mm is obtained. Immediately place the rolled out dough in the freezer. 
When making a “Shu” cake with craquelure (cracks in the top colored layer), it is necessary to prepare two types of dough, and while one of them is already cooling in the refrigerator, we immediately proceed to creating the second one - custard. Here the whole procedure is a little simpler and involves the following steps:
- Take 100 g of butter (in this case its temperature is not as important as in the previous one), cut it into large cubes and put it in a saucepan with a thick bottom.
- Pour the butter with water (250 ml) and add a teaspoon of sugar and salt, stirring the mixture lightly as soon as the butter begins to melt on the stove.
- Next, sift 150 g of flour and, after waiting until the butter has completely melted, pour it (all at once, so that no lumps form) into a saucepan. Before mixing, remove the saucepan from the stove.
- Having mixed the butter and flour well, return the pan to the heat and again stir continuously with a spatula. The dough should not stick to either the walls or the bottom of the container, and at some point you will notice that it has rolled into a ball.
- We continue to stir it until a light velvety crust is visible at the bottom of the saucepan, indicating the readiness of the dough. After stirring it for a few more minutes, remove the saucepan from the stove and transfer the resulting ball to another container.
- Add eggs (4 pieces) to the finished dough, introducing them into the mixture one at a time. Adding eggs one at a time into the dough is necessary in order to accurately guess its consistency (the dough may contain a little more or a little less moisture). It is likely that four eggs will not be enough, and you will also need a fifth or even a sixth, because it all depends on their size.
In order for the dough to bake well, all eggs must be at room temperature.
- Now you need to accurately catch the moment when the dough is ideally prepared, that is, when you mix it with a spatula and lift it up, the dough should drain a little, but not fall in pieces. However, you can’t overdo it, so it’s better to let it be a little thick. If the mixture turns out to be too liquid, then adding flour will not help, and you will have to make a new dough, mixing both later.
- Place the finished dough into a pastry bag with a round tip (from my own experience: the most suitable diameter turned out to be 12 or 14 mm). If you don’t have such a nozzle on your farm, you can carefully cut the spout of the bag to the required diameter.
- We take a baking sheet, cover it with parchment paper and remove circles with a diameter of 3 cm from the bag. You shouldn’t put a lot on it, because the dough simply won’t have time to rise properly.
It is important to leave a space of 4 cm between adjacent balls, since they will definitely increase in the oven and may stick together.
- At this stage, it’s time to take the set aside dough out of the refrigerator and cut out as many circles from the frozen tile (using a special pastry ring) as you have on the baking sheet. Be prepared for the fact that the dough will be very hard, which means you will have to use force to get the desired circles.
- As soon as all the coins take their place on the custard circles, put the future cakes in the oven, preheated to 200 °C, for 10-12 minutes. This is an approximate time, so it is better to focus on the condition of the dough itself: the bottom (that is, the choux pastry) should be browned. If you take the items out too early or open the oven during baking, they will simply fall off.
- We take the finished “Shu” out of the oven, and after it has cooled, you can move on to decorating and adding cream. Properly prepared cakes should be completely empty inside.
Cream for cake “Shu”
How to beautifully decorate and serve “Shu” cake
In principle, a colored cake with cream and a lid looks original and attractive in itself, but you can use other methods of decoration. For example, add a small raspberry, pieces of other fruits to each product, or simply sprinkle the lid with powdered sugar. The main thing is to figure out how to prepare the “Shu” cake, and your imagination will tell you how to decorate it. 
Choux cake is a delicious, interesting and fashionable dessert that was invented in France. Gradually they began to make it in modern restaurants in Russia. However, such original desserts can be prepared at home.
Shu cake: step by step recipe
This dessert is very similar to eclairs. Only it turns out more tender, aromatic and tasty, thanks to a variety of original fillings. If eclairs or profiteroles were prepared only from choux pastry, then shortbread (croquelin) is also added to the classic recipe for our dessert.
Thanks to this method, the original shu cake is obtained. The recipe is actually not complicated at all, but it is painstaking.
Cooking croquelin
This is the test to start with as it will need to go into the freezer. And this takes time. First, sift 100 g of regular flour through a sieve. If you want, add 20 g of cocoa.
