Pastry meets ice cream in these delightfully crunchy, craquelin-topped cream puffs stuffed with cookies and cream ice cream.

Whether you call them cream puffs or profiteroles, these airy ice cream-stuffed pastries make for a truly special treat.

Aa is the case with a number of my recipes, the name came well before the recipe itself, this one a clever play on words sort of like one of those “Before & After” puzzles on Wheel of Fortune. Cookies ‘n Cream + Cream Puffs = Cookies ‘n Cream Puffs. Get it?!?

So I knew what I was going to call them. Now I just had to figure out how to make it happen.

I first set out to make these Cookies ‘n Cream Puffs with a cookie-infused pastry cream filling. At least that was the original idea.

While my craquelin-topped cream puffs turned out great the first time (surprising as it was my first time making craquelin!) my pastry cream didn’t quite set up as firmly as I would’ve liked. And when I tried to pipe it into the center of the puffs, the chunks of cookies kept clogging up piping tip. I’d squeeze harder to dislodge the clog, and the pasty cream would start oozing out the backside of my piping bag. And when I finally got one filled, the molten pasty cream would come oozing right back out of the hole in which I piped it.

Needless to say, it was a big ol’ mess.

At one point as I was trying to force this too-soft pastry cream into a cream puff, I got frustrated to the point where I just wanted to smash something. And as it turns out, a cream-filled pastry is awfully fun to hulk smash (oh yes I did).

But don’t worry, other than the one that got demolished with my fist, none of that first batch went to waste. I filled the rest with plain (cookie free) whipped cream and brought them to my ceramics class where they were readily devoured.

I also froze a handful of unfilled puffs, planning to attempt the filling again the next day. But I didn’t feel like trying (and failing) again, so I ended up just cutting the puffs in half and filling them with a scoop of ice cream. Which turned out to be such a good solution that I did a complete 180 on this recipe, nixing the cream filling entirely in lieu of cookies ‘n cream ice cream.

And ok ok I admit, usually when they’re filled with ice cream they’re actually called profiteroles, but then I couldn’t use my clever name anymore. Ice cream is still technically cream, so cream puffs still works in my opinion.

So there you have it. Cookies ‘n Cream Puffs. Not quite how I originally imagined them, but delicious nonetheless.

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