If you had asked me 6 years ago if I would ever be making any sort of puff pastry, I'd scoff and tell you "no way". It sounds hard to make. Just the name "choux pastry" is enough to deter people from thinking it's even remotely easy to make. Let me tell you right now-it is. This recipe practically bakes itself. Just a few ingredients and you're good to go. Even my husband, Steve, was able to lend me a hand with this recipe. Sorry you'll be getting all of the "after" pictures. Like I said in my first post, it wasn't until I made these delicious nuggets of heaven that I decided to attempt a cooking blog.
Choux Pastry
1/2 cup butter or margarine (1 stick), cut into pieces
1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
In a 3 quart (medium size) saucepan, heat butter, water, and salt over medium high heat until butter has melted and mixture boils. Remove from heat. Add flour all at once, with wooden spoon, vigorously stir until mixture leaves the sides of the pan and forms a ball. Add eggs to flour mixture, one at a time, beating well after each addition, until mixture is smooth and satiny.
Preheat the oven to 400. Grease cookie sheet ( you can flour it too, but I had new non stick sheets so I just put a tiny bit of Pam spray on it)
Drop slightly rounded 1/4 cup scoops of batter in 8 large mounds, 3 inches apart.
Bake until golden, around 40-45 minutes. Remove puffs from oven; with tip of knife make small slit in side of each puff to release steam. Turn oven off and place the puffs back in the oven to sit for another 10 minutes. Transfer puffs to wire rack to cool. With serrated knife, cut each cooled puff horizontally in half; remove and discard any moist dough inside puffs.
This is what mine ended up looking like:
With some BlueBell Natural Vanilla Bean scooped on in:
A little hot Hershey's fudge drizzled on top.
So here are a few things about the recipe that I noticed. When I tried to make the little mounds on the cooking sheet, they kind of spread out more than I wanted them to, but I couldn't really help that. I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to go or not. Also, I think next time I cook them, I may cook them for about 5 minutes less. They were not as light gold as I wanted them to be. Other than that, this is a delicious dessert. It looks like something you'd pay $15 for at a fancy restaurant. Another thing I want to do next time is make my own ice cream and fudge sauce. I have an ice cream maker, so that could be just a really cool finishing touch... Another thing I did was reheat the puffs in the microwave for about 20 or 30 seconds and then put the ice cream and fudge on top. I think that really made it delicious. There's something about the hot of the cream puffs and hot fudge and the cold of the ice cream that really gave it that something special.
So there you have it. Cream puffs. I used to look in recipe books and think, "that looks way too hard to make". Nope. Pretty simple and delicious. You'll impress your friends and family with this one. They're like little eclairs. :)
Happy cooking!
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