Marti's Cream Puffs
I love to cook and I love to teach. Marti Tucker also shares these passions. When we teamed together we had a lot of fun trying to make learning come alive for our 5th grade students. One day, for example, we asked the principal to come into the classroom and tell the kids there was a financial crisis in the district and the school needed to start charging a quarter for each sheet of paper. We had a test scheduled that day, and we told the kids they must take the test to receive an F. As you can imagine, complaints bristled throughout the room, but the students forked over the money anyway - either borrowing it from a friend or writing an IOU if they didn't have a quarter on them. Marti and I carried the ruse through recess until the students had become righteously upset. Finally, we told them the truth - the school was not charging for paper, but we wanted them to know to how the colonists felt when they were taxed by King George without representation!
Not only is a Marti an excellent teacher, she is also a fabulous cook, so I asked her to give me one of her favorite recipes to post online. Which one did she choose? A very labor intensive one and one that usually takes several days to prepare, but the time and effort are so very worthwhile.....ah!!
Shells
1 cup of water
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
½ cup butter (1 stick lightly salted)
4 eggs
1. Preheat oven to 450° F oven.
2. Combine water and butter in a 1½-2quart pot and bring to a boil.
3. Remove from the heat and add the flour ALL AT ONCE. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and forms a ball around the spoon. If the ball does not form almost immediately, hold the pot over low heat and beat briskly a few seconds. Cool slightly (5 minutes is sufficient)
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until the mixture is smooth and glossy after each addition.
5. Drop the mixture by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet, leaving room between each puff to allow for spreading. (obviously the smaller the spoonful, the smaller the puff will be at the end.
6. Bake fifteen minutes and then immediately, WITHOUT opening the oven door, reduce the oven temperature to 350° F and bake another thirty minutes until the sides of the puffs are rigid and no bubbles of fat remain on the surface.
7. COOL....Marti likes to let them sit overnight.
Pastry Cream (for filling the cream puffs)
1/3 cup sugar
6 lightly beaten egg yolks
3½ tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups WARM milk (heat in microwave)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1. Mix sugar, cornstarch and egg yolks in a double boiler over hot water.
2. Pour the scalding milk over the egg yolk mixture, stirring rapidly with a whisk. Cook over the boiling water stirring rapidly until the mixture is thickened and smooth. Do not let the pastry cream boil.
3. Cool and stir in vanilla.
4. Refrigerate, when cool.
Topping
Chocolate chips
1. The next day, cut the top of the puffs off and fill with the pastry cream.
2. Replace the top and begin to melt chocolate chips in the microwave. If they tend to dry out, add vegetable oil to make them creamy again.
3. Dribble the melted chocolate over the tops of the puffs and allow cooling and hardening.