Cream Puffs

If you don't love cream puffs, there's something wrong with you. Seriously, you might want to get it checked out.

This is my mom's recipe. Who knows where it originally came from. Back when we were kids, and she was looking for a "project" to do no doubt, she typed up her recipes into little binders. Three of them. One for her and one for each of her kids so they would know how to at least cook a few things when they moved out. They are filled with type-overs and typos (not the same thing, if you remember anything about the days of typing on a manual typewriter, clumping keys, ribbons of ink and no white-out), shorthand recipes that I have to call her for clarification on and a whole lot of family recipes.

This is one of those.

CREAM PUFFS

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 4 eggs, room temperature

Directions:  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper or grease them.

• In a medium saucepan, combine the butter and boiling water.
• Over medium-low heat, bring to a boil and then gradually add the 1 cup of flour and the salt.
• Beat vigorously until mixture leaves the sides of the pan.
• Remove from heat and cool slightly.
• Add the unbeaten eggs, one at a time, and beat this mixture until glossy.
• Drop batter from spoon onto cookie sheet, mounding into a circle with a little swirl on top.
• Space approx 2" apart.
• Bake for 30-40 minutes. Allow to cool away from drafts on wire racks.
• Cut in half and fill with whip cream and fruit.
• Eat! and then eat another one! For quality control purposes of course.

You can also pipe these into eclair shapes or pipe whipping cream (or pudding if that's your thing) right into the middle of them. Or dust them with icing sugar. Or eat them just the way they are, like Blade does!



TIPS

• You can just grease your cookie sheet with Pam etc. but use parchment paper if you have it. And if you haven't discovered the joys of parchment paper yet, go to the store and get some! Can you say zero sticking and zero clean-up?
• It says to gradually add the flour, but I have to tell you, after the first initial small dump of flour, I just tossed the rest in. I was concentrating on beating vigorously with my spoon!
• You will definitely be able to tell when the mixture 'leaves the side of the pan'. I was a bit worried about knowing but you can't mistake it.
• When you add the eggs, the mixture looks gloopy initially. Just keep stirring until it combines before you add the next one.  Bet your arm is tired by now though!
• If you forgot to put your eggs out on the counter so they would be room temp, just put them in a bowl of really warm water for a few minutes. That will warm them up enough.
• Mine only took 30 minutes to bake. I did both paper and oiling to see the difference. The oiled pan produced puffs with a crispier bottom initially but I don't know as you could tell the difference once they cooled. I prefer the paper though, no washing to do.
• No one cares that your puffs might turn out wonky looking if you think you didn't swirl just right. They'll be too busy eating them to worry about it.