Cream puffs / profiteroles are a great “fancy” dessert option. Not only are they insanely easy to make, they take very little in the way of ingredients, and can be customized many ways.

Cream puffs start out with the batter – Pâte à choux, or “choux pastry”. It’s a basic recipe that’s used to make everything from cream puffs and eclairs to cruellers and churros. It doesn’t contain any leavening ingredients (yeast, baking powder, baking soda, etc), instead relying on its high moisture content to puff during baking. Baked at a high temperature, the water becomes steam and creates large air pockets in the final product. Fill them however you want – with pastry cream, pudding, mousse – and there you go. Fancy dessert!

If you want to up the badass factor though, consider assembling cream puffs into a croquembouche. A croquembouche is a spectacular dessert. It’s traditionally served at weddings in various European cities, but is also becoming a popular alternative to wedding cakes here in North America. It’s also great for holiday dinners, or fancier potlucks. A bit of a disclaimer here: This is an easy recipe to make, however, it’s also sort of dangerous. I won’t kid you, there is nothing worse than a hot sugar burn. If you drop the sugar onto skin, it will burn, it will stick, and it will HURT! Please exercise caution when dealing with the caramel in this recipe. If you do make this for a group, and you do manage to burn yourself in the process.. I promise the reception it will receive – and the amount of brownie points you’ll gain – will be worth it. Be careful anyways, though.

The recipes below – the cream puff dough, filling, and caramel to assemble the croquembouche – are all from my first cookbook, The Spirited Baker. Used together, you can make a croquembouche from scratch, start to finish. (more…)