Cream Puffs...Pâté Choux

I love cream puffs. They're like most baked goods ...homemade is a whole different animal than the stuff we pick up most days at the grocery store. Definitely worth the 10 minutes it took to whip these up.

Having to bring a couple of dishes to a get together with friends, I chose firstly cream puffs with pastry cream. They are such a crowd pleaser. About ten years ago, the Italian's sweet cousin and her husband came to visit from Indiana. One of the recipes she shared was her cream puffs, what Sicilians call beignet. I'm probably spelling that wrong but honestly, it's a French word they've hijacked anyway. ;)

She whips up cream puffs in no time. I've made them a few times, but of course I'm going to try to find an easier way...so online I choose a recipe done in the cuisinart! Super easy. Love my kitchen robot. Well, they weren't even worth taking a picture of. We ate them. Flavor was good. Didn't puff hardly at all. Ugh. So with my need to use the leftover pastry cream from last night, I fall back to Enza's recipe. Grazie cara!!!

Sicilian Beignets

1 stick butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour 
Pinch salt
Pinch sugar
4 eggs.
That's it. Crazy easy.
All Clad Stainless Steel 1 Qt Saucier Pan - 8701004436 (Google Affiliate Ad) So, melt the butter in a pan on medium heat. When melted add water, salt and sugar and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils, turn heat to low and dump in the flour. Stir the mixture to absorb the flour and then beat, kind of smearing, with a wooden spoon for 3 min or so till flour is cooked. Remove from heat and beat some more until it has cooled a bit.  You don't want any steam coming off that lump of dough.


Add an egg and beat with that spoon till its absorbed. You'll think it's not working and you're going to be smearing egg around for 10 minutes.  Don't worry.  It'll work. Add the other eggs one by one, beating till each is absorbed before adding the next. 

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Once all are in there you keep beating till it's elastic, another minute or so.  See me pulling that spoon up?  The dough will try to follow the spoon for an inch or two.  No more than that, but that's just perfection.  See how easy that was?


Spoon onto parchment and bake at 400 for 40 minutes. They will become about 4 times larger than the lump you put on the sheet. Below is a pic of end result with the raw dough size on the right. Good sizes are either a heaping eating spoon for a large one or a half spoon for the small two-bite size ones.  If you like eclairs, put that dough in a ziploc bag and cut off the corner.  Pipe a fat line about 1" by 3" on the parchment sheet.  Bake the same.

Poke a little hole in the side (or the top if you made eclairs) with a knife, turn off oven and return to oven another 10-20 min. They should crisp up and dry inside a bit. 

Control yourself and don't eat them all before you fill them! Great with a salmon mousse, whipped cream, pastry cream... Just yum.


Pastry cream is next...and you'll be happy it is.