Cheese Puff (Petits Choux Au Fromage) - Choux Pastry Part 2

Continuing with my experimentation with choux pastry.Pared down to its most basic, the choux pastry is made by melting fat in liquid over heat. Flour is then added to the fatty liquid and cooked. The cooked dough is subsquently softened to the right texture with beaten eggs. Taking it from the basic recipe, so many permutations of variations can be derived - the fat can be changed from butter to liquid fat. The water can be replaced with milk or a combination of milk and water... and I wonder if anyone has worked with fruit juice. Wouldn't coconut milk make an interesting puff - I can sprinkle dessicated coconut over it and fill it with kaya cream... ooh...so many possibilities and so little time... 

For this post, I am still working with a savoury puff. A basic choux pastry made with water and butter blended with grated parmesan cheese and seasoned with pepper and nutmeg. I chose to bake this at a lower temperature for a shorter time. As a result of which, I get a rounded puff without the splitting. (Normally I prefer my puffs to split especially if I intend to fill it with cream) For this recipe, the puff is meant to be a bite-sized snack, hence a round ball would be ideal. With the lower baking temperature, the puff also turns out softer and less crusty. The Beard Papa crusty split puff is generally achieved with a higher baking temperature and longer baking time.

Geez... now the Coconut Kaya Cream Puff is beginning to feel like a really great idea...


Recipe :

Choux Pastry

All purpose flour             35g
Bread flour(high protein) 40g
Butter                            50g
Water                            125ml
Salt                                1g
Eggs                               2 beaten
Grated Parmesan Cheese 70g
Pepper & Nutmeg            to season        
Method
1.In a heavy saucepan, please water,salt, butter and bring to boil.
2.Remove the saucepan from heat and add all the flour and stir briskly with a spatula.
3.The flour will 'soak' up the the liquid and fat to form a dough. Return the saucepan with the sticky dough onto the heat source. Over gentle heat, continue to stir and cook the dough until dough develops a tackiness and leaves a thin sticky film at the bottom of the saucepan.
4. Remove dough into a blending bowl.Add beaten egg a little at a time and stir well. You will know the right consistency is achieved when the scooped batter, falls off the spatula gradually and leaves a triangle trail drooping from the spatula. (To take the guessing out of this, I used 2 60g eggs(with shell) and get what I feel is the right consistency)
5. Blend in grated parmesan cheese. Season with pepper and grated nutmeg.
6. Pipe the dough to 2cm rounds onto a baking tray laid with baking paper, leaving a 3cm gap in between each round of piped batter.
7. Bake the pastry in a 180C preheated oven for 20mins.
8. Cool the choux puffs completely.