Cream Puffs with Chocolate Chip Filling

One of my favorite things is when I find out what a friend's favorite thing to eat is. I have a friend who is the chocolate chip cookie queen. She always has a stash in the freezer. She even brought my 3-year-old over her own bag of cookies one day when I couldn't bring her over to get some. I haven't been able to come close to how good her cookies are yet, so when I found out she likes cream puffs, I got pretty excited. She is moving in a few days, so what better way to give her a little love-filled send-off than to make up a batch? The cream puff recipe I got from my good old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, while the filling recipe came from Allrecipes(with my addition of chocolate chips).

Cream Puffs

1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
dash of salt
1 cup flour
4 eggs

Preheat oven to 400. In a medium saucepan combine butter, water and salt. Bring to a boil and add flour all at once. Stir until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat. Let cool 10 minutes. With a wooden spoon, beat in eggs one at a time. Drop batter by heaping tablespoons(I used a cookie dough scooper) 3 inches apart onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until puffs are pretty brown. You don't want to undercook them, because the insides will be too damp and your puffs will collapse. You want to give them time to dry out. Cool on a wire rack. Split puffs and fill. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Filling

2 3.5 oz boxes of vanilla instant pudding
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup milk
1/2 bag mini chocolate chips

Whisk pudding mix and milk until pretty well combined. Add cream and mix well. Refrigerate until thick. Stir in chocolate chips.