For our baking lab on Monday we tackled pate a choux, a versatile, forgiving, and fairly sturdy (yet exceptionally sticky) dough that can be used to make all sorts of things like eclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, and beignets. Pate a choux in French basically means ‘cabbage paste’. I’m not exactly sure why the French coined that term for this dough…perhaps they thought that the little cream puffs made from this dough look like little cabbages. Pate a choux is an interesting product…because of it’s high moisture content, the final product for anything made with this type of dough will be nearly hollow, thus making an ideal container. Basically, if the final product is to be filled, there’s a good chance that the recipe will call for pate a choux dough. This kind of dough is also interesting in that it is actually cooked twice, once on the stove top, once in the oven.
The dough itself is fairly simple to make. Put water and butter into a pot and slowly bring to a boil. Then add in flour and salt and cook. The goal of the stove top cooking is to dry out the excess water so that the flour will hold the next ingredient…eggs. Off the heat, slowly add eggs until the dough reaches the desired consistency and there you go, you’ve made pate a choux. The easiest way to handle the finished dough is to place it into a pastry bag and pipe it into whatever shape you need.
When it came time for the actual cooking to begin, I volunteered to make the Pate a Choux Strawberry Shortcakes, another multi-step cooking tour de force. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment, but I figure the more I can take on, the more I will learn. In addition to making my dough, piping it out into cream-puff shape, baking it, cooling it, then cutting open the finished puffs, I’d also need to make a vanilla pastry cream (think vanilla pudding, but better), lemon curd (think lemon pudding, but better), a strawberry sauce, and whipped cream. Plus I’d have to slice fresh strawberries and put the whole thing together in a few short hours.
Here is a shot of my cream puffs right after I removed them from the oven. Chef seemed impressed by how perfectly golden brown they were. I think she was less than impressed with my piping skills. Well, she didn’t exactly say that, but I could tell. Oh well…these came out well and I considered that to be an early victory.
My final product. I didn’t really get too much direction as far as final assembly goes…Chef D let me decide how to present the dish. I filled half of the cream puff shells with pastry cream, half with lemon curd, then I placed a half-strawberry in each shell, drizzled some of my strawberry sauce/glaze on top, and piped on a bit of whipped cream for good measure. What they lacked in presentation appeal they more than made up for in taste. If I may toot my own horn, I’ve never liked lemon curd or pastry cream until I tried my mini strawberry shortcakes…these things were awesome…and a few students told me that, too. Note: I unfortunately ran out of time and had to ‘borrow’ some whipped cream from another student.
By the way, pastry cream is a total pain in the arse to make. You start by whisking egg yolks and sugar, then flour, then you slowly add scalded cream or half-n-half. Once all of the dairy is incorporated into the sugar/yolk/flour mixture, it all goes back onto the heat until the mixture thickens and boils. The danger here is that too much mixing over heat may cause the mixture to break. Not enough mixing and you’ll get scrambled eggs or the whole thing burns. And the boiling is necessary to cook the flour taste out, so this becomes an essential step and the whole process can’t really be rushed. Personally, it’s way too finicky of a process for my taste. I guess that’s why I don’t want to be a pastry chef, but overall this was still a fun learning experience.
Here are some of the different, more traditional cream puffs that the other students prepared:
And the piece de resistance…the Paris Brest. Basically, a circular cream puff, sliced in half lengthwise and filled with an incredibly tasty praline paste:
Thankfully, our daily recipes also called for a few savory treatments for the dough. Just in time too, I was beginning to feel sick-to-my-stomach from eating nothing but sweets all day. First up, Petit Bouchees…little bite-sized cheesy cream puffs filled with a cream cheese mixture…very nice:
Next up, Savory Cream Puffs Filled with Caponata, a mixture of eggplant, celery, onions, and tomatoes, among other things. Also very nice…and again, a welcome relief from all of the sweet items.
Everyone’s creations, all lined up and ready for tasting. Dig in!
So that’s pate a choux…a pretty versatile and ingenious little creation. It can be used for all things sweet and savory (note: the basic recipe for the dough does not call for any sugar so it can really be tailor made for whatever your final product will be). You can probably make the same argument about anything that’s home-made, but there is absolutely no comparison between a store bought eclair or cream puff and what we made in class. I don’t even usually like eclairs, but I tell you, if you take the time to make your own pate a choux and pastry cream, your stress and aggravation will be rewarded.
