Great Grandma's Cream Puffs

My Great-Grandma Rose was an incredible woman.  Whenever we visited her in Tampa, Florida, she would be up at the crack of dawn baking cookies and cakes, squeezing fresh orange juice, and starting to prep the many dishes that would make up lunch and dinner.  As a little kid, visiting Grandma Rose was heaven.  All the cookies you could ever want... ready in time for breakfast!!  But my two favourite treats that she made were cream puffs and her angel food cake (with the most sinful icing ever).

I decided that I wanted to challenge myself this past weekend and make something a bit more difficult that usual.  After scanning the cookbook that my mom put together for me, I picked Grandma Rose's Cream Puffs.  I thought that making these cute little pastries would be a challenge, but I was pleasantly surprised that making them turned out to be easier than I thought.  Okay, cream puffs aren't easy. They definitely require diligence and patience, but my expectation was that they'd be a lot more difficult!  Cream puffs are time consuming, but if you are patient and follow the directions to a "T," I think you can make these yummy treats too!

Cream Puffs
From Great Grandma Rose

For the puffs
1/2 cup butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup boiling water
1 cup sifted flour
3 eggs beaten

Add butter and salt to boiling water and stir over medium heat until mixture boils.  Lower heat and add flour all at once and stir vigorously until mixture leaves side of pan and forms ball around the spoon.  Remove  from heat and add 1 egg at a time beating thoroughly after each addition.  Drop one tablespoon of mixture onto baking sheet.  Bake at 450°F for 20 minutes and then turn oven down to 350°F and cook an additional 20 minutes.  Do not open oven until the end of the cooking time!!

For the cream filling
2/3 cup sugar
5 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups of milk
2 eggs or 4 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons of butter

Combine dry ingredients in top of double boiler; stir in milk gradually.  Cook over boiling water until thickened; stirring constantly.  Cover and cook 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally (I turned it down slightly).  Stir a little of the hot mixture into slightly beaten eggs.  Slowly stir in remaining hot mixture.  Cook over hot water (not boiling) for 2 minutes stirring constantly, but gently - you don't want scrambled eggs!  Add butter to hot cooked filling.  Chill slightly and add vanilla.  Chill before filling the puffs.  Fill the cream puffs just before serving.  Sift powdered sugar over top of the cream puffs.

To fill the cream puffs:  Fit a small tip onto a pastry bag.  Fill the pastry bag with the cream filling.  Cut a small "X" into the side of each puff.  To fill, insert the pastry tip into the hole formed by the "X" and fill until the cream starts to come out of the hole.