Chouquettes are tiny little airy pastries that everybody seems to come away from the bakery with and eat one after the other before you know it, the whole bag’s gone. They are so tempting.
But have you ever imagined making them yourself?
Eclairs, religieuse cream pufs, Saint Honorés, profiteroles, pièces montées, chouquettes … Many French pastries are made from the same base, a pastry called choux.
“Too difficult!” I often hear. Not necessarily, if you follow my step-by-step guidelines: simply pour the flour into a mixture of heated water, milk and butter. The flour absorbs all the liquid and puffs up. It must then be stirred for one to two minutes, until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan. Then add beaten eggs et voila!
Originally, this was called “hot dough” because of the aforementioned process of heating the dough to dry it out. In the 16th century the Italian pastry chef Popelini, serving the Queen Catherine de Medicis, created the “Popelin”, a dessert made by drying dough over a fire. This dough, which had long been known as “hot dough”, was perfected by the pastry chef Avice, and then by his famous apprentice, Antonin Carème (founder of French haute cuisine) to become today’s choux pastry. There are some variations in the quantity of flour, eggs or milk. Purists follow the rules laid down by Escoffier, with no water. I will give you here a recipe thatis simply impossible tomess up.
Iconic treat for French kids' afternoon snack, bought at the boulangerie / bakery or homemade. Simple recipe Prepare the choux pastry, form balls, add egg yolk and sugar rocks then bake 10 minutes in the oven.
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Prep Time 30 minutesmins
Cook Time 10 minutesmins
Course Biscuit or small cake
Cuisine French
Servings 30chouquettes
Equipment
Piping bag and brush (optional)
Ingredients
125mlmilk
125mlwater
100grbutter
1pinchsaltabout 4 gr
150grflourideally all-purpose flour
4eggs3 for batter 1 to glaze
sugar rocks
Instructions
First prepare the choux pastry
Prepare all ingredients in advance as everything goes very fast and pre-heat your oven to 180°C (350°F).
Over a medium heat bring the water, milk and butter to the boil. Do this slowly so that the butter has plenty of time to melt. At the first broth, remove from the heat and add all the flour at once. Stir vigorously until you get a hom*ogeneous mixture. Keep on stirring for 1-2 minutes until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan.
Pour into a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat an egg and stir it into the mixture. Repeat with the 2 remaining eggs. If you want to go faster, beat the 2 eggs and stir them in gradually.
Your choux pastry is finished.
Bake
To make the chouquettes, place small dollops on a baking sheet covered with greaseproof paper using either a piping bag or a spoon. Make sure you leave enough room between the chouquettes as they will expand during the baking process.
Beat the last egg, mix it with a little water. Glaze the chouquettes using a brush and then sprinkle grains of sugar on top. Be generous with the sugar as the cakes will expand meaning the sugar rocks won’t be all over each other. What’s more the sugar rocks are the only sweet element in the recipe.
Bake 10 minutes at 180°C (350°F). At a 5 minute mark, open the oven door for 5 seconds. His will remove the steam from the oven and prevent the chouquettes from falling flat later on.
Notes
If needed, please refer to the conversions and measures article here
Tip: What makes the chouquettes puff up? According to Hervé This, French chemist, co-founder of molecular gastronomy “It’s mostly the water making the dough inflate and thus expand. This water is provided by the eggs. When heated from below on the stove, the water that evaporates gives off a lot of steam, which in turn causes the mixture to inflate.”
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Bon appétit !
If needed, please refer to the conversions and measures article here
Chouquettes (French: [ʃukɛt]) or petit* choux are small pieces of French patisserie consisting of small spheres of choux pastry, sugared and baked. The term was known in the 16th century, and was originally applied to small savoury spheres. Since the late 17th century choquettes have been sweet. Chouquette.
The seven ingredients in chouquettes include water, milk, butter, granulated sugar, kosher salt, eggs, and pearl sugar. The Swedish pearl sugar, not to be confused with Belgian pearl sugar, is small, crisp, and sweet. This makes ordinary choux puffs especially good, and no other embellishments are needed.
The Puits d'amour (pronounced [pɥi damuʁ]) is a French pastry with a hollow center. The center is usually stuffed with redcurrant jelly or raspberry jam; a later variation replaced the jam with vanilla pastry cream. The surface of the cake is sprinkled with confectioners' sugar or covered with caramel.
The Liquid: You can use water or milk, or a combination of the two. Water allows you to bake either hotter or longer (or both) without as much risk of the choux over-browning, while milk, thanks to its extra proteins and sugars, leads to a more rapidly browned crust.
The most used fat is butter, but choux pastry can be made also with oil, margarine or lard. The higher is the content of fat, the more the cream puff will be crumbly and rounded with a smooth surface.
While making choux, butter helps prevent the flour from clumping. If you've ever mixed hot water and flour, you know how challenging it can be to mix the too. As such as the flour hits that hot water it starts to gelatinize. As a result, the outside of a pocket of flour may cook, while the inside is still dry.
The chouquettes deflated after baking: this usually happens if you didn't bake them for long enough, if your oven was not preheated, or if your dough has too much moisture. The puffs got soggy after a while: this is normal and happens after a day or two after making chouquettes.
They are both choux pastry-based puffs filled with a cream filling. The main difference between the two is that profiteroles are filled with ice cream instead of pastry cream.
Simply made of choux pastry made of water (or milk), butter, wheat flour, eggs and salt, the chouquette, short for cabbage with the suffix "ette", was created in the 16th century by the Italian pastry chef Popelini who, while working at the court of Queen Catherine de Medici, imported it to France.
You can keep the Choux in an airtight container for up to 3 days. They will feel soggy when you take them out so it's important to put them in a 175°C oven for about 5 minutes. That will dry and crisp them back up. ..But I suggest to use,the same day you make them, so much better.
First recorded in 1875–80; from French choux, plural of chou “cream puff,” literally, “cabbage” (so called from the resemblance to little cabbages when the pastries come out of the oven). The variant pâte à choux entered English earlier, around 1845–50 ; cream puff pastry was first recorded in 1950–55; chou, pâte.
(ʃuː ) noun. a very light pastry made with eggs, used for eclairs, etc. Word origin. partial translation of French pâte choux cabbage dough (from its round shape)
Americanized form of French Choquet: Picard form of Old French soquet, which was the term for a tax on wines and foodstuffs, hence a metonymic occupational name for a collector of such taxes.
Introduction: My name is Domingo Moore, I am a attractive, gorgeous, funny, jolly, spotless, nice, fantastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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