Cream Puffs for Dummies

Yesterday I plunged into the world of French pastries with this surprisingly easy cream puff recipe.

Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 stick butter
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
4 eggs

Filling Ideas:
Instant pudding
Whipped Topping
Yogurt
Anything creamy, sweet, and delicious

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• In  a medium sauce pan heat water and butter until butter is melted. 
• Mix flour, salt and sugar into water/butter mixture. Should form a doughy ball.
• Let cool (it shouldn't be steaming at this point) and mix in eggs.
• Mixture should form a sticky, paste-like consistency. 
• If you have parchment paper, line your cookie sheet with it. If not, leave the cookie sheet ungreased.
• Drop spoonfuls onto sheet, bake for 20-25 minutes. 

After baking, your dollops should be cute little puffs. Do NOT, under any circumstances, poke warm puffs with a toothpick. If you see someone suggest this on a web forum for cream puff making, do not heed their counsel. I can only assume they want your puffs to deflate and be ruined, so they can keep the title "Best Cream Puff Maker" to themselves. They are NOT your friend.

The puffs should look like this out of the oven:

To fill, you can cut a small slice in one side, and squeeze in your chosen filling. I put vanilla pudding in a gallon sized bag, cut of a corner, and squeezed a little bit of love into each and every one of them. Piping bags filled with pudding, or canned cool whip would also work.

This recipe yields about 24 yummy little puffs.

Good luck, and let us know if you try it!