Cream Horns
Roll puff paste in a long rectangular piece, one-eighth inch thick. Cut in strips three-fourths inch wide. Roll paste over wooden forms bought for the purpose, having edges overlap. Bake in hot oven until well puffed and slightly browned. Brush over with white of egg slightly beaten, diluted with one teaspoon water, then sprinkle with sugar. Return to oven and finish cooking, and remove from forms. When cold, with Cream Filling or whipped cream
A short entry that assumes you already know Farmer's puff paste and cream filling recipes from elsewhere in the book. The technique is straightforward; the details that trip people up are the forms, the oven and the moment the glaze goes on.
- "Hot oven"The book gives no figure; for puff paste this is generally taken to mean somewhere around 425-450F. The high heat turns the water in the butter layers to steam quickly, which is what lifts the pastry; too slow an oven lets the butter melt out instead.
- The forms"Wooden forms bought for the purpose" are cream horn moulds, now usually sold in tinned steel or stainless. Grease them lightly and wrap the strip from the point upward, letting the edges overlap slightly as the recipe directs.
- Two-stage bakingThe egg-white-and-sugar glaze goes on partway through, not at the start. Sugar added at the beginning risks scorching over the whole bake; added once the pastry has puffed, it sets during the final stage of cooking.
- UnmouldingTake the horns off the forms while still warm rather than fully cold, as the recipe directs; very hot pastry is still soft enough to crush between the fingers.
- Fill at the last minuteCream filling (Farmer's is a milk-and-egg pastry cream) or whipped cream will soften the pastry fairly quickly. Bake ahead and fill just before serving.
- Puff paste shortcutAll-butter frozen puff pastry, rolled a little thinner than it comes, behaves the same way here and saves the several hours of turning the original assumes.
Cream horns belong to the long family of European puff-paste conceits — cornets, cornucopias, lady locks, Italian cannoncini — that appear once laminated pastry became a standard skill in professional kitchens and then filtered into domestic manuals. The offhand instruction to buy wooden forms is worth noticing: it takes for granted a reader with access to a shop selling specialised baking tools.