Cream Puff Paste

Put water, butter or salt in a large heavy saucepan and bring to a boil.

Remove from heat (butter should be completely melted) and add the flour all in one fell swoop.

Mix as quickly as possible with a sturdy wooden spoon.

This mixture is known as a \

Return the saucepan to the stove over the lowest possible heat. Continue to stir with the wooden spoon while the panade dries out. This will take about 5 minutes, and a thin crust will form on the bottom of the pan.

This is supposed to happen, so don't worry about it, and don't try to scrape it up and incorporate it into the dough, or you will have plaster chips in your pastries.

The dough should be soft, but when you pinch it between thumb and forefinger it should not stick to your hand.

Dump the panade into a bowl, and let it cool for at least 5 minutes.

Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

The mixture should be smooth and creamy looking before you add the next egg.

After all 4 eggs have been beaten in, the dough will be shiny and satiny yellow, thick and heavy.

Butter and flour a cookie sheet. Fill a pastry bag with the dough.

If you don't have a pastry bag, you can use a tablespoon to drop dollops of dough onto the cookie sheet for eclairs and/or cream puffs, but you really must have a pastry bag in order to make a cream puff ring.

For cream puffs, Squeeze out balls about the size of ping pong or golf balls.

For eclairs, squeeze out oblongs at 3 to 4 inches long.

If you are using the recipe given above, you should end up with 14 to 16 pastries.

Don't succumb to the temptation to make fewer and larger ones, for they won't cook properly if you do.

Brush the tops of the pastries with beaten egg, using the bristles of the brush to gently push down and flatten out the little curlicues left by the pastry bag as you lifted it off.

Finally, drag the tines of a dinner fork down the length of each eclair.

The resulting stripes will make for a more attractive and professional looking product. For a cream puff ring, first mark a 10\ wide \ of cream puff paste right on top of the circle you've outlined.

Squeeze another 1\ crack\