Don’t be intimidated! Classic Homemade Cream Puffs, with their fluffy dough and their lighter-than-air filling, are surprisingly easy to make and totally worth the effort!
Caution: the words in the following paragraphs are potentially hazardous to your kitchen and your waistline. You’ve been warned.
Y’all, Classic Homemade Cream Puffs are way easier to make than you might think. The dough doesn’t have any finicky steps, and the cream filling is literally just whipped cream (it’s also called Chantilly cream; use that term if it makes you feel fancier).
The dough is made on the stove top, which at first glance makes it seem a little trickier than most doughs, but there’s nothing to it. No thermometer or special gadgets required. Just a little bit of stirring and, voila, you’ve got your dough (called pâte à choux, another fancy term) faster than it takes to whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.
The puffs bake for under 25 minutes and then, because they’re light and airy, they cool quickly. The whipped cream filling, which you can totally customize based on your own preferences, comes together in just a few minutes. Fill those little beauties with cream and your done!
So if you’ve been avoiding making your own classic homemade cream puffs because you feared they were far too difficult for the average home cook to pull off, let me tell you, you’re wrong.
Like I said, you’ve been warned.