This Pâte à Choux is simple to make and extremely versatile. We love it filled with Cream Cheese Whipped Cream or Easy Chocolate Mousse.

Cream puffs are tricky until you know that the addition of the extra egg white will make your life easier and almost guarantee success.  With this recipe, you don’t need to poke a hole in the puff when it’s done to let steam out. The puffs bake up nice and dry on the inside (unless you pull it out of the oven too early).  Egg whites help add crispness to baked products. I’ve found that it’s helpful to decrease the amount of egg white in cookies to help keep the moisture in. A cream puff benefits from the crispy factor and doesn’t need extra moisture because it will have a filling. Just save the extra egg yolk. You will need it to make chocolate chip cookies tomorrow (wink).

 I will never get tired of making these cream puffs and exploring the possibilities of delicious fillings. My favorites are Stabilized Cream Cheese Whipped Cream with a shiny chocolate glaze and Easy Chocolate Mousse with a dusting of powdered sugar. A few on my list to try are a lemon curd with vanilla cream and a few raspberries, or a dulce de leche cream filling with a salted caramel drizzle, and perhaps a lime cream with a drizzle of blackberry sauce. For a Christmas event, I piped it into a wreath shape and filled it with orange zest cream, and topped with sliced almonds. 

Let’s not get stuck on sweet fillings though. I would also love to explore savory fillings like chicken salad or scrambled eggs and bacon. Now that I’ve got your creative engine warmed up, let us know your ideas in the comments and tag us in your creations on Instagram.