Then pour 100 g of sugar into the flour. If possible, combine regular and cane, 50 g of each type. Take 80 g of very cold butter and chop it into small cubes in a separate container. Gradually add flour and sugar there and grind. This only works when the oil is cold.
In order for cold butter, flour and sugar to mix well, you should mix not with a fork or spoon, but with your hands. The dough should flow through your fingers. Thus, a homogeneous mass is obtained.
Roll the dough into a ball. Place it in parchment paper and roll it out. The approximate thickness should be 2-3 mm. Place our layer in the freezer to harden.
Choux pastry
While the croquelin is resting in the freezer, continue. There is still something to be done. It is done much easier and faster. Take 100 g of butter, cut into pieces of any thickness. Place it in any container with a thick bottom. Add 200 ml of water here, add 0.5 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. Sahara. Place over low heat, stir occasionally with a wooden spatula.
Meanwhile, sift 150 g of flour. When the oil has dissolved in the water, remove from the heat. Pour all the flour into the hot mixture at once. If you add a little at a time, there is a chance of lumps forming.
Mix the flour and butter thoroughly and put it back on the fire. Now you need to stir all the time only with a wooden or silicone spatula. Try not to use a spoon as it will leave a lot of batter on it. Mix until the dough begins to come together into one large, homogeneous ball.
Let the mixture cool. Add 4 eggs to the dough, but warm, that is, at room temperature. Stir the dough. It should not drip from the spoon, but flow down. If you have achieved the desired consistency, then you did everything right. Now you can shu. The recipe is very simple, but takes a lot of time.
Place the cakes on a baking sheet
Since we have two types of dough ready, we can form the cakes. Take (diameter 12 mm). Pour the choux pastry into it and squeeze it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let them stand for a few minutes and rest.
In the meantime, take out the croquelin, it has already frozen enough and become hard. Place the layer on the table and cut out circles with an iron mold.
It is advisable that they be the size of the cakes that are already in the pan. It could be less. You have got small, beautiful, identical circles or coins. They need to be laid out on top
Baking
Turn on the oven at 180 degrees and place a baking tray with cakes. They bake for about 15 minutes. The bottom will be brown, and the top will be cracked. If you take out the cakes ahead of time, then the balls will fall off and you will end up with a flat and ugly dessert.
During baking, the cakes rise and become fluffy. At the same time, you cannot open the oven, because otherwise the temperature will change and they will spoil. When the shu are cooked, remove them and place them on a wire rack. If you did everything correctly, the dessert should be empty inside. The outside of the top is not only beautiful, but also crispy. The results are beautiful and very tasty custard shu cakes. The recipe, as you can see, is not at all complicated and every housewife can prepare it.
Preparing the filling
The classic one is very easy to do. First, mix 4 eggs with 200 gr. Sahara. Whip until foam forms and consistency appears. Then mix 40 gr. flour and 1 tsp. vanillin. Sprinkle them over the eggs.
Place the mixture on the fire and gradually pour in 05 liters of milk. Remember to stir constantly until the cream thickens to the desired consistency.
When the color changes from white to light yellow, then you need to pay special attention. It is at this time that the cream begins to thicken. Place 50 g of butter into the hot filling. Mix thoroughly and leave to cool.
How to fill cakes with cream
This is important and delicate work. There are two options for filling cakes with cream. The first and easiest way: make a small cut at the bottom of the cake with a knife with a thin blade. Fill a pastry bag with cream and squeeze the cream into the middle.
The second method: you need to cut off the top very carefully and evenly. Fill the bottom with cream and then cover with croquelin. It turns out to be a very beautiful dessert. As you can see, you can easily make shu cake. The recipe with a photo clearly shows what the dessert looks like.
To obtain shortbread dough of the correct structure and consistency, you must add only cold, hard butter. If you take it out and it starts to melt, it’s better to put it back in the refrigerator. Warm oil will not give the desired effect and the croquelin will not turn out as expected.
If you want to make multi-colored cakes, there is one little secret. When the shortbread dough is liquid, add a few drops of coloring. May be pink, purple, red and green. Then the cakes will turn out brighter and more beautiful.
If you don't have a piping bag, no worries. Small circles can be laid out using a teaspoon. But you can cut out coins from shortcrust pastry not only with a special mold, but also with an ordinary glass.
For custard, it is very important that the eggs and milk are at the same temperature. You cannot take one product warm and the other cold. Both ingredients should be taken at room temperature or cold.
