Cream Puff Au Chocolat: cream puff with chocolate cream fillings

Cream Puff...its our family favorite dessert or tea time snack...made these babies yesterday...actually yesterday i had a pudding craving (i know what's with me and cravings?) been searching the net looking for the best pudding recipe but most of it were way to complicated for me...i was feeling a tad bit lazy at the same time...

then...i decided to just use custard powder and start mixing with milk, a pinch of salt and loads of melted chocolate and a dash of vanilla...the chocolate kinda mask the 'custard powder' taste, you know the instant custard powder can sometimes have that powdery and somehow uncooked custard taste (well thats just how i think it taste like...uncooked coz its still taste powdery)
it turned out great only my only dissatisfaction its too sweet for my liking. i didn't add additional sugar because i thought since i'll be adding loads of melted chocolate that its be just right for me...but i was right not to add in extra sugar because it turn out too sweet for me and i feel that i can't eat the pudding alone or on its own...

so i spent half of the day thinking what can i do with it and i thought of cream puff... well i thought of making strudel at first but i don't have any puff pastry, too lazy to make from scratch (although it would be nice though with the combination of sour-ish fruits and non sweetened cream and the crispiness of puff pastry that would be marvelous indeed) ...so cream puff it is.

this is the recipe that i have kinda perfected over the years and letting you in on my so called secret to my choux pastry recipe for cream puff.

1c water
90g butter - cubed
1c flour - sifted 1
tsp salt
1tsp sugar
3 eggs

1. pre heat oven at 180C. and prepare greased baking pan/tray and lined with parchment paper.
   
2. in a pot (preferably medium-large pot for easy handling) heat water until almost simmer then add in the butter. stir until all dissolves
3. when you see that the butter mixture starts to simmer then add in the flour and start stiring until it forms a dough and did not stick to the pot.
4. remove from heat.
5. add in eggs one by one. and stir until the egg is completely combined in dough then add another egg and repeat the step until all eggs are incorporated.
6. now you can start dropping a dollop of dough you may use spoon or pipe it into place. i just use 2 spoons..
7. then bake for 30-40minutes or until golden brown.

TIPS:
~ Do not open oven to check on the choux pastry with in the 1st 20 minutes. this may cause your pastry to not rise properly.

~ make sure that the pastry is golden brown to make sure the doneness if you take out the pastry pre maturely it'll deflate and loose its nice round shape/puff.
...although for this one i did took the pastry out prematurely and it deflate like crazy but i re bake it immediately and it puff back into shape...but this was not always the case...i think i just got lucky, don't purposely try this ok!

~When you simmer the butter mixture, don't let it go to the boiling point...i find that if you let it boil, it somehow effects the dough...and it didn't quite have that beautiful puff to it...

I hope this will help you baking a better choux pastry...HAPPY BAKING!

p/s: the cream custard filling i don't have the recipe i just simply dump all the ingredients i've mentioned earlier and thats it... sorry..^_^