Chouquettes Recipe
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Pâte à choux, which in French means “cabbage dough” because it looks like a cabbage when baked, is a versatile dough. It can be deep-fried into beignets or used to hold ice cream for profiteroles and pastry cream for éclairs. Heck, it can be filled with lobster salad for mini lobster rolls. The possibilities are endless. Here it stands alone, bedecked simply with sugar crystals.
Special equipment: If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can stir the dough with a wooden spoon. It will take a little muscle, but it’s doable—after all, that’s how they did it in the old days. A pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch tip is useful here. If you don’t have one, you can spoon round dollops of dough onto the baking sheet.
What to buy: Sucre perlé (pearl sugar) is coarse sugar crystals that hold their shape and crunch when baked. It can be purchased at the food market in some Ikea stores or online.
Game plan: Have all your ingredients and equipment (saucepan, wooden spoon, stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment) ready to go before you start. Once you begin making pâte à choux you cannot step away; the dough must be made from start to finish.
This pastry was featured as part of our Parisian Sweets photo gallery.
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces, plus more for coating the baking sheets
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the baking sheets
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 4 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature, cracked into a medium bowl
- 1 large egg white, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup pearl sugar
- Heat the oven to 400°F and arrange a rack in the middle.
- Coat two baking sheets with butter, dust each with flour, then flip and tap to remove any excess flour; set aside. Fit a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch round tip; set aside.
- Place measured butter, milk, water, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan and set over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon until the butter has melted. Increase heat to high, bring mixture to a rolling boil, then remove from heat. Add measured flour all at once and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until a dough forms, about 30 seconds. Return the saucepan to medium heat and stir constantly to remove excess moisture and cook the raw flour, about 3 minutes. (A film should form on the bottom of the saucepan.)
- Transfer the dough to a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Let sit, stirring the dough with the mixer on low speed for a few turns about every 30 seconds to release steam until the dough is slightly cooled, about 3 minutes.
- Increase the mixer speed to medium low and add the eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next. (The dough will separate each time you add an egg but will come back together.)
Mix in the egg white. Transfer the dough to the pastry bag. - Pipe the dough into 1-1/4-inch round mounds (about the size of a ping-pong ball), lifting the bag as you form them and setting them 1 inch apart on one of the baking sheets (about 24 per sheet).
Coat your finger with butter and dab each chouquette peak to smooth it out, then sprinkle the chouquettes with half of the pearl sugar. 
Bake 15 minutes without opening the oven door. Reduce the heat to 350°F and continue baking until the chouquettes are golden brown all over, about 10 minutes. - Place the baking sheet on a wire rack and immediately pierce each chouquette’s side with a paring knife to release steam. Let cool completely on the baking sheet.
- Return the oven to 400°F and repeat steps 6 and 7 with the remaining dough, baking sheet, and pearl sugar. The chouquettes are best eaten warm but are also delicious several hours after baking. Once cool, they can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature or in the freezer. Before eating, thaw frozen chouquettes and reheat in a 300°F oven until crisp again, about 5 minutes.
Excellent recipe, although the parchment paper is a good idea. Definitely worth tracking down pearl sugar for! These were so delish, my boyfriend and I ate almost the entire first bath in one sitting (and then had stomach aches)
"Nuns farts".
Argol, you're repeating a supposition popular with people who learn the New Orleans "beignet" first, then seek French antecedents. The nearest French pastry has the overall category pets de nonne or "beignets soufflés," of which the dauphine/viennois versions are normally filled (like US "jelly doughnuts" or cream-filled equivalents) -- see Larousse Gastronomique (Crown, 1961), Escoffier's _Guide Culinaire_ (specifically recipes 4375-4376), or Saint-Ange. There are spotty references to unfilled beignets soufflés, but de-emphasized to the point of novelty in France.
US writers who know French cooking have tried for many years to explain this, including Julia Child: "The French do not make our type of doughnuts, but they do use brioche dough to form various deep-fried filled sweet pastries." (_From Julia Child's Kitchen, 1975._) But whatever you call them, what I find ironic is that older US recipes for "dough nuts" (or New Orleans "beignets") all approximate what we now call a doughnut "hole," i.e. a leftover from making doughnuts, because "doughnut" came later to mean a ring shape.
New Orleans beignets are a yeast dough and are called beignets viennois or beignets dauphine in French; the Créoles just dropped the adjective. Deep fried pâte à choux is called pets de nonne or soupirs de nonne.
Looks like a great practical recipe! Historical/cultural note: As the recipe rightly noted, anyone acquainted with French cooking will know of choux pastry, one of the basics. They'll also know about beignets, but may be confused by that reference here, because the normal meaning of beignet in French cooking (in France, US, or anywhere else) is a fritter, or tempura -- something coated and then fried. French cookbooks are full of recipes. An eccentric local meaning of beignet, peculiar to New Orleans, is unkown in French cooking. It was a local stretching of the French word for fritter to label what the rest of the US called (quoting Mary Randolph of Virginia in the first widely popular US cookbook, 1824) "dough nuts" ("a yankee cake"). The ring shape for "dough nuts" was a later refinement.
I have made these the old fashioned way with the eggs beaten in without a mixer, they are delicious anyway you do them. My mother always made a cream filling of vanilla cream, but I've eaten them plain, with savoury cream sauce (ham, and mixed veggies) and with whipped cream. I never floured the baking sheet and rarely did more than a thin wipe of butter or oil, but parchment would be wonderful. I fully appreciate parchment paper since finding it!
I you made them larger and without the sugar, filling them with creamed crab or lobster bisque would be a great way to use them. Also chipped beef and gravy (just make the gravy with flour and thicker) and any other variation of meat and sauce you can think of. Tuna or egg salad would make a wonderful small bite for the buffet.
I guess it isnt sweet. i am thining of vanilla extract and sugar in the dough
I love the eggy flavor of baked choux pastry. I like this idea of unfilled puffs simply garnished with pearl sugar.
I think you could use parchment for the baking sheets, rather than butter & flour.