Presentation
The dessert must be completed with decoration. For example, if you like, you can sprinkle the cakes with powdered sugar. Just not with a spoon, but through a sieve. Then the dessert will look very beautiful and original.
Chocolate is the perfect option. Melt one slab in a double boiler and then pour over the cakes and around the dish. Thus, create a unique, unique and original dessert.
Chop the nuts with a rolling pin. Sprinkle them on top of the chocolate. You will get a nutty, unforgettable taste that will not leave anyone indifferent. You can take peanuts or hazelnuts.
Conclusion
We looked at how modern shu cake is prepared. The custard recipe is very easy and affordable. The only thing is that you need to spend time preparing an exquisite, French dessert.
This type of cake can most often be seen in restaurants at a very high price. But if you try, you can please your family with an original and delicious dessert at home. Most importantly, you don't need a lot of money to prepare. As you noticed, the ingredients in this cake are the simplest.
Don’t forget to please your loved ones with such a delicious, sophisticated and fashionable dessert as shu cake. The classic recipe with photos is presented so that every housewife has an idea of such a dreamy dish.
Not only children, but also adults love desserts. Imagine, experiment and cook with pleasure. Then your dessert will turn out original with an unforgettable taste.
Only a true sweet tooth and connoisseur of delicate cakes can distinguish the noble “Shu” bun from the profiteroles and eclairs already familiar to everyone. In appearance, “Shu” is an ordinary cake, but after looking inside the delicate dough, tasting the airy cream and learning several interesting facts from the history of its origin, the sweet “Shu” pastry may receive the status of cake No. 1 among its custard relatives.
A “shu” bun is a small ball of choux pastry, almost hollow inside. During baking, the cake rises, air bubbles appear inside, due to this, voids are formed, into which the cream is poured. This interesting cake comes from France, and the first “shu” recipe was invented by the Frenchman Jean Avis at the end of the 18th century. He baked small balls of butter dough in the oven, calling them choux, which translated means cabbage.
By the way, Avis borrowed the name from the court chefs who prepared baked lumps of mashed potatoes. They used the name choux or “shu” for the first time, calling their dish “little cabbage.” Over time, the dough recipe for this dessert acquired a modern look.
Every pastry chef, baker or just an amateur cook brings something special, something new to the “shu” recipe. This can be seen from photos of sweets on the Internet and on the pages of culinary publications.
Classic shu recipe with crumble
To make your close acquaintance with the French dessert especially pleasant and memorable, it is best to use the so-called classic “shu” recipe. According to the traditional method, this cake is made from choux pastry with delicate Patissiere cream and crumble cap.
For crumble:
- butter - 90 g
- brown sugar - 110 g
- wheat flour - 110 g
- vanilla extract
The crumble is prepared very simply: all the ingredients are mixed with a mixer and then kneaded. Next you need to roll out the dough thinly. By the way, the recipe recommends using pastry parchment or silicone sheets with a piece of dough between them. Using a glass, squeeze out circles from the dough that are the size of the future “shu” bun. Place everything in the freezer.
For the test:
- fresh cow's milk - 225 ml
- salt - 1/4 tsp.
- butter - 100 g
- wheat flour 160 g
- granulated sugar - 20 g
- large chicken eggs - 4 pcs
First you need to prepare the oven by preheating it to approximately 180˚. Then, using a saucepan, boil the milk with sugar and butter. Add sifted and oxygenated flour here. Keep the mixture on the fire for no more than 30 seconds, while vigorously mixing the ingredients with a wooden spatula.
Next, the recipe says, the dough should cool. And, already in the cold mass you need to add eggs 1 piece at a time, stirring them thoroughly with a mixer. The resulting dough should be pasty and shiny, like a glossy photo, and flow smoothly from the spatula.
Pour the finished mixture into a pastry bag and place each cake separately on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Place the frozen crumble on top of the dough lumps. Bake them in a hot oven for about 25-30 minutes at standard 180 degrees.
For Patissiere cream:
- chicken egg yolks - 4 pcs
- granulated sugar - 100 g
- corn starch - 30 g
- wheat flour - 20 g
- cow's milk - 500 ml
- vanilla extract
Boil fresh milk in a saucepan, adding vanilla. Grind the yolks with sugar, add flour and starch, then pour boiling milk over the mixture and pour it back into the pan. Cook the cream until tender, stirring vigorously.
