A Real Cream Puff
Appreciating classic choux pastry for what it is
Issue 57: From Dana
When I was a kid, I didn’t have a clue what choux pastry was—the egg-enriched dough that gives eclairs, cheesy gougères and other classic French baked goods their moist, airy-pocketed pastry—but my mom made it all the time when she whipped up her famous cream puffs.
She made them for every special occasion that drew a crowd: birthday parties, graduations, christenings, all the holidays. They were golden golf ball-sized puffs, the tops sliced off and the hollow center filled with vanilla pudding spiked with brandy. Sometimes she drizzled them with melted chocolate, but mostly they were showered with powdered sugar, and we all loved them so much and ate so many of them at these parties, we were constantly brushing sugar off our shirts.
My mom didn’t call it choux pastry, either, because the recipe she followed (out of a 1970s printing of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, see above) didn’t identify it for what it was. But she knew the cream puff batter was finicky and not like any other she made, and so she followed the recipe carefully and to a tee.