Name : Dimas Tirta

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I adore making choux pastry! I could make it with my eyes closed. OK, maybe not quite, but
I’ve made it hundreds upon hundreds of times over many years, it’s pretty much muscle
memory for me by now.
Choux pastry is a very simple dough, and the fact that these chouquettes don’t even need a
filling means that these babies can enter my gullet after being baked that much sooner.
I have a separate post on all the basics of choux pastry, with plenty of troubleshooting tips.
You can use that recipe and guide to get perfect results for your choux pastry too.
HERE’S JUST A QUICK RUN DOWN OF THE CHOUX PASTRY RECIPE
Melt the butter and milk in a saucepan, along with a pinch of salt and sugar. Bring the
mixture to a boil.
Add the flour (off heat), and stir to form a dough. You will need to cook it for a few minutes
to get the right consistency.
Let it cool and then add the eggs (a little, or one egg at a time), just until you get the correct,
pipeable consistency.
Store any unused pastry dough in a piping bag, or ziploc bag to prevent the dough from
being exposed to air and forming a skin. You can also store the dough in an air-tight
container, as long as you place a plastic wrap over it, touching the surface.
It’s very easy to make choux pastry, if you know what to look for at each step. If you’re new
to making choux, I highly recommend reading my in-depth post on it.
Make sure to line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. The sugar pearls
that are on the tray will melt and caramelize, so a lined pan is easier to clean.

Swedish pearl sugar

Pearl sugar is compressed sugar crystals, formed into large pieces. The large, round-ish
particles don’t melt inside baked goods, and retain a nice crunch.
Pearl sugar usually comes in two sizes.
Swedish pearl sugar – smaller compressed sugar particles.
Belgian pearl sugar – larger compressed sugar particles.
For chouquettes, the smaller pearl sugar (Swedish pearl sugar) is used, because the
chouquettes are small themselves. You can have more of the smaller pearl sugar covering a
surface area (compared to the larger ones), resulting in a more crunchy texture in the final
baked product.
Belgian pearl sugar is used for Belgian waffles. These larger sugar pearls have a bigger
crunch, and hide well in larger “baked” goods; like the thick liege waffle.
Swedish pearl sugar

BAKING CHOUQUETTES
If you’ve made profiteroles before, then these will be easy.
I prefer to make chouquettes slightly smaller than the profiteroles that I usually make. So that
these will be bite-sized desserts that can easily be popped in to your mouth. They will also
bake faster.
Once you’ve piped the choux pastry on a tray, keep the remaining choux pastry in the piping
bag.
Generously sprinkle the tops of the choux pastry with Swedish sugar pearls. It’s
important that they’re sprinkled with pearl sugar densely, because as the pastry bakes and
expands, the sugar pearls will spread out as well.

Once the chouquettes are baked, let them cool down to room temperature. And then
devour them immediately!
These are perfect just the way they are. Cue the Bruno Mars song…

TIPS FOR PERFECTING THIS RECIPE

Make sure you get the choux pastry dough right. Pipeable but not runny consistency, and
glossy. All the tips and secrets for that are in this post here.
Get the size of the chouquettes right. Piping them at the appropriate size might take some
practice, but it’s easy. You can watch the video here to see how I pipe consistent shapes (I
count up to 2 when piping these chouquettes).

When piping, keep the tip just below the surface to avoid poop emoji shapes. 🙂 Then flatten
the tip with a little water to prevent them form burning.
Sprinkle with pearl sugar generously. There will invariably be some extra pearl sugar that
end up on the baking sheet instead.
Since these are smaller pastries, I prefer to bake them at one specific temperature. So no
changing temperatures halfway through the baking process.
Allow the pastries to get some color during the baking process. If you take them out while
they are only a light golden color, the insides might not have dried enough, and this can lead
to collapsed and flat chouquettes.
Don’t forget to prick the cases to allow excess air to flow out of the hot pastry puffs. This
also prevents the pastries from collapsing or getting soggy.
The insides of your chouquettes should be airy, soft, and custard-like, with a crisp shell on
the outside. If you find that the insides are raw, then consider these possibilities,
Was the dough pipeable, or was it hard to pipe (too thick)? If so, the pastry wasn’t light
enough to expand and the insides remained raw.
Did you pipe larger choux patries? If so, you will need to increase the baking time to cook the
insides through.
Still raw? Maybe your oven runs a little hotter, and you may need to reduce the temperature
slightly to get the pastries to bake all the way through.

HOW DO I SERVE THESE CHOUQUETTES?

They can be served just the way they are.
The soft, milky interior, and crisp outer pastry shell are delicious, but the crunchy sugar
pearls put these babies over the top!
But if you’d really like to, you can fill these with a little whipped cream for an upgraded
version of cream puffs (French cream puffs).
HOW TO UPGRADE THIS CHOUQUETTES RECIPE
THIS is the fun part!

You can easily upgrade these chouquettes with some simple changes.
Brown butter chouquettes – replace the butter with browned butter to give these a lovely
flavor boost.
Or add some lemon extract to the dough to turn these into lemon chouquettes.
Scrape some fresh vanilla (or use good quality vanilla extract) to make these chouquettes
very vanilla forward.
Sprinkle some sea salt flakes along with the pearl sugar for a sweet and salty treat.
Fill the chouquettes with whipped cream for French cream puffs, or you can opt for a pastry
cream (vanilla or chocolate) if you like too.