The classic recipe involves cutting off the top of the baked product, so the “cap” of the bun must be detached. And, using a pastry bag, you should fill the cake with the finished cream, and put the “cap” back in place.
Recipe for shou cake with raspberry confit
The preparation of choux pastry and crumble, of course, can be found by looking at the previous “classic” recipe for “shu”. But the cream and raspberry confit need to be prepared as follows.
For the raspberry confit:
- homogeneous raspberry puree - 200 g
- granulated sugar - 50 g
- pectin NH (thickener) – 4 g
- juice of half a lemon
Mix the puree with sugar and heat to 40˚. Add sugar mixed with pectin and boil. At the end of cooking, squeeze out lemon juice.
For cream:
- cream 35% - 500 ml
- powdered sugar - 100 g
- vanilla
- cream fixer
Beat cold cream with powder and fixative until it reaches the thickest consistency possible. It is necessary that the buttercream is as in the photo, that is, it does not spread and holds its shape.
When preparing a shu bun, you need to cut off the top. Place raspberry confit at the bottom of the product and pour cream on top. Attach the “cap” in place.
Voila! An exquisite French dessert is ready to be enjoyed.
Video recipe for making “Shu” cake
Oh, where culinary experiments have taken me... Today I wanted to make the famous Shu cakes. A long time ago I made a Croquembouche cake from these cakes, I really liked it.
On the Internet I came across a detailed recipe from Yulia Besedina. Honestly, I don’t like to cook according to the “correct” recipes; for some reason, according to the rules, nothing comes out as it should. Take eclairs, for example, I always made them according to the same recipe, they always turned out good. I read a million rules, and strict ones at that, and tried to do it, but it didn’t work.
Anyway. Shu decided to cook the cakes exactly according to the recipe. There were no problems with the test. It's easy to do. I only had an issue with the temperature regime, but more on that below in the recipe.
Today I chose protein cream as the cream, or it is otherwise called “wet meringue”. This cream always turns out delicious and tender, like a marshmallow. My family really respects this cream. It also holds its shape perfectly.
The shortbread dough is colored to add brightness and effectiveness to the finished cake; you don’t have to color it.
Correct "Shu" - round and even, "cap" without large breaks or cracks.
The cake is magical. Custard donuts with a crispy shortbread cap and so much cream are a delicious treat.
This batch makes a large number of cakes. But it’s better to make cream with 4 or 5 proteins.
Enough writing, it's time to get started).
For shortcrust pastry, take cold butter, measure out sugar and flour. You can use brown sugar, I didn’t have it.
Cut the butter into pieces, add sugar and flour. Knead the dough.
Divide the dough in half. You can paint one part or both in different colors, or not paint it at all.
Roll out the dough thinly between two sheets of parchment.
Cut out circles. First, I took a diameter of 5 cm. Place the blanks in the freezer.
Let's start with the choux pastry. The approximate weight of my eggs is 52-54 g. It took me 4 eggs and a yolk.
Cut the butter or take the melted one so that it has time to dissolve before the water boils.
Pour water into a saucepan, add butter, salt and sugar.
Sift the flour.
When the water and oil in the pan boil, remove from the stove and pour in the flour, stir until the white flour disappears completely. Return to the stove over low heat and evaporate the water for 2-3 minutes. Stir the dough until a ball forms and a light crust forms on the bottom.
Transfer the hot dough into a mixing bowl. Add the egg one at a time and mix thoroughly each time. You can entrust this task to a mixer (attachment - dough, low speed) or knead with your hands.
When I added the last egg, on Yulia’s advice, I began to add the fifth egg a little at a time; I only had one yolk for the mass to reach the desired consistency. Beat the dough until it becomes smooth and shiny. The dough should slide off the attachment, or if you draw a stripe with a knife, the dough will immediately “grow together.”
Place the dough into a bag with a round nozzle. Place on a baking sheet. I drew circles of the same diameter in advance - 5 cm.
Remove the shortbread dough from the freezer.
Place the circles on top of the pieces.
This is where the fun begins. I decided to bake according to the principle “it will work in any oven.” Preheated the oven to 250 degrees. I put out the cakes. I turned off the oven for 13 minutes, during which time the cakes were slightly browned. Turned it on at 170 degrees after 10-12 minutes, the cakes were well browned, the bottom was completely dry and dried out. I decided to take out the cakes. They came out a little scary and large in size, and besides, the center was not completely dry.
