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Choux, a La Creme
Place a tube one-third inch in diameter at the bottom of a pastry bag, then drop in the pate-a-choux and press the paste carefully down on a baking sheet, into six round cakes of equal size two inches high. Set the pan in a moderate oven and bake for twenty-five minutes, or until they obtain a golden colour. Remove from the oven and let cool off for ten minutes. Then with a keen knife make an incision at one side of the cakes. Fill the inside of each with vanilla whipped cream. Dredge them liberally with powdered sugar. Dress on a dessert dish and serve.
A straightforward cream puff, assuming you have already made the pâte à choux that the book gives elsewhere. Two things in the method need adjusting: the oven temperature and the cooling time.
- The hinge: bake hot, then dry out"Moderate oven" here reads as 350F, which is too gentle to raise choux properly. Start at 400-425F for the first 10-15 minutes to get the steam-driven lift, then drop to 350F to set and dry the shells for the remaining time. Resist opening the door during the rise.
- Golden is not doneA puff can look golden and still be damp inside, in which case it collapses on the cooling rack. Bake until the shells are firm and sound hollow when tapped; if in doubt, pierce one and give them a few more minutes in the turned-off oven.
- Ten minutes is not enough coolingWhipped cream piped into a warm shell weeps and softens the pastry within minutes. Cool the puffs completely, at least 45 minutes, and fill them no more than an hour or two before serving.
- Piping tubeA one-third-inch tube is roughly 8mm. A plain half-inch (12mm) round tip is the modern standard for choux and pipes six large puffs more easily.
- "Two inches high"The recipe specifies six round cakes of equal size, two inches high. Whether "high" describes the height of the piped mound or is being used loosely for its width is not clear from the text; piped choux two inches tall would be unusual. Pipe six well-spaced mounds of equal size and expect considerable expansion in the oven.
- Vanilla whipped creamCrème Chantilly: heavy cream whipped with a spoonful or two of sugar and vanilla per cup. Whip to firm peaks rather than soft, or it will run out of the incision.
- Yield and servingSix generous puffs, one per person as a dessert. The recipe dredges the sugar before dressing the dish; dusting at the table instead keeps the sugar from dampening on the shells while they stand.
Choux à la crème are a sibling form of the éclair, the profiterole and the gougère, all built on pâte à choux — a paste cooked on the stove, beaten with eggs, and leavened by nothing but its own steam. The name means "cabbage," said by tradition to describe the puckered look of the baked mounds, and the pastry is often traced — on thin evidence — to the sixteenth-century Italian cooks who came to France in the Medici train, then codified by nineteenth-century French pâtissiers. Its appearance in an "international" collection is characteristic of the genre: such books sold themselves on French technique presented in plain English, and choux was the ideal showpiece — no special equipment beyond a pastry bag, no proving, and a result that looked far more laborious than it was.