CREAM PUFFS

Every spring, we always find a reason to make cream puffs. And then again, we’ll find another reason to make them in summer… and then again in….well you get it! 

On this day I had decided the youngest daughter was ready to learn how to make cream puffs and it was the perfect day for perfecting such skills.  Also knowing that her brothers and her dad never mind when a daughter is practicing her baking skills and making something yummy in the kitchen! So we began.

Now Cream puffs are pretty easy to make.  They take very few ingredients and they have a simple and natural look about them, and trust me they’ll turn out great!  If my 14yr. old daughter can do it, you can too. Besides my family has never had any problem woofing down mistakes and yours won’t either 😊 (if there are any). Your gonna love these chocolate drizzled pastries!❤️

Ok lets dive in and make the Puffs first.

The Puff recipe
Preheat oven to 450 – important with cream puffs!
½ C real butter (not margarine!)
1 C water
1 C all-purpose flour
¼ tsp salt
4 eggs

In a medium saucepan, bring butter and water to a rapid boil, stirring til butter melts. Next as soon as its melted, Reduce heat to low and add in flour & salt. Stir this vigorously (if its a gooey mess at this point, then its perfect 🙂 stir until mixture leaves the side of pan and forms a nice round ball (resembling playdough, is what I always said to my daughters).
Now Remove from heat and add the eggs, but only one at a time, beating well (with a spoon) after each addition (do not use beaters!)

Now your dough is ready. Next plop large spoons of dough onto a cookie sheet, I use parchment paper. The recipe makes about 7-9 puffs, so that’s how many plops you should get. Bake (in a preheated oven) at 450 for 15 min, then reduce the temperature to about 325 for another 15-20 min more. They should be golden brown. Try not to open the oven door, only check them by looking through the oven window (so that they won’t deflate ). When done, Remove from baking sheet and cool on rack immediately. Let them cool for several hours before filling them with the yummy custard recipe below.

Now if your prefer, instead you can pipe them long and narrow and make them into long johns if ya want,(as done below,) yep we’ve done them that way too, but my favorite is to plop them on a parchment covered sheet and let them have a round natural cream puff look.  But However you make them, your gonna love the tender pastry filled to the brim with creamy custard and drizzled with chocolate on top. Trust me!😊

While the puffs cool we will make the Creamy Vanilla Custard to fill them with.

Custard Filling Recipe:
¾ cup instant vanilla pudding mix
(I buy it in bulk, it’s equivalent to 1 large box of pudding.) 
2 cups milk
1 tsp real vanilla extract
Beat the pudding mix, milk and vanilla extract on LOW with beaters, until thickened. Then Set aside, while you whip the cream below.
1 cup heavy cream – –  in separate small bowl whip heavy cream with whisk beaters on high until thick and perfect, then add in ¼ cup of powdered sugar to whipped cream and stir it in.  (I don’t use cool whip)
Now you stir your pudding mixture and your sweetened whipped cream, together, gently to fold and mix nicely into a wonderful creamy custard filling. Refrigerate until ready to fill. (also refrigerate any leftover filling when your finished, if you have some).

Now using a very large tip, (I use tip # 12 ) you fill an icing bag with some of the custard filling and you just poke your tip into the top of your cream puff and gently squeeze some filling into the puff. You will kinda see and feel your puff expand. You’ll see that this is the learning part! Sometimes a lil starts to squish out a weak spot on the side of the puffs, if you overfill it. But that’s okay. We want our girls to learn the art of gently filling things, so a lil practice on the first couple puffs and they figure it out and they’ll get it right. The goal is to have fun learning!   So Just Fill each puff…… sometimes we have a lil filling left over — no one seems to mind eating a spoon or two that’s left!

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Ok once they are all filled then  we drizzle them with chocolate and sorta cover up the hole where we filled them so they look real nice and finished. To make the chocolate drizzle is quite easy and takes literally about 5 minutes.

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Chocolate Icing :
1 ½ C milk chocolate chips
2 T palm shortening or coconut oil  (I don’t use vegetable shortening, but I’m sure any solid would work here).
Melt these 2 together on very very low heat or double boiler style.
Stir continually as chips are melting, so not to scorch it, literally this takes about 2 min. Let chocolate cool well! (or make this before the filling and set aside to cool)

Now the fun part….. using a spoon, just drizzle the chocolate all over the filled puffs, covering up the hole or slit where you filled them and they are done, and will be well enjoyed!

If not serving them right away, they need to be refrigerated.

I hope you family will enjoy these creamy filled pastry treats as much as we do!

Okay now if you need a fun idea for your teen daughters …..go here and see my daughter and her friend having a fun day making cream puffs one summer afternoon,  using this recipe above.