Cream Puffs - Pâte à Choux

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Pâte à Choux is cream puff pastry and is used to make cream puffs, gougeres, and even beignets. You can make these beautiful cream puffs and fill them as a dessert with ice cream or whipped cream. You can make them and fill them for lunch with crab or chicken salad. You can add cheese to the dough and make savory little gougeres for appetizers. You can make the cream puffs ahead of time and then simply fill them right before serving. Once you have this basic technique in your cooking arsenal, you will be ready to make all kinds of goodies.

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Ingredients

  • Makes 12 - 13 medium sized cream puffs
  • 1 C milk
  • 4 T unsalted butter, cut into pieces
  • 1/8 t salt
  • 2 t sugar
  • 1 C flour
  • 5 large eggs (4 for the dough and one for an egg wash)

Preparation

Step 1

Heat the first four ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium high heat just until the milk starts to boil. Turn the heat to low and dump in all the flour at once, stirring with a wooden spoon. The dough will pull together. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring the ball of dough around so that it dries out. Remove the dough and place it either in the bowl of a stand mixer or the bowl of a food processor and let the dough cool off for a few minutes.

Line a baking sheet with either a Silpat or parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

With the mixer running, add the eggs one at a time. It's important that you let each egg incorporate fully into the dough before adding the next one. The dough will look curdled and weird - don't worry about it. After all four eggs are added, mix until the dough forms a nice paste consistency. It will be very loose, not at all like a bread dough. (If you do not have either a mixer or some kind or a food processor, you can beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoon.)

Pipe the dough into a piping bag fitted with a large tip. If you don't have a piping bag, spoon the dough onto the baking sheet. Pipe the dough into mounds about 2 to 2-1/2 inches wide. Beat the egg for the egg wash with just about a tablespoon of water. Brush the mounds of pastry dough lightly with the egg wash.

Bake at 375 F for about 25 minutes, or until the puffs are a nice golden brown. Turn off the heat and open the oven door a few inches and let the puffs sit in the turned off oven to dry out for about 30 minutes.

Unfilled Cream Puffs can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days or frozen for several months.

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