Cream Puffs - Grandma Ross

I don't remember much about Grandma Ross' cream puffs, mainly what I remember is her serving desserts that were sandwiched together with whipped cream.  Mostly meringues with whipped cream but Mom says she also made cream puffs and I found her recipe for them.  I've made choux pastry before and, despite common opinion, it's such a doddle that I didn't know why Mom never picked up the recipe, especially if she was trying to impress company because choux pastry always looks impressive.  Cream puffs are especially impressive because they're nice and big.

A recent conversation with Mom revealed that she was just stymied by the recipe instructions her mother left and for some reason they were always slimy inside even though she thought they were fully cooked.  Well, I can understand her difficulties, especially in the pre-internet world, these are the instructions from Grandma's recipe, "When water & butter are boiling add flour & salt.  Remove from heat.  Add eggs & beat one in at a time." - that was it, nothing else, so no wonder, huh?  If it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't know what to do with the recipe either, so thank-you technology.

 

Cream Puffs

Pre-heat the oven to 400^F (205^C)
Heat in a pot until boiling:
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter

While waiting for the water to boil, sift together:
1/2 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
The moment the water and butter are boiling, turn the heat off, move your pot to a cool burner.  Dump all the flour into the water in one go and start stirring furiously.  I use an electric hand mixer but don't if your pot has a non-stick coating, mine are stainless so I'm good.

Once the dough comes away from the side start adding one at a time
2 eggs
It'll look like scary scrambled eggs for a while but keep mixing until the dough is smooth, shiny, and drops off the beaters (or spoon) easily.

Grease your baking sheet then splash some cold water on them and give them a shake so that you only have small drops of water clinging to the sheet.  This is a trick I found on the internet, because it's the steam that causes the choux pastry to puff up, if you have slightly damp baking sheets it creates extra steam for extra puff.  I'm not sure if dampening the tray makes much difference, I've always had my choux pastry puff up big and I only found the water trick recently, you still have to grease the sheet though, even if it's non-stick.

Spoon big tablespoon sized dollops of the dough onto the sheets leaving enough space for the cream puffs to expand to double their size without touching each other.

Bake  for 40 mins.

When you take them out of the oven, scoop them up off the baking tray immediately and punch a small hole in the bottom then put them on a wire rack to cool.  The internal structure of the choux pastry will remind you of strands of cobwebs like you see as special effects in old haunted house movies.  If you don't make a hole the steam has no where to escape, it'll stay inside, condense, and turn the cobweb strands slimy.  You could possibly try rescue your cream puffs by scraping the insides out with a spoon after you cut them open but you won't have any body left to it and the steam might also have gotten into the shell of the cream puff and there's no rescue for that.  Punch a hole in it, I used the handle of a spoon.

Once they're cooled, they'll keep for a few days if you don't fill them, but where's the fun in that?  Cream puffs can be cut open and filled with whipped cream or creme patisserie.  If you make profiteroles, the cream puff's miniature-cousin, they should be filled by piping the filling in through the hole you made to vent the steam.  To make the dessert extra indulgent you can also top them with sauce or chocolate shavings.