Choux à la crème vs Cream Puffs (French Cooking vs Old Time Recipe)

I did not find this recipe in my grandmother's box, but I am certain that she made them and even more certain that she loved them though we did always just call them cream puffs. I looked up all the fancy french recipes for making these and followed one to the T. I weighed the ingredients to get just right amounts and did everything else that seems to indicate that these are a fussy dessert to make. I even made my own french pastry cream which called back memories of a vanilla custard that my grandmother used to make. Could pastry cream and Mom's vanilla custard be one and the same? They were very good. However, the old recipe that I used make with my mother without the weighing and fussiness was really quite close. The choux à la crème are pictured but I show below the much simpler "cream puff" recipe.

1 stick butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour
pinch of salt
4 eggs

Melt one stick of butter in one cup of water and pinch of salt on the stove. When the butter is melted into the water, stir in 1 cup of flour until incorporated

Remove from heat and beat in on egg at a time until its fully mixed in. Use the same pot. The fancy recipe would like you to dirty another dish, but its not necessary. Do not add the next egg until each is fully mixed in. Stir quickly so the eggs gets incorporated before it cooks. The dough will get slimy, but just keep stirring and voilà, it will be mixed in like magic.

When all eggs have been added, you can pipe dough from a pastry bag or you can just put dollops on the baking sheet. I like to use parchment paper as it makes the puffs come easily off the sheet.

Bake until a golden light brown color. I like to then take them out of the oven and cool slightly then cut a little hat off the top and put them back in the oven with the residual heat to dry out. (The recipe I used said to poke them with a toothpick part way through the cooking to help the insides dry out, but I did not find that to work very well with a couple of them deflating). Then cool completely.

Now you can fill them with pastry cream, pudding or a mixture of one those with whipped cream folded in. Make the real whipped cream and the use the cook on the stove pudding mix if you go with those options. Fill the puffs and put their hats on. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy. These hold up remarkable well in the fridge for a day or two if you do not eat them all.

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