Choux pastry or Pâte à Choux is used to make cream puffs, profiteroles
(puffs stuffed with ice cream), eclairs, and gougères (savory puffs). The
pastry is simple to make, uses little if any sugar and comes together quickly
with flour and then eggs. It being
Spring, I wanted to start my baking excursion with egg based creations
combining cream puffs (and its variant eclairs – all with 4 whole eggs) with
vanilla pastry cream (4 egg yolks), and chocolate pastry cream and puffs (ode
to Easter!) and chocolate custard ice cream (6 egg yolks). I also wanted to try the savory version
of cream puffs (called gougère).
All total, I used at least 2 and a half dozen eggs in 24 hours! Eggcellent!
Saturday (day 1) I made the vanilla pastry cream (Martha Stewart’s ‘No Fuss Pastry
Cream’), and a chocolate version (I just added 2 Tablespoons of Cocoa
Powder to the sugar/cornstarch).
As well, I started the chocolate custard ice cream (Melissa Clark’s “The
Only Ice Cream Recipe You will Ever Need” – the chocolate variation (with
crème fraiche) – so that it could chill overnight.
In 2002, a dear friend of mine, Trish DePula (who has
since passed away from cancer) gave me a Martha Stewart cookbook at a time when
Martha Stewart Living was publishing her annual recipes (from 2002 – 2005) that
had been in the magazine over the previous year. I have two of them – dates 2002 and 2003 – that I had not
opened in at least 10 years. And
they really are quite good. A lot
of basic recipes, great photos, and organized seasonally. I found the gougère recipe in the 2002
volume – using Gruyere cheese, salt, pepper and a bit of nutmeg. Easy to make, and fantastic warm
right out of the oven. Irv and I
had to stop ourselves. They tasted
great the next day stuffed with curried chicken salad. I can certainly see making these for a
dinner party – they would go fast!
Sunday I realized I perhaps had taken on too much too fast. More puffs (chocolate) and then what I
was kind of dreading – using a pastry bag – which is necessary for making
eclairs. It also began to dawn on
me that I was learning my first baking lesson - it is essential to get all your
ingredients, pans, and other supplies together and ready to go before you even
begin the baking process. In other words, don’t make the pastry before you lay
out your pans with the parchment paper (and for me, penciling on circles so the
puffs would be basically the same size, and drawing lines for the eclairs),
have the oven turned on, cooling racks in place, mixer set up, and ingredients
measured and all set to go (including the eggs cracked). It makes the process so much easier and
minimizes mistakes. It also helps
to be patient and read the instructions carefully. These seems obvious, but too many times when cooking I read
the recipe too fast, don’t get my stuff together, then don’t realize how fast
some things have to come together = disaster.
I am also pastry bag challenged. The videos I watch make it look
simple, but this is something I need to work on. Normally, I can’t seem to get the pastry bag tip cut right
and the stuff comes out the bottom on all sides of the tip, sometimes I
overfill and the stuff comes out the top, and other times I can’t seem to get
it to squeeze right. It just is
awkward. I did okay on piping the
eclairs, but filling them was another (messy) story. I admit Irv had to step in and take over as pastry cream was
oozing outside of the tip. Not
that getting pastry cream all over your hands is a bad thing, just sloppy. We got four eclairs filled successfully
and declared victory! Hooray!
I don’t know how bakers do it – baking the same thing day in and day
out – it is exhausting. We did not
think we would get to the profiteroles, but I rallied late Sunday. I forced poor Irv to try one – the ice
cream was delicious….
Thank goodness the treadmill has arrived. Only about 95 bakes left to go!
Cream Puffs – vanilla CHECK
Cream Puffs – chocolate CHECK
Eclairs CHECK
Profiteroles CHECK
Gougère CHECK
Pastry Cream (vanilla and chocolate) CHECK
Ice Cream – single flavor CHECK
