October 1, 2003
Chouquettes : the Recipe
Here is the recipe for chouquettes. For the whole adventure, see Chouquette Story.
The recipe is fairly simple :
1. Melt 30g (3 tablespoons) butter, 125ml (1/2 cup) water*, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt in a small saucepan. As soon as it starts to boil, take the saucepan off the heat, dump 70g (1/2 cup) flour all at once, and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough adheres to itself.
2. Transfer the dough in a bowl, let it cool down a little, then add 2 eggs one by one, mixing with your friend the wooden spoon. And voilà, pâte à choux!**
3. Using two spoons, drop little balls of dough (the size of a walnut) on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment (or, in my case, your brand new silpat sheet) making sure to space them enough so each of them can grow to be a puffy little chouquette in its own right. Sprinkle them with grains of coarse sugar (be generous, my grandmother says the stuff doesn't keep well once opened anyway and recommends sharing the rest with your baker friends). Some crystals will fall on the sheet, but that's fine.
4. Bake in a hot preheated oven (220°C [430°F] seems just right for me, but be careful, your oven is probably hotter than mine), for about 25 minutes. The chouquettes should puff up and turn golden. Resist the urge to open the door, hard as it may be, or your chouquettes will collapse. Turn off the oven and leave the chouquettes inside (door closed) for 10 agonizing minutes, before you turn them out on a rack to cool.
I got 25 chouquettes out of this recipe, which is the perfect amount for two!
* My book's recipe seemed to call for more water than the other recipes, so I reduced the amount. One website recommended to use the same volume of water as eggs in the pâte à choux, and that's what I did : my eggs weighed about 125g, so I used 125ml of water. Not sure if my math adds up, but it sounded good and it worked!
** It's this same pâte à choux recipe you want to use to make éclairs, salambos or puffs to stuff (how good does that sound?) for Saint-Honoré or Profiterolles. See how a whole new baking dimension opens up before your startled eyes? You can even make gougères, or cheese puffs, by omitting the sugar and adding grated cheese to the dough. I gotta try that!
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Comments (13)
Permalink | Posted by clotilde in Desserts & Sweets - Recipe Inside!
Oh, I have all the ingredients for this (save the coarse sugar), so I think I will make them tonight! I'm tempted to do a batch of cheese puffs and one with sugar (with a streudel topping in lieu of the coarse sugar).
Posted by Jackie on December 10, 2003 9:15 PMJackie - So glad you tried it and blogged about it!
Posted by clotilde on December 11, 2003 1:22 PMhi clotilde! and happy (belated) birthday! i have just popped my chouquettes in the oven, and am dying to see if they will puff up at all. my pâte is very runny (not walnut-sized, but coin-shaped) - we'll see. btw, after reading about trish deseine on your site, i have since found "le bonheur est dans le plat" and am saving my "loonies" for a copy of "J'en veux encore". that melted butter/chocolate confection that masquerades as a cake is just fantastic!!
take care
-kelli ann
Posted by kelli ann on August 1, 2004 9:04 PMKelli ann - So, so, so? How'd it go?
Posted by clotilde on August 6, 2004 11:02 AMoh i tried your recipe so many times, a big hit each time!!!! thanks, they are all puffy, little crispy on the top. QUE DU BONHEUR!!!
Posted by Sakinah on October 5, 2005 2:36 PMBravo pour ton blog!!!!
Clotilde,
Posted by maegan on October 11, 2005 7:09 PMI've been drooling over so many of your recipes for about a year now, and never concidered myself very talented in the kitchen. So I never attempted any of your recipes until recently, in fear that I would put them to shame.
One day I became overwhelmed with the urge to try my hand at one though. I tried your oeuf cocotte. It was a flop. I don't know what I did wrong. the egg remained raw and it remained runny throughout. I was a little disappointed but today I had my go at your chouquettes.
Well I'm wondering if you could help me out a little, here. Maybe I'm not meant to cook or bake, but I'd like to have another go at it. I'd like to check with you on if the dough. Is it supposed to be runny or, well, doughy? I found mine was really runny (leaving me with more than enough "pâte à choux soup" to make 25 blobs on my pan) and then once I put them in the oven after about 5 minutes they had puffed up a tiny bit but were turning black.
