thebigfatnoodle

Les chouquettes

David Lebovitz’s recipe for Les Chouquettes (Make a big batch of about 40-50)

1 cup (250ml) water

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

6 tablespoons (90g) unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

1 cup (135g) flour

4 large eggs, at room temperature

At least 2 cups of pearl sugar (also called crystal sugar)

Thebigfatnoodle’s tweak for the glaze

1 tablespoon of milk

1 tablespoon of sugar

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (220 degrees celsius) and line at least 2-3 baking trays.

In a saucepan, heat the butter, salt, sugar and water until the butter melts.

Empty your cup of flour into the mixture all at once and stir well until the pastry mix comes away easily from the side of the saucepan. Leave it to cool for 2 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a mixer or if you don’t have one, start beating in the eggs, one at a time, until it forms a silky, glossy batter.

Ladle about 1 teaspoon of batter onto your tray and space out each mound with at least 2 cm to spare – these puffs expand quite a lot.

Dab each mound with the milky sugar syrup and then top generously with pearl sugar.

You want to pile as much pearl sugar onto each mound as you can.

Bake these in the oven for

s Heat the water, salt, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan, stirring, until the butter is melted. Remove from heat and dump all the flour in at once. Stir rapidly until the mixture is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the pan.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes but keep an eye on them for temperature control.

Once they come out, use a skewer to punch a hole into them to allow the heat to escape – these will help make the choquettes extra crispy.

They are best eaten the day they’re baked but I quite like them the next day too when they’ve soft and really sticky from the sugar.