Pate a Choux: One Recipe, Many Uses

Ah, French recipes.  I've already mentioned that French baking recipes have a reputation for being finicky and difficult in the post on souffles, but the more baking I do, the more I find that reputation to be undeserved.  It may be true for cooking but so far it hasn't held for baking.

Much like souffles, I'd always been told that pate a choux is difficult to make - if you mess up the timing, it will never turn out right!  You must measure out the ingredients exactly or it will be a disaster!  And so on and so forth...

It's all lies: pate a choux is really easy to make, and as an added bonus, you don't need any fancy equipment.  "Pate a choux" means "cabbage paste" in French, which does not sound appetizing at all.  The name comes from one of its later uses, when it takes on the shape of little cabbages: cream puffs.  Now that sounds appetizing, right?  I certainly thought so, which is why I tried making green tea cream puffs in the last entry.

From: the Steamy Kitchen's entry on pate a choux

Pate a choux is an incredibly versatile pastry.  It's the basis of cream puffs, eclairs, profiteroles, croquembouches, crullers, beignets, and gougeres.  It can be shaped into anything that doesn't require support before baking and it will puff up to two or three times its original size.  Pate a choux is fairly flavorless, which means that it can be used for either sweet or savory recipes.