These sweet lobster tails with homemade pastry cream will leave everyone speechless with this recipe. They resemble Neapolitan sfogliatelle, but are not; the filling is more like a cream puff. The recipe for lobster tails is in high demand, and although it’s a complex dessert, by following the instructions step by step, it’s possible to create sweet lobster tails that are just as good and beautiful as those from the pastry shop down the street. Let’s see how to make sweet lobster tails with homemade pastry cream, starting from the base dough that needs to chill in the fridge for 12 hours before it can be used to form the sweet lobster tail. The filling of the sweet lobster tail is different from the classic sfogliatelle, which is made with semolina, ricotta, and candied fruit. This homemade recipe for sweet lobster tail calls for a pastry cream filling.
How to Make Sweet Lobster Tails – Long Preparation, Quick Cooking
How do you make sweet lobster tails with pastry cream? The long preparation of the sweet lobster tails begins with the dough. The base dough should rest in the fridge for at least 12 hours before taking on the shape we know. The filling is made with choux pastry, which is the pastry used to make cream puffs. When baked, the choux pastry will puff up, giving volume and length to our sweet lobster tail. Using choux pastry for the filling creates a cream puff inside the pastry, so once cooked, the sweet lobster tails can be filled with whatever we like using a practical pastry bag. The classic recipe for sweet lobster tails calls for a simple pastry cream filling. Our suggestion is to garnish the already-filled sweet lobster tails with a simple dusting of powdered sugar – they will be perfect!
Sweet Lobster Tails and Sfogliatelle, What Are the Differences?
You might confuse sweet lobster tails and sfogliatelle, but there are at least two significant differences between these two desserts. As we just explained, sweet lobster tails are filled with choux pastry and end up with a cream puff with pastry cream wrapped in a fragrant layer of pastry. In sfogliatelle, you won’t find pastry cream or diplomatic cream. Instead, it has a filling made with semolina, ricotta, and candied orange. It’s also garnished with a characteristic strip of candied orange and doesn’t require the use of choux pastry in baking.
Recipe for Sweet Lobster Tails with Pastry Cream
Here’s the recipe for Sweet Lobster Tails with Pastry Cream. It’s a must-try recipe if you love pastry and crispy sweets with a tender heart. The filling is pastry cream, but if you prefer, you can always fill the sweet lobster tails with Nutella – hazelnut cream goes well with everything, after all!
Lobster tail with custard cream recipe
Other details
- Difficulty: High
Ingredients
Ingredients for the pastry
- 500 g All-purpose flour (1.1 lb)
- 200 ml Water (0.8 cup)
- 1 tsp Honey
- 1 pinch Salt
- 500 g Lard (1.1 lb)
Ingredients for the choux pastry filling
- 125 ml Water 0.5 cup
- 125 g All-purpose flour 1 cup
- 3 Eggs
- 1 pinch Salt
- 1 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil (or 0.2 lb soft butter)
To fill
- 250 g Yellow custard cream (or diplomatic cream: custard and whipped cream together) (0.6 lb)
To decorate
- to taste Powdered sugar
Instructions
How to make Lobster Tails with Cream: Let's prepare the pastry first.
- To make lobster tails with cream, we start by preparing the pastry dough. We pour the ingredients into a food processor and let it work for a few minutes. It will result in a dry and crumbly mix. We stop the food processor and pour the mixture onto a work surface.
- We knead by hand until we form a smooth spherical ball. We cover with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. We take the ball back, roll it out slightly with a floured rolling pin. Cut into 4-5 rectangular pieces that we will then roll out better with the rolling pin lengthwise and then, one by one, we must pass them through the pasta roller machine.
- We start by rolling out the dough piece with the largest measurement and gradually pass the pastry until reaching the thinnest thickness. We repeat the operation for all the pastry pieces. While we do this step, we leave the long pastry sheets to rest on a cloth or on a well-floured work surface.
- As soon as we have all the pastry sheets, we take the lard with our hands, melting it a little, and then we spread it gently on a sheet before rolling it up on itself, putting the lard both inside and outside of the roll. We place the roll on another sheet, put the lard and roll it up.
- We roll up all the pastry into a single roll, always putting the lard on both the sheet and the roll as we roll it up. Once we have rolled up all the pastry sheets, we spread more lard on the roll and wrap it with plastic wrap. The pastry roll must rest in the refrigerator overnight, namely about 11-12 hours.
How to make Lobster Tails with Cream: Let's prepare the choux pastry
- Especially in summer, when the ambient temperature is higher, we must prepare the filling for the lobster tails before taking the puff pastry roll out of the fridge. So, we prepare the choux pastry by pouring water, oil, and salt into a saucepan.
- We bring it to the boil and then add the flour all at once, stirring with a wooden spoon until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the saucepan. We pour the mixture into a cold bowl and continue to stir to cool it down until it reaches a temperature below 40°C (104°F). This is important because this is the time we add the egg. It needs to mix perfectly with the other ingredients without making an omelette.
- We add one egg at a time and stir vigorously with a food processor or a hand whisk. We need to mix vigorously until all the lumps are eliminated. The result is a very smooth and fairly compact mixture, meaning that if we take some choux pastry with a spatula and shake it, it should not drip or fall. We fill the pastry bag with the choux pastry.
Shaping and filling the Lobster Tails
- We take the "puff pastry" out of the refrigerator, cut off the ends, and obtain 2cm (0.7 inches) thick discs one by one. We prepare a baking tray with a sheet of parchment paper, then take one disc at a time and with our hands try to shape the lobster tails by hollowing out the discs, sliding all the pastries with our fingers.
- For a better result, be careful to slide all the pastries uniformly up to the tail. We shape the lobster tails and then fill them with a little choux pastry, about 10 g (0.35 oz) of dough. We lightly close the ends of the lobster tail, but without sticking them together, and place them on the baking tray with parchment paper.
- We repeat for all the sweet lobster tails, and remember to space them apart because they will become voluminous during cooking.
Cooking Lobster Tails
- Bake in a preheated fan oven at 180°C (356°F) for about 25 minutes. During the cooking, the choux pastry should puff up. Then, remove from the oven and let the lobster tail-shaped pastries cool completely.
Filling the Lobster Tails: let's prepare the cream filling
- For the cream filling, which we need to stuff the lobster tails, we need to prepare a pastry cream or, if preferred, a diplomatic cream, which is nothing more than a mix of pastry cream and Chantilly cream.
- Once cooled and ready to use, let's fill our lobster tails as follows: fill a star-shaped pastry bag with the previously prepared cream and insert the nozzle of the pastry bag right above the lobster tail, so that the cream is visible.
- Squeeze the pastry bag firmly and let out a tuft of cream. To ensure that we have filled the sweet lobster tails well, we can weigh them one by one, first empty, and then after filling, so we know exactly how much cream we have put in each pastry.
- We can decorate our lobster tails with an amarena cherry or a piece of candied orange to give the dessert more visual appeal, then dust with powdered sugar and immediately refrigerate. Sweet lobster tails should be served cold. They are a typical pastry from Naples, and being able to achieve a good result by making them at home should be a source of pride! Congratulations, and enjoy these delicious sweet lobster tails.
Conservation
It is recommended to consume the filled lobster tails within two days at the most, while without cream, they can be kept for longer, up to 3-4 days if well kept in an airtight container.Watching calories
3.5 oz of lobster tail pastry provides 337 calories (kcal).SHARE the Sweet Custard Lobster Tails recipe.
