Name: Bite Size Cream Puffs
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 48 Bite Size Cream Puffs
Cuisine: Dessert
Ingredients: 1 (3.4 oz) pkg. Instant Vanilla Pudding; 1/4 Cup Powdered Sugar; 1 Cup Milk; 1 (8 oz) container Cool Whip; 1 Cup Water; 1/2 Cup Butter (no substitutes); 1/8 tsp Salt; 1 Cup Flour; 4 Eggs; 1 (7 oz) container Baker's Dipping Chocolate; OR; 1 Cup Chocolate Chips

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A fancy, yet easy dessert to make. Bite size cream puffs will wow your guests with their sweet filling inside a delicate cream puff topped with chocolate!

Sometimes I am in the mood for something different from the usual kinds of treats we have. Cream puffs are great! Besides being absolutely delicious, they look so fancy, too. Being filled with a fluffy vanilla pudding and drizzled in chocolate makes it hard to stop eating them. To be totally honest, I kept sneaking a couple of these here and there while I was making dinner last night. After dinner my husband asked me if I wasn’t feeling well because I really didn’t eat much. I had to confess that I had eaten perhaps a few more cream puffs than I should have before dinner. They were just so good I couldn’t stop! If you haven’t made cream puffs before don’t feel intimidated. They really are pretty easy. I’ve taught this recipe to Young Women’s groups a couple times. They were able to make them again at home for their own families successfully. So try them for yourself and beware…they just might spoil your dinner!

So you are going to start by making the bite size cream puff filling so it can chill in the fridge while you make the cream puffs. Simply whisk the pudding mix and powdered sugar together in a small bowl. Whisk in the milk and whisk until it slightly thickens. Fold in the cool whip. Cover and put it in the fridge. This recipe makes enough filling for 1 1/2 batches of cream puffs. However, pastry dough needs to be cooked right after you make it to inflate properly. For that reason, I do not recommend doubling or 1 1/2ing this recipe because you can’t cook all that dough at once. So you can either just eat the leftover filling with a spoon (yum!)or when you put the cream puffs in the oven, you can start another half a batch of dough.

You are going to need to adjust your oven racks to the center of your oven leaving one rack level open between them. So, since I have 6 rack levels in my oven I put my racks on the 5th and 3rd levels for these. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and lightly spray two baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray.

Next, put the water, butter and salt in a medium pot. And, yes, butter is a must for cream puffs. No, substitutes. Bring to a rolling boil. Have your cup of flour ready to dump in as soon as it’s boiling. Once the butter is totally melted and the mixture is boiling dump the flour in all at once and stir vigorously. Within just a few seconds, everything in the pot will come together in a ball, like in a the picture above. Remove from the heat and let it cool for 10 minutes. This is a very crucial step. If you immediately start stirring in the eggs you will end up with scrambled egg chunks. Ew!

After the 10 minutes of cooling, stir in the eggs one at a time. I like to crack all my eggs into a cup so I can pour them in one at a time while continuing to stir. The eggs will seem to resist being incorporated at first, but just keep stirring. Your pastry dough should look like the picture above once they are all stirred in.

Drop the pastry dough by 1/2 tablespoons onto two baking sheets that have been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. I use a really small cookie scoop that hold 1/2 Tbs. of batter so they come out uniform in size. You should be able to get 24 on a baking sheet. Since cream puffs bake up and not out, you can put them a little closer together than you would cookies.

Bake for 22-25 minutes. They should be golden brown like pictured above. Resist the urge to open your oven to check on these as they are baking because the steam in the oven will escape and your cream puffs will deflate. Just turn on the oven light instead. Cool the cream puffs completely on a wire rack.

Once the bite size cream puffs are completely cool, use your finger to poke a little hole in the side near the bottom. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a #10 tip (just a tip with a bigger circle shaped opening) with some of the cream puff filling. Place the tip in the hole and fill the cream puff.

I like to line a cookie sheet with wax paper and put all the filled cream puffs on it to drizzle the chocolate across them. It make clean up easier.

For the chocolate I like to buy a tub of the Baker’s dipping chocolate. You can just melt chocolate chips if you want to though. I like the Baker’s dipping chocolate because it is just the right amount and you melt it in the microwave in the container it comes in. Drizzle the melted chocolate across the tops of the cream puffs and place them in the fridge so the chocolate can cool and harden. After the chocolate is cool and hardened transfer the cream puffs to an airtight container keeping layers separate with wax paper. Bite size cream puffs will keep for about a day in the fridge.