Lemon Cream Puffs

Mom has been making cream puffs for as long as I can remember.  Lately, they have become a Christmas Eve staple with her grandchildren often requesting them.  Flaky pastry, filled with cream, topped with chocolate or powdered sugar.  What's not to like, right? 

 After the recent tea I hosted I found myself with leftover lemon curd.  It's so good, that I never want to waste any! I make a crepe cake that has a lemon curd/whipped cream filling in it so decided to do something similar with cream puffs.  I whipped a cup of heavy whipping cream, then folded in about 1 1/2 cups lemon curd. After filling the cream puffs, I sprinkled them with confectioners' sugar.  They were very good!

Mom has an old cookbook she got when she was a young bride.  It was put out by Fluffo shortening and is called Creative Cooking Made Easy: The Golden Fluffo Cookbook.  I think it's the most dog-eared and stained cookbook in her vast collection.  This cream puff recipe comes from that book.  I love the description in the cookbook.  Fluffo melts so quickly, blends so easily that six minutes only from saucepan to oven is all the time needed to make the simple cooked paste known in France as pate a chou, or cream puff paste. But even the pastry-making experts in France cannot make a cream puff more golden, fragile or crisply tender than one made with Golden Fluffo. Golden Fluffo hasn't been produced in many, many years so Mom now uses regular shortening for this recipe.

Cream Puffs

1/4 cup shortening
1 cup water
1 cup less 1 tablespoon sifted flour
4 large eggs

Put shortening and water in a small saucepan and stir over high heat until shortening is melted and liquid is boiling rapidly.  Add flour all at once, raise saucepan a few inches above heat, and stir briskly.  The paste will come away from the sides of the pan and form a smooth ball in center. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds longer.  Remove saucepan from heat, break an egg into the pate and beat vigorously until paste becomes smooth and fluffy.  Break in other eggs, one at a time, and beat vigorously after each addition until paste is smooth and glossy.  Drop paste from a tablespoon into large mounds 2 inches apart on baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes; reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes longer. Cool puffs, split them horizontally two thirds of the way through and fill them with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored to taste, or with any of the cream pie fillings or ice cream.