Crispy Cream Puffs

Hello! For this blog post I have chosen to make "Crispy Cream Puffs" from my book, Petite Sweets. Just a heads up— this recipe takes time to make and there are many parts to it, but it's something I would make again because it's so good.

Since I have to make at least five blog posts and, including me, there are five members in my family, I wanted to make something for each member of the family. The first recipe I made was chocolate velvet cupcakes, which was the recipe I chose to make for myself.

The next recipe was chosen by my little brother, Alex. He wanted me to make this recipe because when we were younger my mom used to make cream puffs for us and we would fill them with ice cream and eat them, so this would be like a recreation of that.
To make things a little more fun, I had help making these with my best friend, Hannah.

The end result was supposed to look a little something like this....

Crispy Cream Puffs from Petite Sweets (Ojakangas 126)

To create the cream puffs, I first had to get all the ingredients I would need:

Cream Puff:

• 1 cup water
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ teaspoons sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs

Cream Glaze:

• 5 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract 
• 4-6 tablespoons hot water (I used 6)
• ½ cup milk chocolate chips
• 1-2 tablespoons chocolate sprinkles (for garnish- optional. I did not use this) 

The first thing I did was make the cream puffs. I started with preheating the oven to 425°F.

Then, in a saucepan I combined the water, butter, salt, and sugar. When it started to boil I took the pan off the stove, added the flour, and stirred it until "all the flour [was] incorporated" (Ojakangas 124). After, I placed it back onto the stove over low heat and stirred for "about 2 minutes to evaporate some of the moisture" (Ojakangas 124). When the dough was ready, I moved it from the saucepan to a mixer. Once I turned it on, I added all the eggs one at a time.

I then prepared the two baking sheets and lined them with parchment paper. I took a spoon and scooped 1 inch (in diameter) balls of dough from the mixer bowl and placed them so they were evenly spread out on the baking sheets (Ojakangas 124). When I finished, I placed the pans in the oven and set the timer for 15 minutes.

While the cream puffs were baking, I started making the glazes. To do this, I mixed the butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and hot water in a bowl (we'll call this bowl #1). I would recommend not adding all the hot water at once because, if you do (like I did), the butter will not melt all the way and you'll need to place your bowl in the microwave for a couple seconds until the butter is melted to fully mix the ingredients.
Anyhow, I then took a saucepan, filled it with water, and set it on the stove over medium-high heat. I placed another bowl (bowl #2), which was full of chocolate chips, on top of that saucepan and started stirring the chocolate chips around in the bowl with a wooden spoon. When all of the chocolate chips were melted, I poured half of the mixture in bowl #1 into bowl #2 with all the melted chocolate chips and mixed those two together. 

As you can see, the white bowl (bowl #1) contains the first glaze and the black bowl hidden in the back (bowl #2) is filled with the glaze + melted chocolate chips. These will go on top of the cream puffs.

Speaking of cream puffs, after 15 minutes of baking in the oven, I reduced the temperature in the oven to 375°F and continued baking the cream puffs for another 10ish minutes. In the book it says 25 minutes, but my cream puffs were already browning so you may want to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't burn. 

After however many minutes, I took out the cream puffs and let them cool just enough so when I picked them up I wouldn't burn myself.

This next part got messy, so what I should've done was start by getting two large plates or cooling wracks (with paper towels underneath!!). Unfortunately, I'm not the kind of person to think ahead and I took out two cooling wracks with just my counter underneath. Let's just say I had a lot of cleaning up to do afterward and my mom was not happy about the mess. 

I picked up my first cream puff and dipped it into bowl #1, the original glaze. I placed the cream puff on the cooling wrack so the glaze could settle and continued this process until all cream puffs are covered. 

Side note— using the glaze it totally optional. If you want, you could stop there, fill it, and eat it! But I think the glaze adds more flavor and it's veryyyy good.

When all the cream puffs were covered with the first glaze, I picked up a cream puff and dipped it into bowl #2— the chocolate glaze. I continued this process until all the cream puffs were covered with chocolate glaze. Again, this step is optional.

Finally, I took a cream puff, split it in the middle, and filled it with ice cream. Many people fill it with pudding, custard, or etc. but my favorite is ice cream. At the moment all I had was Cookies and Cream, but anything's good with these! 😍 

If I were to do this again, I would definitely try to clean up along the way and try not make a total disaster of the kitchen. I might even try making the "Fruit Filled Cream Puffs" (Ojakangas 125), which is the same recipe for the cream puffs but a suggested ricotta and fruit filling. 

I would highly recommend making these if you're ever hungry and/or want a tasty dessert. Although they didn't look as good as the picture in my book did, they tasted amazing! 

And this time my dad didn't get to eat them before I was done, but he sure did ask me when they would be done a lot. 

Is there a recipe that you make a lot that brings back old memories? 

Or is there something you like doing with your best friend that makes time seem to fly by? My best friend helped me along the way and made the wait and hard work for preparing these a lot easier and more enjoyable 🙂 

Thanks for reading!

Ojakangas, Beatrice, and Roger LePage. Petite Sweets: Bite-Size Desserts to Satisfy Every Sweet Tooth. Portland, Me.: Sellers, 2009. Print.