Choux pastry (pronounced as "shoe") is a light pastry dough used to make profiteroles, eclairs, croquembouches, French crullers etc. It contains only water, butter, sugar and eggs. Its raising agent is the high moisture content, which creates steam during cooking, puffing out the pastry. -courtesy of Wikipedia.
Choux pastry is really a versatile thing. Once you know it, you can use it to make a dozen different products. In basic patisserie, we make the 3 most common choux products: profiteroles, eclairs and paris brest. Today, I present you with the profiteroles.
Profiteroles. This little ball-shaped pastry is a wonderball. Make a few hundred of these and you can use it to make this magnificent, super-popular, Italian wedding cake, croquembouche. A good sized croquembouche would need about 300 of these little darlings. Or you can use it to make a St. Honore gateau. Cool or what. haha.
To make a choux pastry, we must first make a panade, which is gelatinised starch containing water, flour, butter, sugar and salt. Then we add the eggs to adjust its consistency before piping them onto the baking trays. While baking, never never! open the oven door. Or at least wait for about 15mins for the structure of the profiteroles to set first before taking a peep to see if it is cooked. Open the door too soon, your profiteroles will just loose its steam and flatten out into god-knows-whats. So, please do take note.
Chef Keith and Chef Angelo went so far as to plate the profiteroles with piped chantilly for us. Profiteroles dusted with icing sugar, profiteroles with spun sugar, profiteroles with melted couverture and profiteroles with raspberry coulis. They were really enthusiastic this morning. Must be the caffeine huh?
I call them little wonderballs. You can use them as croutons for soups and salads as well.
My version of wonderballs. :D And I think I did them right. A little cracking on the top is desirable. Chef says it gives more character.
Me and mini-me. :)
End.
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