There is still some dough left. I made a batch with a smaller diameter - 4 cm. I baked according to the usual method - 180 degrees. I set it for 40 minutes, and after 20 minutes the cakes were perfectly baked. This option suited me better. Perhaps the first time I made big Shu, they didn’t have time to cook completely. Perhaps my oven cooks too well. In any case, you need to try and focus on your oven. Can be baked in small batches.
For the cream, combine the whites, sugar and lemon. Beat a little. Place in a water bath.
Beat, gradually increasing the speed of the mixer. When the whites begin to wrap around the whisk, remove from the “bath”. The more whites, the longer you will have to beat. Beat again with a mixer for 3-5 minutes.
The right cream for “Shu” cakes is thick, durable and shiny.
Cut off the tops of cooled cakes. I don't have a knife or file. I used small scissors (convenient). Dust the tops with powdered sugar.
Fill the cakes and cover with a cap.
The cakes came out very beautiful.
You can decorate “Shu” cakes with berries.
Bon appetit.
P.S. You can use any cream you like. Try it, experiment. I would not add salt to the choux pastry, either my salt is nuclear, or 5 g is a lot, I felt it in the dough. This cake is worth trying at least once. A new look and a new taste for familiar eclairs.
One day I planned to make a Croquembouche cake, and it is a tower of round Shu cakes. In general, I was very inspired to make these funny cakes.
In appearance, Shu dessert resembles the well-known profiteroles or eclairs, but thanks to the craquelin sugar crust it has a more delicate and refined taste. 
Ingredients for choux pastry:
- Premium flour - 200 g
- Butter - 100 g (use only high-quality butter, with a fat content of 82%)
- Large eggs - 5 pieces (be sure to weigh on a scale, it should be 300 grams)
- Water - 180 g
- Salt - 1/3 teaspoon
This is a classic choux pastry made with water, which is also used to prepare,
Ingredients for craquelin (lids for Shu):
- Butter (from the refrigerator) - 100 g
- Sugar - 100 g
- Flour - 100 g
How to cook Shu cake: (step-by-step recipe with photos)
At their core, Shu cakes are profiteroles with a craquelure crust. Thanks to this sweet crust, the taste of the cakes becomes special, everyone who tries them falls head over heels in love. Craquelure gives the cakes not only a slight sweetness, but also crunch and an amazing structure.
For the choux pastry, place butter (100 g), water (180 g), salt (1/3 tsp) into a deep saucepan with a thick bottom. Put on fire and stir.
Combine completely and wait for the mixture to boil.
We will brew the dough over medium heat, but as soon as the contents of the saucepan boil, immediately reduce it to low.
So, immediately after the mixture boils, add all the flour (200 g) and begin intensive stirring: actively move along the bottom and walls of the saucepan so that all the flour is mixed into the liquid.
At first the dough will knead easily, and then it will gather into a ball and become more elastic. You will feel that it is becoming more and more difficult to stir, and a film has appeared on the bottom of the saucepan.
There is no need to remove this crust from the bottom, we are not scraping anything, just take note: if the crust appears, it means that the entire process of brewing the dough is going correctly. The lump of dough should be on the fire for 1-2 minutes, so you can be sure that when the custard cakes go into the oven, they will not crack or break, but will only stretch under the influence of steam from the inside.
Remove the dough from the stove and let it cool slightly (to about 60-70 C), in the meantime, move on to the eggs. Stir the egg mixture with a fork, just a little so that the whites are mixed with the yolks, then add this liquid in small portions to the main dough. The size of eggs is different for everyone, so add a little at a time so that the final dough does not turn out too liquid.
Stir constantly until the dough is homogeneous and smooth. You may use up all the egg mixture or have a little left over. It's better to throw away half the egg than to ruin the whole dough! Because if it turns out to be too liquid, adding flour (as we are used to, for example, with sponge cake) will not solve this problem. If the dough is too thin, you will either have to throw it away or mix another portion of a thicker one and mix them together.
In the photo below you can see the correct consistency of the choux pastry: when it flows from the spoon, a so-called “triangle” is formed. If you see the correct thickness of the dough in your bowl, then there is nothing to worry about, you will succeed 90% of Shu cakes!
