Classic Cream Puffs

Hello there LLK friends!  My boys are home for Spring Break this week, and we have all sorts of fun things planned to do together.  So I won’t stay long, but just thought I’d pop in real quick here to share this Classic Cream Puff recipe with you, and then I’ll be back again when the boys are back in school.

I’m sure many of you have made cream puffs more times than you can count, and there is really nothing too special about the way I made them.  But I thought I’d share since this was the first time I had ever made a choux pastry (pronounced like “shoe”) and it had been on my baking bucket list for a while.  I hosted a baby shower this weekend for a sweet baby girl, and it was so fun to serve these classic little delights. 

I filled the cream puffs with a simple homemade vanilla whipped cream, and dusted them with powdered sugar.  I thought about doing a strawberry whipped cream (using crushed freeze dried strawberries for color and flavor) because I thought they might add to the girlie pink shower theme, but in the end decided to just keep them vanilla.  Next time I’ll let myself be a little more creative.
There are truly so many wonderful things you can make with a good cream puff, both sweet and savory.  I’m so glad I had the perfect occasion to make them for.  You should have seen my boys when I gave them all the okay to come home after the ladies had left.  They stood wide eyed at my little leftover dessert buffet and just gobbled everything up.  Made for an easy clean-up!

Classic Cream Puffs

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

For the Shells

•     1/2 cup (120 ml) whole milk
•     1/2 cup (120 ml) water
•     1 stick (1/2 cup, 113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
•     1 cup (127 grams) all-purpose flour
•     2 TBSP (24 grams) granulated sugar (optional, but will sweeten them slightly)
•     large pinch kosher salt
•     4 large eggs

For the Cream Chantilly

•     1 cups (237 ml) heavy cream, cold
•     1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
•     3 TBSP powdered sugar

Instructions

For the Shells

1. Place the water, milk, butter, sugar if using, and salt in a sauce pot over medium high heat. Stir until butter is melted and everything comes to a boil. When the mixture is boiling, take it off the heat and pour the flour into the pot all at once. Stir quickly and vigorously. This mixture is called the panade.
2. When the mixture becomes smooth, flatten it to the bottom of the pan and return it to medium heat. Let the mixture sit on the bottom of the pan until you start to hear it crackling. At this point pull the mixture to the side and if there is a thin film left on the bottom of the pan it is dried out enough. If there is not, let it heat for a little while longer until a film forms.
3. Remove the mixture from the heat and stir until most of the steam has evaporated. This is called "evacuating the steam" and is important to further dry out the pastry dough.
4. Off of the heat, add one egg at a time into the mixture and stir vigorously until it is completely absorbed into the dough before adding the next. The batter will look smooth and glossy when it is ready. Use immediately or store covered in a cool spot for up to 3 hours.
5. Place batter in a pastry bag fitted with a large round tip or a zip top bag with the tip cut off. Preheat oven to 425F (we will crank up the oven heat once we put the cream puffs in). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Hold the pastry bag over the baking sheet and squeeze over one area until you have about a 1 1/2 inch round (or 2" for larger cream puffs). Release the pressure from the bag and pull up to release the dough mound. You will have a little peak on the each that can be smoothed out with a wet fingertip. Keep the mounds about 2 inches apart.
7. Place one baking sheet at a time in the oven and turn to heat up to 450F. This will create an active heating cycle for your oven so that the shells will puff up quickly. Bake for 10 minutes (without opening the oven) then drop the heat down to 350F and bake for 13-15 more minutes until the shells are crispy on the outside and set. Allow the oven to preheat back to 425 F before baking the next sheet.
8. Fill cooled pastries with creme chantilly (recipe follows) and dust with powdered sugar.

For the Creme Chantilly

1. Whip cream by hand, in stand mixer with whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer until just starting to thicken.
2. Add sugar and vanilla and continue whipping until soft to medium peaks form.
3. Fill a pastry bag with the cream, and pipe into the bottom of the puffs until filled.

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