Custard Bombs

Custard bombs, also called saloons or berlinas, are simply buns filled with pastry cream and covered in icing sugar. And as their name suggests, they are a real time bomb … Here we show you how to make them.

Option 1: Custard Pumps

Ingredients

For the cream:

• ½ l of milk
• 1 branch of vanilla
• 100 g cornstarch
• 75g sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 120 g egg yolk
• 50 g butter, diced

For pumps:

Mass 1:

• 25 g of pressed yeast
• 125 g of water
• 250 g of strength flour

Mass 2:

• 350 g of bread flour
• 125 g of creamy butter
• 75g sugar
• 6 g of salt
• 100 g of egg yolk
• 75 g of egg
• ½ tablespoon lemon zest

Mounting:

• Sunflower oil for frying
• Powdered sugar

Process:

From the pastry cream:

• First, boil 125 ml of milk together with the open vanilla branch and its seeds. Once it has boiled, cover with plastic wrap. In this way,  let it rest for half an hour.
• Meanwhile, mix the cornstarch, sugar and salt in a pot and add the settled milk very little by little, until making a porridge, stirring constantly with the rods.
• Then add the rest of the milk and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes.
• Pour the butter into cubes and mix well.
• Add the yolks and beat energetically  with the rods.
• Finally, transfer the cream to a bowl or a tray, cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge.

From mass 1:

• Dissolve the yeast in part of the warm water.
• Put the flour in a bowl and gradually add the water and yeast mixture. Thus, stir until incorporated. While kneading, add the rest of the water also little by little.
• Mix until you get a homogeneous dough. Then put it in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap.

• Similarly, let it rest until it doubles in volume.

From mass 2:

• Put the flour in a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients little by little, stirring until you get a homogeneous dough.
• Put in a bowl, cover with a plastic wrap. Thus, let it rest at room temperature.

Final assembly:

• First, knead the two doughs together until there is a single, uniform and smooth dough.
• Second, put the dough on the previously floured work surface and cut it into pieces of approximately 60 g.
• Then, make balls with each of these pieces and place them on a tray with a cloth at the base. Cover with another cloth and let the balls rest for about 20 minutes, until they double in volume.
• Meanwhile, put sunflower oil in a frying pan and heat it to about 180ºC.

• Fry the bombs in the oil for about 3 minutes, turning them constantly.
• Later, drain them very well on absorbent paper.
• Open the bombs with a serrated knife without completely slitting them and with the help of a pastry bag, fill them with the cream.
• Finally, sprinkle the bombs with icing sugar.

Advice:

To fully enjoy these cream-filled bombs, it’s best to chill them in the fridge before eating. Also, if they are not going to be consumed during the day, it is best to keep them refrigerated and consume them within two or three days, since the cream contains eggs.

Even so, cream bombs can be frozen in a zip-lock bag and will easily keep until ready to be consumed.