Cream Puffs – Lori Walters

1 cup water
½ cup butter or margarine
1 cup flour
4 eggs

Heat oven to 400. Heat water and butter to rolling boil.
Stir in flour, turn off heat and stir vigorously about one
minute or until mixture forms a ball; remove from heat.
Beat in eggs, all at once; continue beating until smooth.

On ungreased cookie sheet, drop dough by slightly less
than ¼ cupfuls about 3 inches apart. Bake 35-40 minutes
or until puffed and golden. Cool away from draft about 30
minutes. (I made my cream puffs much smaller and baked
them for about 15 minutes.)

Make the fillings. Cut off top third of each puff and pull
out any strands of soft dough. Fill puffs with filling; replace
tops. Cover; refrigerate until serving. Store covered in the
refrigerator.

Filling:
1pkg (4 serving size) vanilla instant pudding (can use sugar
free)
1 cup milk
2 cups whipping cream

In large bowl, beat pudding mix and milk on low until well
blended. Add whipping cream; beat on high speed for 1-2
minutes or until soft peaks form. Fill puffs. Serve
immediately or cover and refrigerate up to 3 hours. Just
before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

Eggnog Filling:

Use recipe above except add 1 tsp rum extract, 1 tsp
nutmeg and ¼ tsp ginger to the pudding and milk mixture.

Peppermint Whipped Cream Filling:

Whip 2 cups whipping cream until soft peaks form. Add ¼
cup granulated or powdered sugar and 1 tsp peppermint
extract and 5-6 drops red or green food color.

Can also fill with ice cream or anything else that sounds
good. Chicken or ham salad is great in these puffs.

Cream Cheese-Filled Pumpkin Muffins

(We still don’t know who brought these, but there were
delicious! Thanks!)

Muffins

2 ¼ cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp coriander
½ tsp salt
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup pumpkin
½ cup vegetable oil
½ tsp vanilla

Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and coriander
in a bowl. Set aside. In another bowl, mix eggs, sugar,
pumpkin, oil and vanilla. Mix well. Mix in dry ingredients,
stirring until moist.

Filling:

6 oz cream cheese
1 egg
1 tbsp sugar

Beat cream cheese until smooth. Add egg and sugar. Beat
until well mixed.

Topping:

¾ cup coconut
½ cup finely chopped pecans
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp cinnamon

Combine all topping ingredients together. Spoon ½ batter
into muffin cups (cups should be filled half full). Spoon
about 1 tablespoon of filling on top. Fill with remaining
batter. Spread to edges. Sprinkle generously with
topping. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until wooden
toothpick comes out clean.