Cream Puffs

Cream Puff

Cream puff, home-made choux Pastry and home-made cream. Yummy snack.

Ingredients

Choux Pastry 

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup butter (or 1 stick butter)
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

Cream filings

1 cup (240ml) heavy whipping cream (double cream, 35-40% butterfat)

1/2 teaspoon  pure vanilla extract

1.5 tablespoons granulated white sugar

Garnish

Confectioners sugar (or powdered, icing sugar)

Directions

Choux Pastry

1.       Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

2.      In a large pot, bring water and butter to a rolling boil.  Stir in flour and salt until the mixture forms a ball.  3.      Transfer the dough to a large mixing bowl.  Using a wooden spoon or stand mixer.  Dump all 4 eggs in at once and mix Immediately on med. speed.  Mix until the dough is tacky and starts sticking to the side of the mixing bowl (about 2-3 minutes).  (Remarks: Mixing in one egg at a time makes no difference in dough texture and only allows more time for the eggs to curdle in the hot liquid). 4.      Drop by a heaping tablespoonful of dough for each onto an ungreased baking sheet.

5.      Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown.  Poke a small hole with a toothpick in the side of each puff to let the steam escape with a toothpick and cool.  (No need to let it sit in the oven for cooling, or it will dry out. ) 6.      Use parchment paper to bake or it will stick.  Don't grease the cookie sheet, or the bottoms will burn or get too brown.

Cream filings 7.  Chill the whipping cream, mixing bowl and whisk in the refrigerator for at least 15 mins. 8.     When chilled, whip the cream, sugar and vanilla extract mixture, just until stiff peaks form. To assemble 9.      When the pastry shells are cool, either split and fill them with the cream filing mixture, or use a pastry bag to pipe the filling into the shells. 10.  Dust the puff with icing sugar. 11.   Leftover cream puffs should be stored in the refrigerator.