Choux pastry

Choux pastry is a light, airy and crispy pastry perfect for profiteroles and éclairs. It is quite a simple recipe but easy to get wrong if you don't follow a tried and tested recipe closely.

I usually use a strong flour which due to its higher gluten content, I find gives crisper results than ordinary plain flour.

Ingredients
60 g of strong plain flour

50g of butter

tsp sugar

150 ml of cold water 

Method

1. First sieve your flour into a bowl ready to go , add in the sugar and set aside.
2. Then place the water together with the butter into a saucepan over a medium heat until the butter melts and it is just to the boil. Let it boil for no more than a minute or two. 
   
3. Take it off the heat and add in the flour in one go and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon until it forms a ball and comes away from the sides.
   
4. Often i put it back on the heat for a minute or so at this stage , mixing it all the time, just to ensure all the moisture is gone.
5. Take it off the heat again and let it cool.
6. Next beat 2 large eggs well, then beat them into the mixture – a little at a time, mixing each addition in thoroughly before adding the next. You may not need the two entire eggs, so watch the mixture and make sure it doesn't get too runny. 
7. Beat until you have a smooth glossy paste. If you dip your wooden spoon into the mixture and pull it out, you should see a 'V-shape' form with the pasty as it falls slowly off the spoon.
   
8. To make the choux buns, place teaspoons of the mixture on the baking sheet, leaving about 2 cm between them as they will rise and puff up.
   
9. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200°C for 20 minutes. Checking after 10 minutes. and again after 15, until the buns are crisp, light and a rich golden colour. 
10. A Note on ovens here - when I first got my fan oven I had awful issues making the profiteroles, they would be completely cooked and dried out in 10 minutes at 200°C,  I tired lower temperatures and couldn't get it right, so in the end I just used the non fan oven option on my oven and they come out perfectly again.
11. Once golden brown, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool on a wire rack.