Nutella Cream Puffs

Nutella Cream Puffs

Posted by Brit

Brandon found a Saturday project for me.  Luckily for him it resulted in some delicious treats...  I've always heard that Cream Puffs and Pop-Overs were difficult because if the dough is over worked they won't rise properly with an air pocket center.  These Nutella Cream Puffs were easy, messy, and delicious.

Brandon found the recipe below...  She recommends putting some peanut butter in with the Nutella; it's not in the recipe but I simply added about 1 Tb all natural peanut butter to the 6.5 oz. (or half a standard Nutella container) to the mix.  Nutella is already sweet enough and all natural peanut butter has no added sugar.  I used Kroger's and it's fairly cheap.  The recipe calls for whole milk, but Brandon only had skim so I did 1/4 C. Skim and 1/4 C. of the Heavy Whipping Cream.  I also do not have a piping bag, but managed with baggies.  Tip: Cut a smaller whole in the corner of the filling baggie than you did in the dough baggie, but not too small.  We used a chop stick to poke holes in our cream puffs to prepare them for filling.

Mounds of Cream Puff Dough

Nutella - Peanut Butter - Heavy Whipping Cream Filling

Complete - These would probably be less
messy with a piping bag and a tip.

Recipe courtesy of The Sweet Art.

Nutella Cream Puffs

Adapted from Laduree

Makes about 36 

5.5 tbs butter

10g (1 tbs) sugar

120g (1 cup minus 1 tbs) cake flour

100ml (1/2 cup) whole milk

100ml (1/2 cup) water

pinch of salt

3 large eggs

1/8 tsp fancy cinnamon (*any will do, but the better the cinnamon the better the flavor)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Bring the butter, sugar, milk, water, and salt to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the flour, whisking vigorously until it turns into a homogenous paste. Let cool and add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, and stir in the cinnamon last.

Fill a piping bag with a round tip with the batter and pipe small mounds on a baking sheet. Top with pearl sugar (optional).

Bake for 9 minutes. Then open your oven door slightly (or stick a wooden spoon in it to hold it open) and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden.

Remove and let cool.

Nutella Filling:

6.5 oz Nutella spread

2.5 tbs butter

6-8 tbs heavy whipping cream

Beat all ingredients together on high until fluffy. Add more cream according to taste.

Pour the filling into a piping bag with a small round top. Poke holes in the sides of each cream puff, or on the bottom with the tip of the piping bag and fill with frosting.

 _________________________________________________________

And this gal, I love her so...

Homemade Pizza

Homemade Pizza

Posted by Brit

Brandon found a crust recipe on reddit, I believe so I'm not sure who to credit but it is directly quoted. The dough is easy and has a good flavor.

Pizza Crust:
"It makes 3 thin crust pizzas and if you don't want to make them all at once freeze (keeps for a while) or refrigerate (use within at the most a week) the dough. I like to make 2 pizzas, one for myself and the other for my boyfriend.. the remaining dough I use to make calzones! Here's the recipe: Combine: 2 1/4 tsp dry active yeast and 1 cup warm water (not hot and not cold) Add: 1 tsp honey, 2 Tablespoons olive oil (or vegetable oil) and 1 tsp salt. Stir. Gradually add (as you mix with a spatula or your hands): 2 1/2 cups flour. Place a cloth over the dough and let it rise for 10 min or longer if it hasn't doubled in size. Roll out your pizzas and enjoy! I've noticed that if you bake the crusts before adding the toppings (at about 400F for the time it takes you to get your toppings ready) the crust is nice and crispy."

We pre baked our crust for four minutes and they turned out perfect.  Pre bake on the middle rack of the oven.

Pizza 1 Toppings:
Garlic
White Onion
Red Bell Pepper
Spinach
Heirloom Tomato
Bacon
Asiago
Mozzarella

We (Brandon) lightly sautéed the red bell pepper, garlic and onion.  We finely chopped the spinach and put some large (circumference) but thin slices of heirloom tomatoes. We thought the veggie chunks could be a bit bigger but the flavor was awesome.

Pizza 2 Toppings:
Yellow Onion
Green Bell Pepper
Garlic
Red Bell Pepper
Shredded Purple Cabbage
Spinach
Heirloom Tomato
Bacon
Mozzarella
Asiago

Again, we lightly sautéed the bell pepper, garlic and onion.  This one wasn't bad, but we definitely decided keeping it simple is the way to go.  The flavors just kind of trampled over one another.

After pre baking crust and then topping it, spread olive oil or your bacon grease around the edge of the crust to keep it moist during the second bake.  Move oven rack closer to the top of the oven and bake until cheese is melted, which for us was about 5 minutes.  We didn't use a lot of cheese though, about 1 cup per pizza of mozzarella and just a little shredded asiago.

Topping Time

First Pizza

We had Smoky Hill Pasta Vino with our pizza.