Cream Puffs w/ Cinnabon Cream Cheese Frosting

Every now and then I get somewhat creative with what I bake - usually I combine multiple recipes in order to make something of my own.  My husband LOVES when I get those bursts of inspiration because he is my guinea pig as to which recipes to keep and which to continue to work on.

Last night I decided to try my hand at Cream Puffs, but since I didn't have any whipping cream for the filling, I used a cream cheese frosting.  I will include the recipe for the original filling; however, the "test group" liked the cream cheese frosting just as much.

To Make the Cream Puffs You Need:

• 5 tbsp butter, plus extra for greasing
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• Generous 3/4 cup water
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 400 F/200 C

Grease a large baking sheet

Sift the flour

Place the butter and water into a pan and heat gently until the butter has melted

Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and immediately add all of the flour, beating well until the mixture leaves the side of the saucepan and forms a ball

Let cool slightly

Beat in enough of the eggs to give the mixture a soft dropping consistency

Transfer the mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch/1-cm plain tip and pope small balls onto the baking sheet

Bake for 25 minutes

Remove from the oven and pierce each ball with a skewer to let the steam escape

  

A Cream Puff is not complete without the filling, I used a cream cheese frosting for these because I was out of whipping cream - the original cream recipe can be found at the bottom of the page (both are equally deliscous!)

Beat together:

• 1 (3 oz) package of cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp salt

You can either fill the puffs with your pastry bag or cut them in half and fill.  The cream cheese is a bit dense, so I found cutting them in half worked better.

Since dough of the cream puffs is not very sweet, there is a dark chocolate sauce that can be made to drizzle on top.

To Make the Chocolate Sauce - You Will Need:

• 4 1/2 oz/125 g semisweet chocolate, broken into small pieces
• 2 heaping tbsp of butter
• 6 tbsp of water

To make the sauce

Place chocolate, butter, and water in a heatproof bowl
Set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, and heat until smooth
Once the sauce is done and the cream puffs have been filled, pile the cream puffs into individual serving dishes or into a pyramid on a raised cake stand and pour the sauce over them.

In order to make the original cream filling, whip together:

• 1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
• 3 tbsp superfine sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Enjoy!