Today, January 2nd, is National Cream Puff Day.

Cream puffs are also known as profiteroles, or choux à la crème in the original French.

These are a dessert made from choux (pronounced shoe) pastry which is a light pastry dough made from butter, water, flour and eggs - with no raising (or leavening) agent such as bicarbonate of soda. The pastry puffs during cooking from the steam produced by the high moisture content.

The puffs are balls of choux pastry that are filled with whipped cream, pastry cream, ice cream or custard after the balls themselves are cooked. They are then commonly topped with either powdered sugar or a chocolate ganache.

Image: By Stu Spivack [CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons