Exlairs (or ‘Brandteigkrapferl’ in German) are on my todo list for quite a while. Today I got around to finally give them a try. The filling is not what I would go with the next time, but it is a solid start.

Ingredients

Dough:

• 240g water
• 60g butter
• 10g rum
• 200g cake flour (‘doppel griffig’)
• 4 eggs
• 3g salt

Instructions

Put the water and butter in pan. If you have one use a deep one as it makes the initial mixing easier (saver). Bring that to a boil, remove it from the heat and add all flour. Instantly start stirring until the flour is fully incorporated. An option here would be to add water and flour to a stand mixer, mix it and then place it back in the pan.

Put the pan back on heat and keep stirring (or rather folding) the dough for three more minutes. Use a sturdy kitchen tool doing so as you will apply quite a bit of force (pictures below). You will see a white layer forming on the bottom of the pot though make sure to not burn everything. Once done get the dough out and let it cool down to body temperature.

Using a stand mixer add one egg at a time, wait until it gets fully incorporated before adding the next one. Once all eggs are combined you can fill the dough into a piping bag.

Usually you use a star top to form them on the baking tray. Though I don’t own one of these (nor a piping bag for that matter) so I used a plastic bag where I cut of one corner instead (ca. 2cm diameter). Cutting a star pattern did not work that well, but did at least ended up with some texture on the outside when painting the stripes.

Once layed out spray or brush them with water. This is key! I brushed them and they were really quite wet but it worked out perfectly. Bake them for 30 minutes in a preheated oven at 200 degrees (upper under heat). Do not open the oven during baking or they will collapse. If you get them out too early, they will collapse shortly after so rather bake them a bit longer than shorter.

Cut them in half with a bread knife and let them fully cool down (should only take a few minutes). Choose the filling and topping of your choice. Some examples can be found below.

Fillings

Whip Cream:

• 300g whip cream
• 60g selfmade vanilla sugar
• dash of citric acid powder

For the first try I just filled them with sweetened whip cream. I added a dash of citric acid just to spice things up a little bit. To be honest, I’m not a fan of this type of filling. Next time Ill try something different for sure. Though as I did not expect the dough to come out all right the first time around I was not prepared for any other type of filling.

I topped them of with powdered sugar, though chocolate or a lemon glaze would be better options.

Simple Vanilla Cream:

Filling:

• 500g milk
• 1pkg vanilla pudding powder
• 80g sugar
• 1cl rum
• 1/8 tsp citric acid powder
• 100g sweet cream

Topping:

• 4tbsp powdered sugar (potentially more!)
• 2tbsp cocoa powder
• 1tbsp milk
• dash cinnamon
• dash salt

Put 80g milk aside and mix it with the pudding powder and citric acid. Mix the rest of the milk, rum and sugar together in a pot and bring it to a boil. Remove it from the heat, mix in the pudding slurry and place it on the heat again. Let it simmer for 1 minute under constant stirring. Let the pudding cool down fully afterward. Once cold remove the skin. Whip up the sweet cream and gently fold it under the pudding.

For the topping just mix everything together.

Anything Else

As the dough is pretty neutral you can also fill them with salty things.

To be honest, eggs were not the greatest idea as the dough itself already has an egg taste. But it still worked fine and made a simple dish look amazing.

Other salty fillings that I really want to try would be ricotta and dried tomatoes, or a tuna sour cream.

Next time…

• prepare a different filling (vanilla cream or something with lemon or lime)
• use different topping (lemon glaze maybe)
• get a dough bag and a star top if you want to make them more often