A cream puff is also known as a profiterole (frozen after filled with cream) or chou à la crème. It is basically choux pastry filled with whipped cream, whipped cream with cream cheese, custard cream, pastry cream (vanilla or chocolate or any flavour) or any cream of your liking. The puffs may be decorated with powdered sugar as I had done or drizzled with chocolate sauce, etc. or it may be served plain.
Cream puffs are easy to make. Being light and airy, they are great for breakfast, tea time snacks or desserts. Usually I will not fill my puffs; I will keep them in air-tight containers in the refrigerator and pipe them when I want to eat them. However, you may fill them in advance, store them in air-tight containers and freeze them. The puffs will thaw in less than 15 minutes when you want to eat them.
Ingredients for the Dough:
- 220 g water
- 130 g butter
- A pinch of salt
- 160 g plain flour, sifted twice
- 5 - 6 eggs
Ingredients for the Whipped Cream
- 300 g whipping cream
- 100 g powdered sugar (can be reduced)
- Pour water, butter and salt into a saucepan and bring them to a boil.
- Pour the sifted flour immediately into the saucepan.
- Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture is well incorporated, forms into a smooth dough ball and does not stick to the saucepan.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the dough cool down a bit.
- Transfer the dough into a mixing bowl.
- Set the mixer to medium speed.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, to the dough. After adding the 5th egg, test the dough to see if it can drop from the spoon to form a ball. If it cannot drop from the spoon, it means that the dough is too dry. Add the 6th egg, spoonful by spoonful, and mix again to incorporate it into the dough until it can drop from the spoon to form a ball.
- You may transfer the dough into a piping bag and pipe the dough onto a greased and slightly floured baking sheet. Leave a space between the dough balls to allow for expansion. When you have finished piping the dough, wet your finger and press the tip of the dough down.
- Or, you may use 2 spoons to drop the dough onto the baking sheet, again allowing space for expansion.
- Bake at a preheated oven at 230 degrees Centigrade for 25 minutes or until they turn golden brown.
- Remove the puffs from the oven immediately after baking.
- While waiting for the puffs to bake, measure the whipping cream and the powdered sugar into a cold metal bowl. (Due to our weather, it would be better to put this bowl into a bigger bowl filled with water and ice.)
- Beat the cream and sugar with a hand held beater until stiff peak.
- Pipe the whipped cream into the puffs which had cooled down.
- The cream puffs are ready to be served.
- [Note: This recipe makes about 25 relatively big puffs, the size of ping pong balls. If you wish to have more puffs, pipe lesser amounts onto the baking sheet.]