Pâte à Choux /Choux Pastry
I find myself delving into more traditional recipes, many from my memories of the 1970s. While a lot of these foods never really went out of fashion in the patisseries and eateries of Europe, the fusion and molecular cooking that have swept the world more recently have taken some fine dining to places that don’t really tickle me.
Being served a deconstructed lemon meringue tart with all the bits separate on the plate is a bit like buying a pair of shoes, opening the box and being forced to assemble the sole with the uppers and thread the laces before you can enjoy them. This is of course all in the name of ‘cool’, fashion and trend.
So when one gets to make and serve tried and true delicacies, such as delicacies made from ‘pâte à choux’, a dough invented by an Italian pastry chef named Pantanelli from the kitchen of Catherine de Medici some 600 years ago, it’s culinary heaven on earth.
‘Pâte à choux’ is an interesting dough: instead of using yeast, eggs, baking powder or baking soda to raise the dough, it uses the moisture inside the dough that when heated becomes steam, thus forcing it to rise. This leaves a cavity inside that just has to be filled with pastry cream.
Thank god for Catherine de Medici the Italian Florentine mother of the cuisine that everyone knows today as ‘French Cuisine’.
Cream Puffs Filled with Pastry Cream and Topped with Another Type of Thin Crumble.
Thin crumbled topping for cream puffs:
Ingredients:
- Demerara sugar x 70 gram
- Butter cubed x 70 gram
- Flour x 70 gram
Method:
Put everything into the mixer with the paddle attachment, mix until combined. Place dough between two sheets of baking paper and roll out with a rolling pin until 1-2 mm thick. Place on a tray in the freezer to harden until needed.
Pâte à Choux:
Ingredients:
- Milk x 100 gram
- Water x 100 gram
- Butter x 100 gram
- Salt x 3 gram
- Sugar x 5 gram
- Flour x 120 gram
- Eggs x 180 gram
Method:
Put milk, water, butter, salt and sugar into a saucepan, heat until just starting to boil, add the flour all at once and stir quickly using a strong wooden ladle; the mixture will quickly form into a ball of dough. After a moment, remove from the stove and place in mixing bowl with paddle attachment to cool. Once just warm, turn the mixer on to medium-high and add one egg at a time, leaving a minute between eggs. You can test if the dough is ready by picking up a small piece between thumb and finger: when opening your fingers the dough should be elastic enough to not break. If the dough isn’t elastic then add another egg.
When ready the dough is piped using a piping bag and a nozzle of your choice. Pipe a ball onto the baking paper, wet your fingertip with water and smooth down the peak that will form from the piping.
Using a small diameter pastry cutter ring, cut circles in the crumble topping and using a small knife or metal spatula place the circle of crumble on top of the piped ball of pâte à choux. Make sure to leave enough space between balls, as they expand when baked.
Put into an oven preheated to 210°C for 15-17 minutes, the last two minutes with the door open. Let cool and either place in the freezer for another time or fill using a piping bag with a stiff whipped cream or pastry cream.
Creme Patissiere/ Pastry Cream:
Ingredients:
- Milk x 333 ml
- Vanilla essence x 1 teaspoon
- Egg yolks x 80 gram
- White sugar 83 grams
- Cornflour (starch) x 33 gram
- Butter x 33 gram
Method:
Put milk and vanilla essence in saucepan, heat until it simmers, but don’t boil. In a bowl using a whisk mix the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour until they become one. Tip 20 percent of the hot milk into the egg mixture a bit at a time and mix well with the whisk.
Using a silicone spatula pour the mixture back into the saucepan through a sieve. Stir slowly, ensuring it doesn’t burn, and the mixture will start to thicken quite quickly.
The mixture will start to erupt like a bubbling hot mud pool in Rotorua. Keep stirring until you can feel it thicken and when you lift the whisk from the mixture the batter remains firm on the whisk and doesn’t drip back.
Remove from the heat, add the butter, mix it in and then create a skin by covering with Glad Wrap, ensuring the Glad Wrap is one with the mixture. This prevents a hard skin from forming which would result in the loss of a significant amount of the mixture. Set aside to cool/place in the fridge.
To fill the cream puff, you can either gently cut it open, fill and place the top back on, or you can puncture the base with a small toothed piping head and then pipe the filling into the cream puff.
Enjoy the calories. It will be worth it.
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