Chocolate Cream Puffs

These irresistible Chocolate Cream Puffs combine a crisp choux ball filled with luxurious chocolate pastry cream and a chocolate ganache topping. The combination of pastry and smooth chocolate custard is just heavenly!

If you know your French baking then you'll realise just how popular choux pastry is. Use it to make simple chouquettes, traditional profiteroles or refined èclairs. Worried about getting the shape right? Then take the easy route and go for these Chocolate Cream Puffs. Making choux balls is way easier than piping the long èclairs and you'll get exactly the same flavour!

The Choux Pastry is light, golden and crisp and using my choux pastry guide, you'll master this pastry in the blink of an eye. The Chocolate Pastry Cream is undeniably a French classic that's rich and full of chocolate flavour.

The Chocolate Cream Puffs are topped with a simple chocolate ganache and a sprinkle of cocoa nibs for crunch. Yes, these take a moment to make but I'll share my tips to spread the work over two days as these are definitely worth the effort!

🧾 Ingredients Needed

The ingredients needed to make these Chocolate Cream Puffs are fridge or pantry staples. I've made a few notes below regarding some of these in specific and any substitutions that you can make.

Choux Pastry

• Liquid: water or milk - Use either water or milk or a combination of both. I use milk and water in my recipe today as they yield crisp shells with a tender custard-like interior. You get to choose, but what's important is that you stick with the correct quantity and don't deviate from this. 
• Butter - Provides richness and flavour to the dough, but also moisture. I prefer to use unsalted butter (preferably European butter) to control the amount of salt added later. If using salted butter, then omit the extra salt in the recipe.
• Flour - Adds structure to the dough. I've only tested with plain (all-purpose) flour but have researched that cake flour can produce a slightly softer texture and bread flour, which is high in protein, produces a sturdier pastry shell. Weigh your flour with digital scales to obtain the most accurate weight. There's no room for guesswork in such a recipe.
• Eggs - Adding just the right amount of eggs helps create a flexible and structured dough when baked. Too much and the dough will be too runny and result in flat choux balls; not enough, and the dough will be too dry and crack. The eggs also provide the essential leavening needed to puff the dough. Room temperature eggs are also key.
• Sugar and salt - You can make choux pastry perfectly well without sugar or salt, but for me, they add flavour and season the dough. Sugar adds sweetness but also helps colour the dough. The salt enhances the sweetness whilst also balancing it out.

Chocolate Pastry Cream and Ganache

• Eggs - Large egg yolks provide flavour and structure when cooked to the right consistency. 5 yolks are perfect when combined with the richness of the whole milk but feel free to add another yolk if you want an even richer custard. In the UK a large egg yolk weighs 16g/0.56oz - important as egg sizes vary in different countries.
• Sugar - Granulated or caster sugar is perfect to make Crème Pâtissière, however, I've used light brown or dark brown sugar as well. The extra molasses in the sugar adds a beautiful caramel note to your pastry cream. I don't like the pastry cream to be too sweet and find ½ cup perfect for this amount of pastry cream.
• Milk - Whole milk is best over low-fat or skim milk, as it provides a richer, more well-rounded flavour due to its high-fat content. You can substitute with coconut milk, almond milk, soy milk or oat milk.
• Vanilla - this is the flavour that we want to taste predominantly. So use the caviar from a vanilla pod for a maximum, well-rounded flavour. You can use a teaspoon or two of vanilla bean paste as a substitute or vanilla extract at a push (I personally love to see all the little specks of vanilla beans throughout the cream).
• Corn Flour - (cornstarch) is needed to thicken the pastry cream. It's perfect as it doesn't alter the flavour of the pastry cream, which plain flour tends to do. However, you can still use plain flour to thicken the pastry cream, but you'll need to add more than corn flour. I have not tested this recipe with plain flour.
• Chocolate and Cocoa Powder - these two ingredients work hand in hand to provide a rich, luscious chocolate flavour. I prefer to use a 70% dark chocolate so that the pastry cream does not end up too sweet.
• Butter - Only a small amount is needed to add flavour, shine and richness. Replace with plant-based butter if you prefer.

👩🏻‍🍳 How to Make Chocolate Cream Puffs

The Chocolate Cream Puffs are made with three elements:

• The Choux Pastry
• The Chocolate Pastry Cream filling
• The Chocolate Ganache Topping

To save time on the day of serving, make the pastry cream the day before. It actually benefits from being overnight in the fridge as it cools and stiffens to the right consistency to be piped into the buns.

On the day of serving, you can fill, then dip each of the choux buns and refrigerate until ready to serve. This helps with cutting down on the hands-on process before serving.

*Be sure to see the recipe card below for the full ingredients list & instructions!*

Make the Chocolate Pastry Cream

STEP 1. Heat the milk gently. Add the milk into a heavy-based saucepan and set over low heat on the stovetop (Image 1).

Heat the mixture until it's steaming and you can see some bubbles appear around the edges of the saucepan. Whatever you do, don't boil it!!! Once warmed sufficiently then turn the stovetop off.

STEP 2. Whisk in eggs and sugar, then cornflour and cocoa powder. In a separate bowl add the egg yolks and sugar and whisk together until thickened and pale (Image 2). This takes about a minute, a little longer if doing it by hand. Then add the cornflour and cocoa powder and whisk together (Images 3 & 4).

STEP 3. Combine the two mixtures together. We're then going to temper the eggs now. What does that mean? The milk mixture is warm and if you add the eggs directly to that, it would basically scramble them. Disaster! So, we temper by adding a little of the milk mixture at a time to the eggs whilst continuously whisking which brings the temperature down of the milk and up for the eggs.

