Canadian Cream Puffs

In the oven.

Almost in my mouth.

I've been bugging my mum to make cream puffs for what feels like decades. They are my favourite dessert. These cream puffs aren't distinctly Canadian, they are actually from a New York Times Cookbook from 1961, but we ate them at our Canada Day barbeque, and they were delicious.

Here is the recipe (my first recipe! I'm so proud):

Cream Puff Shells

When cream puff paste is baked it is one of the apparent miracles of cuisine. The paste expands to many times its original size and a mass of air occurs in the center. Nonetheless, it is one of the easiest of foods to prepare. The only "secret" is to add the flour all at once and fearlessly to the water-butter mixture. Cream Puff paste is not only baked; it may be deep fried to produce air-filled beignets souffles.

1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
4 eggs

1. Preheat oven to hot (450 degrees F.)
2. Combine the water, butter and salt and ring to a boil. Remove from the heat and add the flour all at once. Stir vigorously until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and forms a ball around the spoon. If a ball does not form almost immediately, hold the saucepan over low heat and beat briskly a few seconds. Cool slightly.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, an dbeat until mixture is smooth and glossy after each addition.
4. Drop the mixture by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet, leaaving two inches between the puffs to permit spreading.
5. Bake fifteen minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to moderate (350 degrees F.) and bake until no bubbles of fat remain on the surface and the sides of the puffs feel rigid, about thirty minutes longer. Cool. Cut a cap off each puff and fill with pastry cream. Replace the cap.

That's the end of the book's instructions. Instead of "pastry cream" we filled them with strawberry whipped cream (which is my absolute favourite). To make this you whip cream with a little bit of icing sugar (this is always a point of contention in my house, I only like a very little, others like a lot). Drain a package of thawed frozen strawberries (in syrup) and mix only the berries (not the liquid) with the whipped cream, folding them in.

Oh, the recipe book says this will make 10 large puffs, but we had a bunch of people coming over so we made smaller ones, baked them for a shorter period of time, and ended up with 25 small/medium puffs.

Deeeeee-lish.

Happy Canada Day!