Chocolate & Strawberry Cream Puffs

Today is Wednesday...so it's mid week baking day!! OK, there is no such thing as mid week baking day (even though I realized that we usually bake on Wednesdays) but I read online that it's fairly easy to make cream puffs. Soooo, Kevin and I decided to try and make a few batches. This is a step by step guide to making cream puffs.

Here are the ingredients that you will need to make the cream puff shell. Some flour, butter, salt and 4 eggs. The chocolate pudding mix is for one of the fillings that I will make later.

First, measure out 1 cup of flour and add in 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Set that aside.

Then, add 1 cup of water and 1/2 cup of butter to a large pot. Bring that to a rolling boil.

Remove from heat. Mix in the flour and salt mixture into the pot. Stir it with a spatula, it should resemble somewhat of mashed potatoes.

Transfer the dough mixture into a large mixing bowl. Add in one egg.

Mix it well, adding the eggs one by one.

Once that is done, you are ready to make the cream puff shells. Line a baking tray with wax paper. You can either drop the dough by tablespoons on the baking tray or you can pipe it out like I did. I made two different size shells. The one in the photo is tiny bite size and I also made bigger ones later on.

Put it in the oven (preheated to 425F) for about 15 minutes. Take it out to cool before filling. The first picture is of the tiny bite size shells and the next is the regular big cream puff shells.

Now, we need to make the filling. While I saw making the shells, Kevin was actually busy making the chocolate pudding filling. You can get the mix from any grocery store. Just add 2 cups of milk to the pudding mix in a saucepan and stir continuously until the mixture is smooth. Continue stirring and let it come to a bubbling boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat and let it cool. The pudding will thicken once it's cools.

To make the strawberry and cream filling, you would need some whipped cream and strawberry jam. I mixed some strawberry jam (with big chunks of strawberry pieces) with Coolwhip. Make sure it is folded in and do not over mix. Return the filling to the refrigerator until you are ready to use it.

Once the shells have cooled down, we are ready to fill the cream puffs. Cut a little hole at the bottom of the cream puff shell. Fill a piping bag with the filling. If you do not have a piping bag, just put the filling in a Ziploc bag and cut a tiny hole at corner of the bag. It works just as well. Fill the cream puff shell with the filling. Set it back down on your tray once you have filled it.

Dust some powdered sugar on the top of the cream puffs and it's ready to be serve!! Here are some pictures of the cream puffs. I cut the cream puffs to half so that you can see the filling inside. Refrigerate the left over cream puffs (if there are any left over :P). I love to eat my cream puffs super cold, it's really yummy! So, what do you think? I told ya it's pretty easy to make cream puffs. I know, I didn't realized that it was so easy until I tried making it. You should too!!