What do I use to knead the dough? It is very convenient to do this with special attachments for thick dough - hooks. I mix at low mixer speed with these attachments.
The main mistake in this process is to make the dough very liquid (usually this happens if you add eggs by eye, sincerely hoping that there are 300 grams in these 5 eggs). Under no circumstances should you do this. Therefore, if you live without a kitchen scale (how do you manage to live like this!?)), do not pour in the entire mixture at one time. Add in parts and it’s better to have to throw away some small part of the eggs than to have all your shu cakes turn into pancakes in the oven and have to throw the whole dough in the trash. Alternatively, stir each egg in a separate bowl and add one at a time, constantly checking the thickness. It may take 4 eggs, four whole eggs and another half, etc.
If you don't have a scale, use the weight of the eggs indicated on the package as a guide. For example, if the package indicates a weight of 65-75 g, take into account that an egg without a shell weighs 60 g (the shell weighs 10% of the egg’s weight). So, in this case, to prepare eclairs we will need 5 eggs. If a different weight is indicated on the package, recalculate according to the new data.
Now we transfer the dough into a pastry bag and place small cakes (about 2 cm) on a Teflon sheet, leaving a distance of a couple of centimeters between them (in the oven they will increase greatly in size (2-3 times). Depending on what size you want to get the final cakes, you can make them smaller.
If you don't have a pastry bag, you can use a thick milk bag or spoon out the dough. To make the cakes the same size, you can draw circles of equal size on the back of parchment paper and pipe the dough onto these stencils. If you use a Teflon sheet, like me, draw these circles on a regular white A4 sheet, place it under the Teflon, and after depositing the dough, carefully pull it out.
If a “tail” appears on the top of the cake, wet your finger and smooth it.
Preparation of shortcrust pastry for Shu cakes:
I advise you to first make the craquelure dough, and then start making the choux pastry (while the shortbread is cooling in the refrigerator). In general, despite the fact that in my article choux pastry comes first in preparation, still start with shortbread for craquelure.
Grate cold butter (100 g) or chop it into small pieces with a knife. I use a grater with large cells for these purposes, and to prevent the butter from melting from the heat of my hands, I wear gloves. Of course, they also let heat through, but still not as quickly as it would be with bare hands.
Add 100 g of flour and 100 g of sugar to the same bowl and mix. At this stage, you can add a few drops of gel coloring, in which case the Shu cakes will turn out colored.
The shortbread dough is colored to add brightness and effectiveness to the finished cake; you don’t have to color it.
Also, sometimes cane sugar is used instead of regular white sugar, this is also a variant of a different taste.
You can use a fork first, and as soon as uniform crumbs appear, put the fork aside and start kneading with your hands.
Kneading shortbread dough comes down to collecting all the crumbs into a single lump; this lump needs to be assembled as quickly as possible, because the butter melts quickly from the warmth of your hands.
Now roll out the shortbread dough to a thickness of 0.3 cm between two layers of parchment or Teflon.
Put it directly on the sheet in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes (while you knead the choux pastry, the shortbread dough will be ready for use).
Take the well-chilled dough out of the refrigerator and squeeze out even circles using a glass or iron recess. Each such blank will be the lid of the cake.
Now we place shortcrust pastry lids on the placed cakes.
We send Shu cakes to bake in a preheated oven to 200 C, leave this temperature for 10 minutes, then reduce to 170 and bake for another 15-20 minutes. Depending on the power of the oven and the size of the cakes, the baking time may be longer or shorter. The cakes can be considered ready if the surface has turned a pleasant ruddy color and a mind-blowing smell comes out of the oven!
Attention! We do not open the oven for the first 10 minutes so that the cakes do not fall sharply!
Unfortunately, many people underestimate the fact that the oven needs to be preheated 10-15 minutes before baking! By the time the cakes enter the oven, it should be heated to 200 C. I bake Shu cakes in the “Top-Bottom” mode without convection.
The surface of the cakes can be dusted with powdered sugar through a sieve. You can consider your cakes ideal if they turn out to be round and even in shape, with a cap without tears, and with a cavity inside.
Tender, melt-in-your-mouth cakes are ready. They are truly magical. These are custard dumplings with a thin sugar crust and a huge amount of cream inside. Pour tea into mugs and enjoy!
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