soft baked mini cream cheese puffs

How To Make soft baked mini cream cheese puffs

• 1

  Preheat oven to 425° and spray mini muffin pans with floured cooking spray, or grease and flour the pans; set aside.
• 2

  In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except milk and beat with an electric mixer to combine, about 2 minutes on medium high speed. Mixture will be very crumbly, with pebbles and sandy bits.
• 3

  Slowly drizzle in up to 3/4 cup milk; just enough so that batter will combine and come together. Note - this batter is very thick and paste-like, and I only used 3/4 cup milk. If yours is thick to the point you can't stir it, add milk, as necessary to thin it.
• 4

  Using a tablespoon or small cookie scoop that's been sprayed with cooking spray (helps batter slide off spoon or scoop easily), form rounded 1 tablespoon mounds and place mounds into prepared pans. Each cavity of pan should be filled about 3/4 full. The cavities are small and the batter is thick, and it's okay if they're not all filled exactly uniformly. As the bake, batter that was placed in the pan in a very rounded fashion (like a perfect scoop of ice cream) will bake up more domed and puffed than batter that was just smooched in. They rise very well; be careful not to overfill.
• 5

  Bake for about 11 to 12 minutes, or until puffs are springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Don't over bake because they'll be prone to becoming dry and the bases will turn overly dark (and you can't see this until you release them from the pans). Allow puffs to cool in pans for about 10 minutes, or until they've firmed up and are cool enough to handle.
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