Whilst whisking continuously, pour the hot milk slowly (Image 5) into the eggs until fully added (Image 6).

STEP 4. Add chocolate and thicken the pastry cream. Pour the combined mixture back into the saucepan (Image 7) and place it back onto the stove at low heat. Add in the chopped chocolate (Image 8) and carry on whisking whilst the chocolate melts thoroughly (Image 9).

As the pastry cream heats the corn flour will activate and cause it to thicken. Once you see a couple of bubbles, continue to whisk for another minute or so. The chocolate pastry cream will be thick and luscious (Image 10)! Don't be impatient and turn the heat up hoping for the thickening to happen sooner. All you'll get is a split custard and bits of cooked egg.

STEP 5. Sieve, cool and refrigerate. To guarantee a smooth custard, take the pan off the heat and pass the pastry cream through a sieve into a bowl (Image 11). Sometimes the egg can catch on the bottom of the pan - definitely don't want those bits in your custard! Add in the vanilla extract, and butter (Image 12) and whisk until melted, smooth and shiny (Image 13). 

Cover the chocolate pastry cream straight away with plastic wrap - but make sure the wrap sits touching and covering the surface of the custard (Image 14). This prevents a skin from forming.

Leave the bowl to cool for an hour and then refrigerate until cold - a minimum of 3 hours. It will thicken as it cools which is super important when it comes to assembling the chocolate cream puffs.

Make The Choux Pastry

Whilst the pastry cream is chilling in the refrigerator, it's time to make the choux pastry. The first step is to make the panade.

STEP 6. Melt mixture, then boil. This is done by heating the milk and water on low heat to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar and salt (Image 15). Once fully melted (Image 16), the heat is turned up until the mixture is at a rolling boil.

STEP 7. Add flour and form a dough. From there, turn off the heat, add the flour to the saucepan in one go and mix it vigorously (Image 17).

Placed back onto the stove top, the dough is 'cooked' to dry it out by causing the water to evaporate. This is done by 'beating' it in the pan for a couple of minutes until the dough forms a ball and a thin starchy film forms on the bottom of the pan (Image 18).

STEP 8. Beat to release the steam. The panade needs to be cooled down so that when the eggs are added in, they don't instantly scramble. The fastest way to do this is to add the dough to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat it for the steam to release (Image 19). It's a quick process that only takes one minute.

Whilst the dough is cooling, whisk the four eggs in a jug. This allows you to control how much egg is poured into the panade in the next step. The dough may not need it all, or it may need some of the 5th egg that's set aside.

STEP 9. Beat the eggs into the panade. With the mixer running on low speed, pour in ¾ of the eggs slowly, in 3 separate additions, mixing for 30 seconds with each addition (Image 20).

Add the eggs in too quickly, and you'll have runny eggs and bits of panade floating around! Not the outcome we need! A smooth and shiny dough is what we want (Image 21). When you lift up the beater the dough should drop off in the form of a 'V' (Image 22). If it breaks and isn't smooth, mix in a bit more egg.

STEP 10. Fill the piping bag. Fit a 1.3cm (½ inch) plain nozzle or Wilton 1A piping tip into a piping bag, and scoop the choux batter into the bag until full and twist the opening to close.

Refrigerate the dough and preheat the oven to 200°C (390°F). Refrigerate the dough whilst the oven comes to temperature.

STEP 11. Pipe and prep the choux dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking tray (Image 23). Ensure you hold the piping bag vertically upright - otherwise, you’ll have wonky, odd-shaped buns! Pipe 1-inches wide mounds about 2 inches apart.

Prep choux on the tray. 

• With a wet finger, smooth down the points of the choux buns. This will prevent them from burning in the oven (Image 24).
• Add the milk to the remaining whisked egg and mix. Brush egg wash onto the buns. This gives a glossy sheen to the finished pastry and helps deepen the golden colour (Image 25).
• Brush the parchment paper with water around the buns. This produces more steam in the oven providing extra lift for the buns to puff up.

STEP 12. Bake: Place the baking tray in the oven, reduce the temp to 180C (350F) and bake for 25 minutes until the choux buns are golden brown and crisp. Do NOT open the oven for the first 25 minutes whilst the choux are baking. 

Poke a hole in the base of the buns and pop them back in the oven for a further 10 minutes. They can cool fully on the tray (Image 26).

Fill the Choux Buns and Decorate

STEP 13. Pipe pastry cream into the buns. Once the buns are fully cooled, remove the chocolate pastry cream from the fridge. It will look quite thick and gluggy. This is normal! Give it a good firm whisk for a couple of minutes until smooth again (Image 27).

Spoon the pastry cream into a piping bag fitted with a ½ inch piping tip and push the tip into the steam vent hole already in the choux bun base. Squeeze the pastry cream into the choux bun - you'll feel the weight of it in your hand (Image 28). Continue until all choux buns are filled.

Make Ganache and Decorate

STEP 14. Make Ganache. Heat the cream in a small saucepan on the stovetop or in short bursts in the microwave, until warm and just starting to simmer. Add the chopped chocolate and butter to the hot cream (Image 29). Stir until chocolate and butter have completely melted and created a smooth ganache (Image 30).

STEP 17. Decorate choux balls. Dip the top of each filled choux bun into the chocolate ganache allowing any excess ganache to drip off before placing the bun onto a baking tray (Image 31).

Repeat until all buns are dipped and sprinkle the ganache with cocoa nibs (optional) (Image 32). Refrigerate buns for 30 minutes or until ready to serve. They are best enjoyed the same day they are made.