Ooh, faked you out there. I bet for a second you thought we'd discovered a way to deliver food through the computer. Weren't we supposed to have been able to nosh on our computerized futurecake while riding in aerocars sometime in 1985?
Ah well.
When I get a craving for a particular foodstuff, I hop on the computer to find out who's selling it near me or if there's a way I can make it arrive at my front door with a minimum of fuss. When my husband gets a craving, he pulls out all of our cookbooks and back issues of food magazines and does three hours of research online to find the ultimate recipe. Often, he has to go buy equipment too.
For a month, the boy had been talking cream puff, or Choux à la Crème if'n you's fancy. After a lot of perusal and rejecting all sorts of recipes that called for vanilla pudding or Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, he alighted on a recipe that we have in a cookbook in our very own house, from Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home.
Making choux paste, or choux pastry, is weird. I feel comfortable saying this even though my personal experience with baking is limited to peering over people's shoulders while they do cool things with dough. First, you make a mix of milk, butter, salt, and sugar, which you cook in a saucepan (don't worry, I'll give you the actual recipe later on). Then you dump in a bunch of flour and stir until the mess comes together as a dough.
Then, you throw this lump into the food processor and dump in some egg yolks one at a time until you have a pretty thin, gloopy dough. This mixture goes into a pastry bag - yes, that's the new equipment I mentioned earlier, along with two different pastry tips - and piped out onto parchment paper or one of those technofancy Silpat mats.
Since the man picked up two decorating tips for his pastry bag, a round one and one for rosettes, he of course had to give both a workout. Honestly, it was difficult to tell the difference after they'd baked, but it was worth it to try.
After throwing them in the oven and baking (and then leaving them in the oven to dry out, per Jacques' instructions) I wanted to tip an entire pan into my mouth. How could I not?
My big mean husband kept me from eating them right out of the oven. Something about how he wanted to actually put cream in his cream puff. I don't pretend to understand the foibles of men.
He beat on some cream until it was well and truly whipped, and then brought out his pastry bag again and jammed that pointy rosette tip into the soft underbelly of each puff. So violent. So delicious.
Now he's talking about making a savory choux paste and filling it with some sort of vegetable cream. Until then, though, here's the recipe for pâte à choux, from Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home.
Yield: About 40 small profiteroles, or 20 larger choux, serving 10 to 12
1 cup milk
4 Tbs butter (1/2 stick)
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 cup flour (unsifted, weighing 5 to 5.5 ounces)
5 large eggs
Special Equipment
A 2.5 or 3 quart saucepan; a food processor; a large baking or cookie sheet or 2 smaller sheets; parchment paper or a silicon sheet liner; a pastry brush; a pastry bag (14-inch or longer) with a 1/2 inch plain tip and a 1/4 inch star tip
Making the pâte à choux
Preheat the oven to 375F and arrange oven racks to accommodate 2 cookie sheets if necessary.
Put the milk, butter, salt, and sugar in the saucepan and set over high heat. Stir as the butter melts and bring the liquid to a boil. Immediately remove the pan from heat, dump in the flour all at once, and stir rapidly with a sturdy wooden spoon, until all the flour is moistened and the paste comes together.
Set the pan over medium heat and continue to stir vigorously. The dough ill leave the sides of the pan and gather into a soft lump. Continue stirring the dough in the pan to dry it slightly, for a minute or so, until a whitinsh, cakey skin forms on the bottom of the saucepan.
Remove from the heat and scrape the lump of dough into the bowl of the food processor. Allow it to cool for about 5 minutes, so the eggs to not cook when added. Meanwhile, break 4 of the eggs into a measuring cup or bowl and crack the fifth egg into a separate small bowl (do not beat the eggs).
Pulse the dough in the food processor a few times to break up the lump. Then, with the machine running, tip the pitcher or bowl of eggs over the feed tube, allowing only 1 egg to slide into the work bowl. Process for 5 or 6 seconds as the dough absorbs the egg, then 1 at a time slide in each of the remaining 3 eggs, processing for a few moments after each addition. It will take about 30 seconds to incorporate all the eggs.
Stop the machine and check that the dough has a soft paste consistency. If it is still too stiff, lightly beat the fifth egg, add a teaspoon or two of it to the dough, and process briefly. (Save this egg, whether you have used any of it or not, for the egg wash.)
Piping the profiteroles or choux
Line the cookie sheet, or 2 sheets if small, with parchment paper or a reusable silicon liner.
Fit a plain tip into the pastry bag, and fill with the choux paste. If you don't have a pastry bag, you can make one by cutting a hole in the bottom of a sturdy plastic bag. Pipe small profiteroles, using about a tablespoon of dough for each, or larger choux, using 2 to 3 tablespoons. Alternatively, push mounds of dough onto the sheet from a spoon. Leave at least 1.5 inches between each puff, using both baking sheets if necessary.
For the egg wash, spill off about half the white from the reserved egg, so there's an equal amount of yolk and white, and beat well with a fork. (The whites make the puffs shiny and the yolks give them a deep color.) Using the pastry brush, lightly paint the top of each puff with the egg wash, gently smoothing down the point of dough left by the piping bag.
Baking the puffs
Place the sheet (or both) in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes for smaller profiteroles or 35 to 40 minutes for choux, until the puffs are a deep golden brown all over.
When the puffs appear done, turn off the heat and prop the oven door open about 2 inches. Allow the puffs to dry out in the oven for 30 mintues or so before removing. Cool them completely before using or storing.
