This Karpatka recipe is an amazing Polish Carpathian mountain cream cake that consists of two layers of choux pastry and delicious pastry cream in between. Dusted with powdered sugar, the choux pastry that puffs up unevenly in the oven represents the Carpathian mountains. It’s so delicious and decadent, with just the perfect sweetness.
INGREDIENTS AND SUBSTITUTES
Flour – I use all-purpose flour but you can use pastry flour if you like to make this cream puff cake.
Cornstarch – Cornstarch has no aftertaste and it doesn’t affect the texture or the color of the cream. However, some people prefer to use a blend of flour and starch, while others replace it with potato starch.
Eggs – We need three whole eggs at room temperature to make choux pastry for Polish Carpathian cake and 4 egg yolks to make the cream. If you don’t know where to use egg whites, check my Meringue cookies recipe.
Milk and water – For the choux pastry, we need whole milk and water. However, you can use only water if you like. As for the pastry cream, we need whole milk which you can’t replace with anything else.
Vanilla extract and salt – I add these to the pastry and cream to make the flavors more interesting.
Butter – We need unsalted butter for the dough as well as for the cream. Although the temperature of the butter for the dough doesn’t really matter because you’re going to melt it together with the milk and water, the cream calls for room temperature butter.
Sugar – I use granulated sugar for the dough and cream and powdered sugar to decorate the cake.
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