Chouquettes

Rachel Khoo's The Little Paris Kitchen has become my new addiction. I find it immensely enjoyable to watch her cooking show not just because she's pretty and has a great sense in style, she also makes cooking look so easy and fun and completely breaks that cliche of French food being complicated. On top of that all, she has lived out my dream of living in France, cooking, hitting the nearby markets for fresh produce and of course, bargaining in French fluently! ;p

In one of her episodes, she made chouquettes. Chouquette is actually pastry puff, rich egg flavour and pillowy texture. They are usually covered with nipped sugar then baked until golden-brown. Since I could not find nipped sugar anywhere in Hong Kong (if you could, please let me know!), as a chocolate-lover, very naturally I added chocolate chips to my cute little chouquettes! I also added grated Gruyere to some, making them what the French called- Gougères (Cheese Puffs).

These chouquettes are so easy to make, out of ingredients you are very likely to already have in stock! Milk, butter, flour and eggs. They are such sweet devils, so delicious, so alluring, so easy to pop into your mouth, and before you even realize it, you're already eating the 8th piece!

Chouquettes
(servings: 25 bite-sized puffs)
Ingredients
- 85ml of water,
- 85ml of milk,
- 50g of butter,
- 85g of plain flour,
- 2 eggs,
- 1/2 teaspoon of caster sugar,
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt, icing sugar for dusting,
-  a handful of chocolate chips/ grated Gruyere (optional)

Preparation

1. In a bowl, mix in the flour, caster sugar and salt.
2. In a saucepan, heat the water, milk and butter over medium heat. Turn off the heat when the butter has melted.

3. Pour into the saucepan the flour mixture. Then mix, mix, mix! Rest assured, it will be lumpy and look like mashed potato at first. Keep mixing until it forms a smooth dough.

4. Transfer the dough into another bowl and stir it a little bit to cool it down.

5. Make sure the dough is cool enough to touch before you add the eggs one by one to avoid scrambling them. Incorporate one egg into the dough. It will look like it is curdling, but don't worry, keep going. As Rachel Khoo said, "If it looks like it's going wrong, you're actually on the right track." :) Once it seems to look right and smooth, add in another egg and mix until it forms a smooth paste.

6. Preheat the oven up to 200C.

7. Have your baking pan ready, covered with baking sheet. 

8. Put your paste into a piping bag. Cut the tip and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze and then you flick! See the little peak up there?

9. Dust the chouquettes with icing sugar then add chocolate chips on top. Dust again with icing sugar then they're ready to go! 

10. Alternatively, sprinkle salt and grated Gruyere on top for a savory version.

11. Pop them into the oven and bake for at least 25 minutes to make sure they are golden-brown and completely cooked. Otherwise the chouquettes will collapse very quickly, not puffy anymore.