Cream Puffs with Chocolate Sauce

For the Cream Puffs:

Heat the first four ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium high heat just until the milk starts to boil. Lower the heat to low and then dump in all the flour at once and stir with a wooden spoon. The dough will pull together. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring the ball of dough around, so that it dries out. Remove the dough and place it either in the bowl of a stand mixer or the bowl of a food processor and let the dough cool off for a few minutes.

Line a baking sheet with either a Silpat or parchment paper (I like parchment paper because I can just throw it away). Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

With the mixer running, add the eggs to the dough one at a time. It’s important that you let each egg incorporate fully into the dough before adding the next one. The dough will look curdled and weird – don’t worry about it. After all four eggs are added, mix until the dough forms a nice paste consistency. It will be very loose, not at all like a bread dough. (If you do not have either a mixer or some kind or a food processor, you can beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoon. It just is a little more work).

Put the dough into a piping bag fitted with a large tip (I like using a star tip). If you don’t have a piping bag, you can just spoon the dough onto the baking sheet. Pipe the dough into mounds about 2 to 2-1/2 inches wide. Beat the egg for the egg wash with just about a tablespoon of water. Brush the mounds of pastry dough lightly with the egg wash.

Bake at 375 degrees F for about 25 minutes, or until the puffs are a nice golden brown. Turn off the heat and open the oven door a few inches and let the puffs sit in the turned off oven to dry out for about 30 minutes.

* If you are not sure about your egg size (especially if you get eggs from a farm), I weighed my eggs after I broke them into a cup and they weighed a little over 5 ounces. This does not have to be exact.

For the Chocolate Sauce:

Heat the cream and chocolate just until it scalds (bubbles will form on the outside perimeter of the pot). Turn off heat, add extract and whisk until chocolate is smooth.

This sauce can be kept in the refrigerator a few days – just bring to room temperature to serve because it firms up when it is cold.

Assemble:

Cut cream puffs in half. Place a scoop of any kind of ice cream on the bottom half, place the top on and drizzle with chocolate sauce.