Pate à choux
Pate à choux: the building block of a town
My mother-in-law has a house in the middle of nowhere France. It is beautiful, but there is nothing. A train station, a tiny grocery store, a bakery, and two hairdressers – TWO! – make up the whole place The bakery is the busiest place in town with a line sometimes out the door and down the street. It isn’t fancy and often, their display cases are almost empty. What they do have, however, is delicious. There are a few tarts, the occasional mini pizza, Nutella stuffed doughnuts, and lots of pate à choux concoctions. The last of these is the base of these amazing pate à choux with pumpkin ice cream and chocolate ganache.
Pate à choux is a versatile pastry
Pate à choux is what we normally call cream puff pastry in the US. In France, it can be used to make a giant cream puff tower stuffed with flavored pastry cream. Hardened caramel holds all of the cream puffs together. It is a good test of the health of your teeth, but it is amazing and generally reserved for special occasions. There are also eclairs and something called a religieuse – a nun. A religieuse is a small cream puff stacked onto a bigger cream puff, like a rotund religious. They are both filled with pastry cream and topped with a little frosting. Pate à choux is super versatile and once you learn to make it, the possibilities are endless.
The pate à choux basics
There aren’t a lot of variations in pate à choux recipes. They are very basic: flour, butter, a tiny bit of sugar, salt, water, and eggs. The butter, sugar, salt, and water come to a boil over medium high heat. Once it is at temperature, you remove it, quickly stir in the flour and return it to the heat. Over the course of the next 2-3 minutes, you stir, stir, stir, until everything comes together in a ball in the pan.
We’re almost there!
Transfer the dough to a bowl to cool it down just a bit – about 3 minutes. Add the eggs to the cooled dough, one at a time. Fully incorporate each egg before adding the next. And voilà! You have the basis of lots of seemingly fancy recipes.
Pate à choux: so many ideas
I have used pate à choux a few different ways. I have stuffed them with ice cream and I have also made a very time consuming cake, the Paris Brest. For this recipe, I filled them with some of my no-churn pumpkin ice cream and topped them with chocolate ganache.
But wait! There’s chocolate ganache, too
Chocolate ganache is like really fancy chocolate syrup. Happily, it is fancy, but not difficult. Melt the chocolate by pouring hot heavy cream over it. You can spoon it over cakes, dip cookies in it, or just eat it out of the jar. Uh…I mean, who would do that?
Pate à choux, no churn pumpkin ice cream, and chocolate ganache: a really special dessert that anyone can manage!
If you enjoy this recipe and feel moved to make a small donation – like $3! – I would very much appreciate your visiting my ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/goodenoughkitchen
Pate à choux
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup flour
- 5 eggs 4 eggs in the dough, 1 for egg wash
Chocolate Ganache
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 8 oz semisweet chocolate
No Churn Pumpkin Ice Cream
- Recipe link in notes below
Instructions
- Cut the butter into tablespoon sizes.
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Add the butter, sugar, salt, and water to a deep, heavy saucepan.
- Cook over medium high heat until the mixture begins to boil. Immediately remove the pan from the heat once the boiling begins.
- Add the flour into the mixture and stir quickly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula until complete incorporated.
- Return to the heat and stir constantly until the mixture becomes a ball, about 2-3 minutes. It will leave a film in the pan.
- Pour the dough into a bowl and let it cool slightly for about 3 minutes.
- Make sure the four eggs are nearby. You will add them one at a time.
- Add each egg, one at a time. Stir one egg until completely combined before adding the next egg.
- When all of the eggs are mixed in, place the dough in a piping bag with a round tip. You can use a Ziploc with the corner cut off if necessary, but it won't be as neat.
- Squeeze out the dough in a circle. I made mine in a spiral, but you can also just push the dough straight out. You can make them as large as you would like. Mine were about 1 inch in diameter.
- Wet your finger and
- Bake the pastry at 425 degrees until it starts to puff up and become golden, about 10 minutes.
- Lower the temperature to 375 degrees and bake until fully puffed and golden, about 30 minutes.
- Let the pastry cool completely before filling it.
- Make the chocolate ganache.
- Chop the chocolate and put it in a heatproof bowl.
- Heat the heavy cream in a heavy saucepan over medium high heat. DO NOT LET IT BOIL. The cream is ready when steam rises from the surface and small bubbles appear around the edges.
- Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate and let it sit.
- The cream will begin to melt the chocolate. When it all starts to look melty – about 3 minutes – stir it all together with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula.
- Make sure all of the chocolate is combined.
- Assemble your dessert by cutting the pastry horizontally. Fill with about 2 tbsp of ice cream. Place the top part of the pate à choux you cut on top like a cap. Drizzle with the chocolate ganache.
