Profiterole

Choux pastry dough is piped through a pastry bag or dropped with a pair of spoons into small balls and baked to form largely hollow puffs. After cooling, the baked profiteroles are injected with filling using a pastry bag and narrow piping tip, or by slicing off the top, filling them, and reassembling. For sweet profiteroles, additional glazes or decorations may then be added.

German cream puff

Czech version

The most common presentations are pastry cream, whipped cream, or ice cream filling, topped with powdered sugar or chocolate ganache and possibly more whipped cream. They are also served plain, with a crisp caramel glaze, iced, or with fruit.

Filled and glazed with caramel, they are assembled into a type of pièce montée called croquembouches, often served at weddings in France and Italy, during the Christmas holiday in France, and are served during important celebrations in Gibraltar. Profiteroles are also used as the outer wall of St. Honoré Cake.

A name that frequently emerges is that of Popelini, whose first name is unknown. A considerable number of websites refer to him as the supposed inventor of choux pastry around 1540. In 2011, a Parisian pastry shop specializing in cream puffs was named after him. Popelini seems to have first appeared in the early 1890s, in a book of Pierre Lacam[6]. Those who have read the writings of Lacam can easily conclude that he invented this "Chef Pasterelli [who] was named Popelini," chef of Catherine de' Medici, who "brought with him the recipe for a dough that was dried over the fire, which he made into an excellent dish that he named after himself at court; it was later called Popelin, instead of Popelini." Furthermore, investigation of records listing service personnel who worked with Catherine since her arrival in France until her death revealed the absence of any Italian chefs[7]. Rather than imagining Popelini shaping choux pastry, it is assumed that Lacam mainly created Popelini from choux pastry, and Pasterelli from the pastry[8].

A patissier by the name of Jean Avice wrote the first recipe of the pastry in the middle of the eighteenth century and created choux buns[9]. It was in the nineteenth century that Antoine Carême perfected the recipe, the same recipe for choux pastry as is used today.[10]

Cream puffs have appeared on U.S. restaurant menus since at least 1851.[11]

The Wisconsin State Fair is known for its giant cream puffs.[12][13]

Profiteroles are served in the banquet scene in the 2017 film Victoria and Abdul in which Queen Victoria is seen to be taking great pleasure in devouring her serving of them.[14]

Cream puffs are heavily implied to be the favourite treat of Hanyū in the Japanese murder mystery sound novel series Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Cream puffs are often mentioned and used as a payment method or a sign of gratefulness towards her, throwing cream puffs away as a threat. In Hanyū's character song 'Nano Desu~' she also clearly states "I love, I love, I really love Chou à la crème!".

In the 1989 film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, profiteroles are a favorite treat of the titular wife, Georgina Spica.

•  Food portal
• Bossche bol, a giant profiterole from the Dutch city of Den Bosch
• Éclair, a differently-shaped choux and cream pastry
• Gougère, an hors d'oeuvre made with choux pastry
• List of French desserts
• Moorkop, a similar Dutch pastry

• Cream Puff at the Wikibooks Cookbook subproject