Have you ever had a cream puff? Like, a real cream puff? I’m not talking about the frozen kind, which is all I had experienced up until this point in my life (ridiculous, I now realize.) Those were always okay, but nothing to write home about. These, however – these are little bites of heaven. Now I’m sure this comes as no surprise to those of you familiar with my serious love of pastry cream. A small round pastry shell filled with the silky smooth pastry cream, and glazed with chocolate – how could I not love them? (Even better, I had some pastry cream left over for random snack attacks ;) )
Another thing I love is how easy they were to make, yet impressive when served. The pâte à choux was a breeze to make in the food processor. My one tip is that I think a thermometer is really important when cooking the dough. The recipe describes how the appearance should change when it reaches the desired temperature, but I never really saw a discernible difference and if I hadn’t used a thermometer, I probably would have really overcooked it. The chocolate glaze may not be traditional on cream puffs (at least it wasn’t originally included in this recipe), but it just seemed so much better than the dusting of powdered sugar that was recommended. What isn’t better with chocolate?