Cream Puffs

One rainy Saturday morning, Rebecca and I decided we would go on a cooking rampage. I actually woke up at 6:20 in the morning (hey, I just came back from the East Coast, where the time change is 3 hours earlier than California), and Rebecca woke up a little bit later, so we got started pretty early. We started with Alton Brown's Pate a Choux recipe and made a whole kitchen-full of eclairs and cream puffs. We also made Pastry Cream from the book Joy of Cooking (half vanilla, half chocolate) and topped them all with Alton Brown's ooey gooey chocolate glaze (the same one from my doughnuts). It was messy, high in calories, and sinfully delicious.

Then our whole apartment had a mega-epic hot pot for lunch. Yum. Now I just have to work it all off.

Pate A Choux

-1 cup water
-6 tbsp butter
-1 tbsp sugar
-1/8 tsp salt
-1.3 cups AP flour
-4 eggs + 2 egg whites

1. Heat water, butter, salt, and sugar in a medium saucepan until the butter melts.
2. Add flour and stir until the ingredients form a ball.
3. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 3-4 minutes. Preheat the oven to 425F.
4. Add in one egg at a time, stirring on the lowest setting until each is incorporated before adding the next.
5. Place mixture into a piping bag with the largest tip.
6.Pipe a small bit of mixture in four corners of a large cookie tray. Then lay a piece of parchment paper over them. The corner pipings will stick the paper to the tray and keep it from moving about.
7. Pipe in a spiraling motion toward the center, forming golf-ball shaped balls 2 inches apart from each other. For eclairs, just pipe them into long S-shapes. However, make sure you don't bake eclairs and cream puffs at the same time! The differences in size will result in uneven baking. Also, make sure you only bake one tray set at a time, so don't pipe another set until you are just about done baking the first.
8. As soon as you are done piping, place the tray in the oven for 10 minutes.
9. Turn the temperature down to 325F and bake for another 10 minutes. DON'T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR! The pate a choux rises by steam, and any release of it will deflate them!!
10. Take them out, and while they are still warm, poke a hole in each one's side with a knife.
11. Allow to cool, fill with pastry cream, then dunk into the chocolate glaze.
12. EAT!

Pastry Cream (makes ~2 cups)

Ingredients:

-1/3 cup sugar
-2 tbsp all-purpose flour
-2 tbsp cornstarch
-4 large egg yolks
-1 1/3 cups milk
-3/4 tsp vanilla

1. Combine sugar, flour, cornstarch, and egg yolks in a mixing bowl and beat on high speed until thick and pale yellow (~2 minutes).
2. Combine in a medium saucepan the milk and vanilla, and bring to a simmer.
3. Gradually whisk about 1/3 of the hot milk into the egg mixture (make sure it doesn't cook!), then add the egg/milk mix back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk.
4. Cook over low heat, whisking constantly until the custard is thickened.
5. Continue whisking and cooking for another minute.
6. Scrape into a clean bowl and voila!

Note: for chocolate pastry cream, fold about 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the hot custard, stirring until it incorporates.