Cream Puffs

Cream puffs, eclairs, even funnel cakes, are all made from a pastry dough called "Pate a Choux". It's a French phrase that means "paste of cabbages", or cabbage paste. It is so named as the little cooked pieces of pastry are said to resemble little cabbages. You might also hear it called simply "choux paste" (pronounced like "shoe").

Pate a choux gets it's rising entirely from the evaporation of water - there is no leavening. The ingredient list is remarkably short - water, butter, sugar, salt, flour, and eggs. The process is rather different than probably any other pastry you've ever made. Pate a choux can be made for either sweet or savory fillings - that is the purpose of these little gems, they are simply a shell for some really tasty inside bits.

For eclairs or cream puffs, you'll fill your choux paste with a pastry cream. Savory puffs are often filled with herbed cream cheese or blue cheese mixture. Or even meats.

Pate a Choux for Sweet Filling
yield - 4 dozen bite-sized cream puffs

1 cup water
3/4 stick butter (6 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/8 cup flour
1 cup eggs, about 4 large eggs and 2 whites

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Boil water, butter, sugar, and salt. Add flour and remove from heat. Work mixture together and return to heat. Continue working the mixture until all flour is incorporated and dough forms a ball. Transfer mixture into bowl of a standing mixer and let cool for 3 or 4 minutes. If you add your eggs to too hot mixture, you'll get scrambled eggs, so be sure it's cooled. With mixture on stir or lowest speed, add eggs, 1 at a time, making sure the first egg is completley incorporated before continuing.

Once all eggs have been added and the mixture is smooth, put dough into piping bag fitted with a rather large round tip. Pipe immediatley into golfball-sized shapes, 2 inches apart onto parchment paper or Silpat lined sheet pans.

Cook for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 degrees F and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Once they are removed from the oven pierce the bottoms with a paring knife immediately to release steam. Let cool completely before filling.

Pastry Cream Filling
batch size - 10 ounces

3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons corn starch
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Combine milk with approximately half the sugar. Heat, stirring frequently until boiling.

Blend together the remaining sugar and constarch before adding the egg. Use a wire whip to beat smooth.

While stirring the egg and starch mixture, slowly add about 1/4 of the hot milk mixture. Return the warmed egg and starch mixture back into the boiling milk. Stir constantly until it thickens.

Place in a suitable container and cover the surface of the pastry cream with plastic wrap. Press the plastic wrap tightly onto the surface of the cooked pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming.

When cold, remove wrap, add vanilla, and beat until very smooth and creamy. Fill a piping bag fitted with a smallish round tip, and poke the tip into the bottom of the cooled cream puffs. Fill until the puff feels heavy. You can also use a ziptop bag fitted with a tip instead of a piping bag.