Cream Puffs a la J&J

I finally tried the pate a choux (puffs) out of the cook book Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home.

The recipe is one of those time consuming, detail intensive ones that use only the most basic ingredients and have been around for ages. Something that was probably often made at home a few decades ago, but it considered too time consuming for the modern kitchen. The hand stirring of all the dough also requires a little elbow grease.

Milk, butter, sugar, and salt is boiled together, then flour is dumped in and stirred like crazy with a wooden spoon. The mixture is stirred over medium heat to evaporate liquid out of the mix; you're done when a white cakey film coats the bottom of the pot. The dough is set aside to cool for five minutes. At this point, preheat oven to 375.

Here's where the real elbow grease comes in. You have to stir in one egg at a time with a wooden spoon. The first egg will absorb fairly easily. Remember to keep stirring until each egg is fully incorporated before you add the next one.

Each successive egg will make the dough break apart into a sloppy, slippery mess. You have to keep stirring and cutting the dough with your wooden spoon (or chopsticks, like I used) to get it to absorb the egg.

After the second egg, the dough will start to look like a smooth paste akin to polenta. It needs to be thick enough to form into mounds, but not as hard as cookie dough. It's somewhere between a dough and a batter, if that helps.

Scoop the dough into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2" plain or star tip. Pipe little mounds. For mini puffs, about 2-3 tablespoons per choux is good. For the big palm-sized ones, you'll have to pipe about 5 tablespoons' worth for each. Brush a little beaten egg on each one, smoothing down any points you might have made. Bake the little ones for 25 minutes, and the big ones for 40. They're done when they're browned all over and cracked on top. Leave them in the oven for another half hour with the door open a crack (about two inches). The dough doesn't need to bake further, but keeping it in the oven allows a little extra moisture to evaporate.

After they're cool, you can put the choux in an airtight container and refrigerate them for a few days or freeze them for a few weeks. They defrost well if you set them out in a cool place. I sliced this one open and put in a big spoonful of pastry cream so it was visible.

For neater and more transportable choux, I used a pastry bag fitted with a flat tip, stabbed each choux in an appropriate spot (somewhere there was already a weak line, for example), and filled. That way the cream didn't ooze out and I could put the choux in a box. For a cream puff, I think the best filling is pastry cream made the night before and cooled in the fridge, folded with some freshly whipped sweetened whipped cream right before serving and filling. The last photo is a choux filled with a whole lot of leftover whipped cream--cook's treat!