Cream Puffs....The Whole Recipe

Ingredients for the pastry:

• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 4 to 6 large eggs

Prep:

In a heavy saucepan bring water to a boil with butter and salt over high heat. Reduce heat to moderate. Add flour all at once and beat with a wooden spoon until mixture pulls away from sides of pan, forming a dough

Transfer dough to bowl of a standing electric mixer and beat in 4 eggs (use a sturdy wooden spoon and get an upper body workout), 1 at a time, on high speed, beating well after each addition. Batter should be stiff enough to just hold soft peaks and fall softly from a spoon. If batter is too stiff, in a small bowl beat remaining 2 eggs lightly, 1 at a time, and add to batter, a little at a time, beating on high speed, until batter is desired consistency. 

 Baking:

At this point, put this in a piping bag with a round tip. For bite-size puffs make them about as big as a large grape. For make them as large as you'd like but the bite-size ones I made turned out cute.

Heat the oven to 400 deg. Pipe the little bundles onto either a silpat mat or parchment paper. After piping, wet a finger and push down the little tip on the top. Put them in the hot oven, close the door and do not open the oven for at least 10 min. Bake until golden brown. Take out of the oven and pierce to let out the steam them put on a rack to cool.

Filling:

You can use simple whipped cream at this point or make a smmmmooooth vanilla cream filling.

Ingredients for the vanilla cream:

2/3 C, sugar
2 tbls flour
2 tbls cornstarch
pinch of salt
2 eggs or 4 egg yolks
2 cups of cream or half and half or milk (2 C of dairy....mix it up)
2 tbls butter (softened)
2 tbls vanilla
In a sauce pan, combine sugar, flour, cornstarch and salt. In another container mix eggs and dairy. Whisk everything together in the pan over medium heat. At first whisk occasionally but as it heats up whish continually. I just got a new little gadget (a flash from my past) it's a hand egg beater from OXO. You can detach the mixing part from the hand crank for cleaning. I remember a large metal one my mom had. This one is perfect for this job!

The OXO egg beater

Mix until this boils and thickens. Adjust the heat to low and the mix bubbles gently, mixing all the time, until it coats the back of a spoon. Stir in the butter and vanilla.
Strain through a fine sieve to get rid of little lumps and cool to room temp.

Little Poofs...I mean puffs  bite-size

Put THIS into a piping bag and fill your little pooofs. You can also cut off the tops and fill, topping with the hats. To top the whole with dark chocolate if you want making little squiggles. Put the chocolate...or caramel in a zip lock bag, cut off a little corner and pipe over the puffs. VERY Pretty!

Creamy pooofs!