I was particularly excited to start baking the choux pastry or cream puff pastry when I found this recipe on the website last week.  I have tried to bake some before but failed badly.  The outcome of my first attempt many months ago turned out to be as hard as biscuits.  But it did not stop me from attempting again because I love cream puffs.

This time was a total success though it took a longer baking time than the instruction, I was all to be blamed because I made the blobs too big thus the middle part of the pastries required more time to be cooked.   The puff or enclair should be hard at the outside but moist in the inside right from the oven.

The method of preparation requires the first part of the ingredients to be cooked on top of the stove and later bake in the oven.  Here is the ingredients and the easy way of making choux pastry or cream puff.  The number of puffs can be made from this ingredient is entirely depends on the size of the blobs and enclairs, it should be able to make a dozen of normal size cream puffs or enclairs.

Ingredients

• 340gm (equivalent to 1 cup) of water
• 6 tablespoon butter
• a pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 135gm of flour,  shift the flour after weighing
• 3 large eggs

Methods

1. Preheat the oven at 180C.
2. Mix the water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan, heat until the butter is melted and the mixture is  boiled.
3. remove immediately from the stove and add in all the flour.
4. mix with wooden spoon (preferably), until the dough become a ball and does not stick to the side of the saucepan.
5. add in egg one at a time.  Mix the egg with the dough until it is fully incorporated then add in another egg.  The eggs will incorporate with the dough after mixing for a while.
6. light grease the baking tray or you can use a non stick tray. 
7. place the dough in a piping bag and pipe the dough to form cream puffs or enclairs on the baking tray, or work with 2 tablespoons to scoop and scrape the dough onto the tray.  Place the dough with some spaces apart from each other.
8. bake at 180C for 35 minutes.  The puffs are ready when they are slightly brown.  If the centre part of the puffs remain uncooked, just slice open the top or centre of the puffs, return to the oven continue to bake for 5 to 10 minutes.
9. Just before serving, fill the puffs with custard or cream, sprinkle with some powdered sugar, perhaps top some chocolate on the enclairs.

Happy baking !!