Revisiting: Dessert Person

it's pronounced "pat - a - shoo"

Revisiting: Dessert Person: Recipes and Guidance for Baking with Confidence by Claire Saffitz

The cool thing about both recipes I made this week is that they all came from the same base recipe, pâte à choux (pg. 346). Pâte à choux is a basic dough used to make many French baked goods, including gougères and eclairs.

Despite its intimidating name, the pâte à choux came together very quickly. It requires basic ingredients such as butter, water, flour and eggs. The steam from the water creates a puffy, hollow center. I first made the gougères (pg. 277), savory little puffs made with gruyere cheese. These were about as yummy as you’re imagining. Note: they don’t taste as good leftover, so don’t feel bad for eating as many as you can straight out of the oven.

I used the second half of the pâte à choux to make a few eclairs. This recipe is not in Dessert Person, but you can find a video of Claire making them here. I expected these to be a lot more complicated than they were. They require a bit of time since there are several components – the dough, the pastry cream (pg. 321) and the chocolate glaze – but I found them all to be simple. If you don’t mind spending an afternoon on a baking project and can handle a few extra dirty dishes, you’ll probably enjoy these! My eclairs need some work, but nothing that a little practice can’t fix! I will definitely be giving these another try soon.

Thanks for reading, sweeties! 🍎