Chouquettes

Sometimes I crave simplicity, and these chouquettes are just about as simple as French patisserie gets. They are light, airy puffs of choux pastry encrusted with a generous amount of pearl sugar – and that’s all there is to them.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking these are in any way second best to the more complicated choux pastries - somehow this simple recipe adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. As with palmiers, a combination of puff pastry and sugar, I find these hugely addictive. Luckily this recipe makes a very small batch so I didn’t feel too guilty about polishing off the lot in a surprisingly short amount of time!

The simplicity of making something so delicious with only one saucepan and one baking tray to wash-up at the end is also very appealing to me. This is baking in it’s most uncomplicated form, and when I’m in the mood for keeping things simple, I find chouquettes to be every bit as satisfying to make as some of the more challenging baking projects.



Things I have learnt from making chouquettes:

I couldn’t find pearl sugar (sometimes called nib sugar) in the supermarkets near me, but you can buy it from Ocado or specialist Swedish food shops such as this one. They also sell it online from baking supplies websites but they seemed much more expensive and charged postage on top of that.

These are best piped quite small, so you get a good sugar to pastry ratio. 2cm mounds are an ideal size.

Try to coat the choux pastry mounds with as much sugar as possible. To get the sugar to stick to the pastry you can brush them with water or some of the leftover beaten egg mixed with a little milk if you find you didn’t need to use all of the eggs when making the dough.



Chouquettes: makes about 15-20 small chouquettes
(Adapted from David Lebovitz’s recipe)

2 egg batch of choux pastry
Pearl sugar

• Make the choux pastry as per the instructions in my basic choux pastry recipe
• Pre-heat the oven to 200°C and prepare a large baking tray with greased parchment
• Pipe 2cm rounds of the pastry onto the baking tray, making sure you leave enough space for them to expand in the oven
• Flatten any pointy bits with a dampened finger and then brush with either water or the leftover beaten eggs mixed with a little milk
• Sprinkle a generous amount of pearl sugar over the pastry mounds and press it into the sides of the dough to get a good covering of sugar
• Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until dark golden brown and very crisp
• Chouquettes should be eaten the day they are made, although they wont last more than an hour or two if they are anywhere near me!