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Coffee Cream Puffs with Ice Cream
1 cup flour 1/2 cup margarine 1/4 teaspoon salt 4 eggs 1 cup coffee Add salt and margarine to coffee, bring to boil, add flour all at once, stirring constantly until mixture leaves sides of pan. Drop by spoonfuls onto slightly greased pan dusted with flour. Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees, then reduce heat to 375 degrees for ten minutes. When baked, make slit in top or side with sharp knife, cool and fill each puff with ice cream. Frost the cream puffs, or serve with a sundae sauce.
A standard choux paste with brewed coffee standing in for the usual water, baked as puffs and filled with ice cream rather than pastry cream. The method as printed omits the step where the eggs go in, which is the part that decides whether the puffs rise.
- The eggsThe four eggs are beaten into the cooked paste one at a time, off the heat, only after the dough has cooled for a few minutes — hot paste will scramble them. Beat each egg in completely before adding the next; the finished paste should fall from the spoon in a thick, glossy ribbon.
- Coffee strengthUse ordinary brewed coffee, strong but not concentrated, measured after brewing. The flavour in the baked shell is faint; the recipe leaves the filling and topping unspecified beyond ice cream and frosting or sundae sauce.
- MargarineOlder margarine tended to run wetter and blander than butter. Modern stick margarine or butter both work at 1/2 cup; avoid tub spreads, whose higher water content weakens the paste.
- Drying out the pasteAfter the flour goes in, keep stirring over heat until a film forms on the pan bottom and the dough pulls into a single mass. Underdried paste gives squat puffs with soggy interiors.
- Oven425F for 15 minutes then 375F for 10 is as printed, and suits small spoon-dropped puffs. Larger puffs will want longer at the lower temperature. Do not open the door during the first stage.
- Slit and dryThe slit is not decorative — it lets steam escape so the shells do not collapse. Cut them the moment they leave the oven and, if the insides are still damp, return them to a turned-off oven for five minutes.
- Filling with ice creamShells must be completely cold or the ice cream melts on contact. Fill and freeze on a tray, then hold in the freezer until serving; filled puffs soften within half an hour at room temperature.
- YieldExpect roughly 18 to 24 small puffs; the recipe gives no serving count.