Also known as cream puffs, choux pastry has to be one of my favorites, especially when filled with rich mousse. These however, I did not make for that purpose.
Some time ago, for a reason I can not now remember, I picked these up for my children. What was I thinking? Frozen eggs?! *shudder* Anyway, with the inexplicable bad taste of youth that inevitable prefers food out of a box to lovingly hand crafted dishes, they loved them. Since then, I have been trying to find a home-made option that will satisfy my little ones. Now, I am a very fond parent, and I love baking, but croissants go above and beyond what I am willing to do. I have made them from scratch, and perhaps now that I have a kitchen larger than a closet and am no longer having to use the top of a hot water heater as counter space, I might try them again, but make them on a weekly basis I will not.
Biscuits would be sensible and traditional, but my children find them too dry for breakfast sandwiches. I had despaired and taken to buying the cursed frozen egg things at Costco from time to time as a treat. Then one day it hit me. Choux! If you have never made choux, you are in for a treat. It is a pastry that begins from a roux, can you think of anything more decadent? I think of the dough as essence of cream sauce. This is my recipe from my trusty old Better Homes and Garden red book.
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup water
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1 cup flour
- 4 eggs
Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, add water and salt and bring to a boil. Add all the flour at once and mix vigorously. Continue to stir until the mixture forms a ball. Cool for 10 minutes and then add eggs one at a time, beating until smooth. You can drop spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet as this recipe calls for, or for a more finished look, pipe the dough onto a silpat. Bake at 400 degrees for 30-35 minutes. The outsides will be golden and crispy/flaky, and the inside, just a little doughy. I prefer to turn down the oven after 20 minutes to get the insides just a little dryer. You can remove the doughy parts before filling. These make a great sandwich bread for chicken salad, or you can fill them with custard, pudding or mousse.
Aren’t they pretty? They freeze well too. Unfortunately the kids only give these a “B.” And I’ve had no requests for breakfast sandwiches since I started serving them. Guess I’ll keep looking… Angel Yeast Biscuits might work…
Another good post, and how unlucky. Back home I would nlmarloy be someone who eats a lot of bread but here, well I just don’t like most of the stuff that’s out there (with honourable exceptions to the rye bread you can buy at Costco and the bagels in Homeplus). No matter how much I try I do not like it! I keep telling my wife how I think she will be eating more bread and sandwiches when we move to England and she always tells me “I don’t like bread!!”, which I find odd because she hasn’t really tried the good stuff. I still find it weird when Koreans change food to make it fit into what Koreans like because it completely changes it from what makes it good in the first place! I doubt the bakeries in France that Koreans train in teach them to make sweet white bread