Basically these are nice bite-size cheese puffs made from a pate a choux (forgive my French, I'm way too lazy to put in appropriate symbols). What's a pate a choux, you ask? I barely know myself. It's the pastry that you use for cream puffs and eclairs and such. Which means I've made it before. With mixed success. However, I've been binge watching the Great British Baking Show on Netflix so I've watched it get made a bunch of times and now have a much better idea of what to do. Maybe. Ok, not really. But off we go anyway!
Step 1: preheat oven. Check. I'm doing so well already. Next I had to combine butter, water, and salt into a 2-4 qt saucepan. I literally have 2, 3, and 4 qt saucepans and stood motionless in my kitchen for a solid 5 minutes debating which one to use. I opted for the 3 qt because I was only combining a cup of water and a stick of butter and then adding a cup of flour to it later. Plus I never get to use my 3 qt pan so this was a new and exciting adventure. I brought it up to a boil as directed and then took it off the heat to IMMEDIATELY! add a cup of flour and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until it resembled mashed potatoes. Ooof, need to work on my arm muscles. After a couple minutes, it actually did start to resemble mashed potatoes! I swear it even started to smell like mashed potatoes. Then I had to return it to medium-low heat and stir for 3-5 minutes until the dough "smells nutty, glistens, and dries out enough to hold up a spoon". Disaster.
At first it seemed like the dough would never dry out and I got worried that the heat was too low. Then I worried that I was stirring too fast (or maybe too slow?) and was experimenting with different speeds. And actually, at about 5 minutes, the dough was glistening and smelled nutty and looked drier. But it couldn't support a spoon. That said, I suspect that in the 3 qt pan, it never would have supported a spoon because the base was too wide. So I kept stirring a little over the 5 minutes and I swear, at 6 minutes precisely, the dough just died. It somehow seemed to be getting worse! It looked to me like all of the butter was now seeping out of the dough from overmixing. I had no idea if it could be saved. I took it off the heat, I tried stirring it slowly to try to reincorporate the butter, I prayed to the baking gods, I stared at my pot...and I threw out the dough. Failure.
Don't get despondent yet! I'm determined to succeed!
So I just started again. This time, in the 2 qt pan and with a shorter wooden spoon so I could get better leverage. And with timers so I didn't go one second over that 5 minute mark. And ya know what? It worked! I'm really proud of myself for trying again. I moved the dough to the mixer where I was supposed to mix for about 1 minute until the dough stopped steaming. After a minute the dough was still steaming and I started panicking again. But the next step was adding eggs and I really didn't want scrambled eggs. I let it mix a tiny bit longer and then added the eggs one at a time as directed. The recipe was a little bit weird in that it said some days I might need 3 eggs and some days I might need 4 and to check it by seeing if the dough makes a V when I lift it with a spatula. Ooooook. I did get a little worried after the second egg because I felt like the dough was doing the opposite of incorporating the egg and was splitting apart instead. But I upped the speed just a bit and it all came back together. By the way, I did need all 4 eggs.
Next I had to mix in the cheese. I decided to make half with Gruyere and half with Parmesan. I eyeballed dividing up the dough and mixed in the Gruyere first. I was pretty amazed how well the shredded Gruyere incorporated into the dough. It was a super smooth dough. Finally, I had to scoop out 12 Gruyere balls from my dough. They seemed a little bit big and definitely sticky and I ended up with 15 instead of 12. I think in the future I'll make them smaller but I didn't want to work with 3 baking pans this time. Then I mixed up my Parmesan gougeres and got about 9 out of that. Again, bigger than I wanted but I couldn't stand the thought of 2 batches.
Apparently the key to baking these is a high heat initially then longer on a lower heat. I'm going to come out and say this now: I do not think my oven is baking at correct temperatures. I keep meaning to get an oven thermometer and check but I haven't gotten around to it. And with pastry, you really do want to be correct. So into the oven they went at 450 for 5 minutes. I'm not sure if this step was supposed to brown them or not but they didn't really get very brown. Then the directions said to reduce the heat to 350 and bake until puffed, deep golden brown, and dry to the touch. For some reason, I thought I had to take them out of the oven and wait for the oven to come down to 350 before continuing to bake them. I have no idea why I thought this. It's not like the recipe said to take them out. I've literally never done that before for anything I've ever baked. I can only claim temporary insanity that lasted approximately 3 minutes before I yelled in my kitchen "WHAT AM I DOING?!?!" and threw them back in the oven. So umm, that happened.
At the end of the day, they needed a bit longer in the oven and didn't get quite as deep golden brown as I would have liked but they were done and they were delicious. Little puffy heavenly bites.
The more neatly rounded ones are the Parmesan and the messy ones are the Gruyere but I actually really like the nooks and crannies of the messy ones. Plus I think I like the taste of the Gruyere better.
Overall, definitely some user error in this recipe but live and learn and now I have a bunch of these in my fridge and freezer to enjoy with tea! Yum! I'll take any other suggestions people have for afternoon tea snacks by the way, and encourage you to institute your own personal afternoon tea time!
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