A light, airy, and sweetly satisfying dessert. Cream puffs only need a few basic ingredients and are actually super fun and simple to make. Add some fresh strawberries and chocolate ganache to make your cream puffs even fancier!
Ingredients:
(Dough)
1 cup water
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
(Fillings)
Heavy cream
Semisweet chocolate
Fresh strawberries
Powdered sugar (for dusting)
Directions:
(Prep) Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, and print out cream puff templates.
(Dough) Add 1 cup water and 1 stick of butter to a small pot and bring it to a boil.
Add 1 cup flour and 1/4 tsp salt. Stir until everything comes together and forms sticky dough.
Move the mixture into a stand mixer bowl. Use the paddle attachment to beat the dough for a few seconds, just to help cool down the mixture so the eggs don’t cook.
Add 1 egg at a time, waiting until it is combined before adding the next egg until you add a total of 4 eggs. The mixture may take a second to come together, but it should form a smooth dough. (In my notes I wrote “will not look right, until it does”, so be patient!)
Put the dough into piping bags fitted with small, round tips. If using a template with smaller circles, pipe rounds onto every other circle. You can also make giant cream puffs by making larger circles, and you’d just have to extend the baking time 5-10 minutes.
Dip your finger in water to tap down the peaks of the dough circles.
(Bake) Put the baking sheet on the top rack in the 425 degree oven for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 325 degrees and bake for 10 more minutes. (Only bake 1 baking sheet at a time)
(Filling) Make the fillings -
Chocolate ganache (in macaron recipe)
Whipped cream (beat heavy cream in a mixer with granulated sugar to taste and a dash of vanilla extract until stiff peaks form).
Sliced strawberries
Take the puffs out of the oven and let them cool. You can pipe the filling into the cream puffs with a piping tip or cut the puffs in half and put the fillings in the middle.
One way to decorate is to put a base of chocolate ganache in the bottom, add some chopped strawberries, pipe a ring of whipped cream on top of it, place two slices of strawberries, add more whipped cream, then top it with the second half of the puff (picture below). - kinda complicated but makes for the best ratio of chocolate, strawberries, whipped cream and pastry.
Dust powdered sugar on top and enjoy!
NOTES:
You can stick candles on top and serve them for someone’s birthday!
One time, I baked two baking trays at once and the cream puffs didn’t rise as much, so I only bake one at a time now. They only bake for 20 minutes, so when you’re in the middle of decorating half of the cream puffs, you won’t even notice the others are still in the oven.
This pâte à choux dough can also be used for eclairs and churros! (fancy word for dough that has a hollow center after it’s baked)
Source Recipe: In my lifetime, I’ve taken two baking classes before, and one of them was a week-long class at Sur-la-Table I think like two years ago, and this is where the recipe came from!
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