Pâte à Choux, Beignets

You too can choux

One of the splendid challenges about running a resort on an isolated island is the lack of commercial bakeries.

At the Bitter End Yacht club, on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, guests wake every morning to the homey, yeasty smell of fresh baked bread.

At dinner, each table is graced with a fresh baked loaf. What is leftover becomes delicate croutons for their classic Caesar salads.

In the morning, an array of pastries are piled up on the breakfast buffet.

On the very best days, the pastry assortment includes the most delectable doughnuts!

These doughnuts are tender and light, yet satisfying. They are made from an eggy dough such as Pâte à Choux.

These bakery items reminded us of what a difference a fresh baked product makes to a meal, and, of the brilliance of Pâte à Choux.

This is one of the easiest and most useful doughs to make. It is egg based which makes it puff (as in cream puff). The smells, texture and finished product make this an extremely gratifying experience.

Once you master Pâte à Choux (it includes 5 ingredients and takes less than 1/2 hour to whip up a batch of batter) the uses are unlimited!!

In this post, you’ll find the master recipe for Pâte à Choux along with information to make delectable little beignets from a sweet version of the dough. In our next post, we’ll feature a savory version of the dough — formed into a giant puff ring, which is used as the base for a tuna nicoise sandwich for a boatload! Later, there’ll be a recipe for making a savory cheese puff, perfect with cocktails.

Pâte à Choux

recipe can be doubled

1 cup water

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 tablespoon sugar (for sweet) or 1 teaspoon salt (for savory)

1 cup all-purpose flour

5 large eggs (about 1 cup), cracked and lightly beaten

Set out all of your ingredients along with a mixing bowl and pastry bag.

Bring water, butter, and sugar (for sweet) or salt (for savory) to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat, stir to melt butter.

When butter is melted, remove from heat.

Remove the pan from heat and pour flour in all at once and beat vigorously until it becomes smooth. Then beat it over medium heat until mixture pulls away from side of pan and dough forms a ball, stir a little longer until a film begins to form on the pan, this allows more of the moisture to evaporate, so the eggs will absorb more easily in the next step.

Remove from heat, transfer batter to mixing bowl and stir the batter for about a minute to cool the mixture.

Create a well in the center of the batter and dribble in 1/4 of a cup of whipped eggs at a time, beating well with wooden spoon after each addition of eggs.

The batter will get very loose with each addition, but will become smooth again as the eggs are incorporated. This is a good work out for upper arms, a standing mixer on a slow setting can be used to add the eggs.

When finished, the dough should not be runny, it should hold it’s shape when lifted with a spoon.

Use batter within 2 hours.

Beignets

One batch Pâte à Choux

2 tablespoons sugar (powder, granulated or cinnamon sugar) for dusting

4 cups vegetable oil

Good quality jam

Spoon sugar choice in a mixing bowl (or multiple bowls if you want to try multiple sugars).

Cover a plate with paper towels for draining the cooked beignets.

Pour a couple of inches of oil into a straight sided pan and heat over medium high heat.

Fill pastry bag with dough. Minus a pastry bag, one could use a heavy duty zip lock bag, fill it up and trim the corner to pipe the dough.

Put a drop of the dough into the oil and watch for it to bubble and puff to indicate the oil is ready.

Pipe about 3 inches of dough into one hand, quickly shape it into a circle and drop it into the bubbling oil.

The puffs should puff up and rotate around on their own, but if they seem to be getting too brown on one side you can flip them in the oil using a slotted spoon or spatula.

When puffed up and golden brown lift beignets out of the oil and put on plate with paper towels to absorb excess oil.

Toss the puffs in the mixing bowl with your sugar choice.

Serve with a nice jam for dipping.

The French translation for Pâte à Choux is “the pastry for forming little cabbage shapes”!

Pastry bags, mixing bowls and other baking items can be found in the Splendid Items section.

For more information on the Bitter End Yacht Club go to http://www.beyc.com/ and see other posts under roam, or roam culinary in marketofsplendor.blogspot.com.