So, can you help me?
Thanks,
Maegan
Maegan - The dough for the chouquettes is supposed to be doughy, not runny. Did you measure the ingredients with a scale? As for the oeuf cocotte, did you put *hot* water in the dish to surround your ramequins? And it sounds like maybe your oven wasn't hot enough -- it may be a good idea to test its accuracy with an oven thermometer. Hope that helps a little and good luck with your future endeavors!
Posted by clotilde on October 12, 2005 8:40 AMThank you for you quick reply!
Posted by maegan on October 12, 2005 9:39 PMI did not measure using a scale, but I attempted to used you conversion page. Maybe I incorrectly converted my flour amount to a little over 1/2 a cup. Maybe I should have used more. Who knows maybe I just made a silly slipup, and didn't notice.
I shall also have to check my oven's accuracy once I get a chance. Thank you so much, and I'll let you know how it all turns out.
dear clotilde,
yesterday night i did your chouquettes and at the second try they came out perfect! let me explain my error to meagan, i'm pretty sure that most of the people who, at the end, had they dough more liquid than solid made my same mistake:
be sure to add the flour while the saucepan is still on heat and keep it there until the dough loose its liquid aspect and start to solidify.
now you can let it cool in a bowl before adding the eggs one by one.
Meagan you can be a very good cooker, the secret at the beginning is to be very sever and follow every single step of the recipe and measure everything, never adding or taking away any extra gram or ml of any ingredient.
at my first try i didn't notice this passage, i had added the flour when the melted butter-water-sugar were already in the bowl and the recipe was definitively ruined. (i actually tried to add some bicarbonate and to put the liquid dough in small cups in the oven, they just turned brown and burned in 5 minutes, there was no hope for them)
once you have your fluffy chouquettes, just cut them horizontally and fill them with fresh wiped cream, they seam to be born for that!
ciao
Clotilede, i really enjoy both the recipe and the picture of your blog.
actually i miss some pics of the key passage of the recipes, to know how a dough looks like at the end is essential, especialy for beginners like us.
vale
Posted by valentina on January 1, 2006 11:07 AMps
meagan i'm going to send you some pics of how it turned out my first and my second time, clotilde i couldn't find your mail to put you in copy.
I was just wondering if anyone knew the American measurements? The recipe sounds wonderful, but I sadly only have access to cups and measuring spoons...help?
Posted by Sarah on September 20, 2007 8:39 PMSarah - I've updated the recipe above with the American-style measurements. Happy chouquetting!
Posted by clotilde on September 21, 2007 9:20 AMHi Clotilde,
Posted by Angela on October 18, 2007 4:24 PMI tried to make your recipe of chouquettes today, but unfortunately my dough was more like a batter. After 'googling' a bit I changed the ingredients to 100cc water, 50 g butter, 75 g flour, little salt, 10 g sugar and 1 teaspoon baking powder. This worked out far better for me. I did make some nice blini-looking 'things' with the batter and with some chocolate creme inside they were really scrumptious.
After a burning failing 1st attempt, I have successfully brought out a lovely second batch!
There's a couple of things I thought that may help others -
1) - coarse sugar - i ididn't have any - but the ones sold in Paul's (sorry Clotilde!!) seem to be just small lumps of caster sugar .. so I mixed a tsp of water into 1/3 cup of sugar until small lumps form and leave it to dry out a little whilst I prepare my other ingredients. At the end I drop a small lump of this messy sugar and press the 'lump' lightly - which spreads out perfectly as small lumps!
2) I also had the problem of runny batter - but I found (by accident) - that by the time I baked the second batch with the same batter as the 1st - the batter had cooled down quite a bit and became much harder and more walnut like! So I would say give the dough a chance to cool down a fraction before making balls!
Thanks Clotilde for the wonderful recipe - before this chouquettes was one of those things that I thought only the bakers could make!
Posted by Tina on April 29, 2008 2:51 PMPrivacy. The email addresses you enter will not be used for any other purpose than the sending of this message.