Gluten Free Pumpkin Cream Puffs

A crisp gluten free puff with sweet pumpkin filling, is a perfect way to celebrate the end of October. If you call them profiteroles, pate feuillettée in France or a choux recipe, bottom line is they're delicious!

Everything in my kitchen is kissed with pumpkin this time of year. On a special occasion, I will make cream puffs and this recipe allows everyone to be able to enjoy them. Anyone else curious why they're called cream puffs and where did they come from?

The cream puff has a colorful history and can be the main character in one of Agatha Christie's novels. No one is sure when it appeared on the culinary scene. Rumor has it, that Catherine de Medici's cook was the first to prepare the cream puff in the Middle Ages. Yet long before the colorful Catherine, there was a cheese puff pastry created in the 13th century in southern Germany. You'll never get a French chef to agree to this rumor and will argue with you that it was only in a French kitchen that this delicate pastry was created. Viva la France!

If it was in a French kitchen or an English kitchen, this dough made from flour, water, butter and eggs, creates a crunchy pastry that is light and has a hole in the middle. This is a perfect vessel to fill with whipped cream or a basic pastry cream.

This Victorian pastry that once decorated dinning rooms for queens and royalty, can by made by YOU with this easy recipe. The choux dough has 4 ingredients and spices. I took all the horror and scary words out and broke it down so we're going to make not only delicious cream puffs, but we're making them GLUTEN FREE.

Let's make the Choux (dough) - you'll need: BAKE: 425 degrees 22-24 mins

1/2 cup butter

1 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Flour (1 to 1 baking)

1 cup water

4 eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice

You have to add the ingredients in this order so you get "puffs" as an end results. Don't get me wrong, pancakes are fun too, but we're not making them in this recipe.

In a sauce pan boil the water, salt and butter. Take off the heat and stir in the flour and with a wooden spoon. Beat in the eggs, one at a time with the wooden spoon. (yup, this is arm workout but it's worth it) The end result it is a shiny dough that will rise in the oven like pillows of air.

I put my dough in a plastic bag with a tip (optional) and pipe onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. You can put the dough in a plastic bag, cut the corner on an angle (little bit) and slowly make circles on the parchment paper, you do not need a fancy tip.

Bake in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for 22 - 24 minutes, it may vary from oven to oven. Your goal is a puff that is golden brown and airy.

After they cool, split them in half and fill.

Pumpkin Filling:

1 box vanilla pudding mix (instant)

1/2 cup whole milk

1/2 heavy cream

1/4 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/4 cup powdered sugar

Put the pudding mix in a large bowl and add the milk, cream, and powdered sugar. Mix well and gently stir in the pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice. After a few minutes, fill a plastic bag (cut the tip off) and fill the cooled puffs. Wilson has disposal plastic pastry bags and I highly recommend them. They're affordable and disposable. Those of us that used an old fashion pastry bag knows that cleaning the bag is worse part of baking!

I'm thankful that Catherine de Medici isn't here today. Surely she would have yelled "off with her head" for what I've done to her grand pastry recipe. I wonder if Nostradamus warned her of me?

T