Pâte a Choux

Yesterday was a rather lenient day with our pastry class, but it was freezing in pastry class with all the fridges and the room set at a lower temperature than the average kitchen of course.

We made Pâte a Choux (pastry dough) used to make profiteroles and eclairs. It's a lot of fun making them but I definitely need practice as mine did not come out as perfect as Chefs. You really got to have the right consistency because you don't want them too skinny like noodles or too chubby like a banana...and don't overcook them as they turn dark brown (mine were a little light colored for my taste)

To make Pâte a Choux, you need to melt butter in a pan with water, sugar and salt and then incorporate little by little the eggs while beating the mixture (and making sure you don't cook the eggs!), a yellow doughy mixture should come about and it should be fluffy (to the point that when you dip your finger, the dough is soft that it curls a little bit.


Then you put the mixture in a douille (piping bag) and push out your mixture on a buttered baking pan (this is probably the hardest part!). Then baking time of about 20 minutes until golden brown and the bottom not too burned out and you set them aside while you make the cream filling.

Chef Thierry's perfect piping skills

Brushing a little butter before oven time....

Ready!

To realize the cream, in one bowl you heat up milk (making sure it doesn't burn), while in another, you beat eggs with sugar and then pastry flour and then add all mixtures together to get a yellowish cream that is spread out on a baking sheet and chilled in the fridge. 

Afterwards you can either add chocolate or coffee flavored liquid to the mixture. It is then piped into the pastry dough (which has been poked with entry holes at the bottom so THAT'S how they get the cream inside! and that's it!

The sweetest part of the dessert is probably the glaze at the top - I used coffee again because I found chocolate too sweet!

We also quickly made them with chantilly inside!

                         

My little baby of a creation :)

Pâte a Choux family photo

The whole family

It was a good day, but I did feel a bit sick at the end from eating little bits and pieces on the way...very dangerous!