Cream Puffs

I’ve had three kinds of fresh-cream puffs. Here’s the rundown.

The first is the roughest-looking of the bunch — a yellowish blob — but the skin is thin and the cream is generous. Eating it feels like an explosion in your mouth; you can really feel the cream hit you.

The second is the deluxe version of the first. It doesn’t look rough anymore, some even have a pattern piped onto the crust, and sometimes the outside is still crispy. But that over-refined crust only cuts into the cream’s impact — that’s what it means to let the tail wag the dog. One bite in and you find you’re just chewing crust, or only got half the cream. You can’t pop the whole thing in your mouth, and honestly………

The third is even more upscale, improved on the second: more cream, more refined crust work, raisins or whatever thrown in. It tastes fine, sure, but I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t a cream puff anymore… “little cake” fits better.

All things considered, I still prefer the first one. It’s nothing to look at, but the texture is top-notch, and it directly satisfies my craving for that explosive, overflowing fresh-cream sensation. The other two — one lets the tail wag the dog, the other puts the cart before the horse. Pricey and more refined, sure, but they’ve lost the most basic thing a cream puff has.

It’s like that sometimes. You can’t forget your roots when you make something. Give a dumpling a whole crab wrapped around it and I’ll say the crab is delicious, but I will never admit that it’s a dumpling…