Mmmm, gougères! So impressive, so fancy sounding, and yet so easy to put together.
Welcome to my first post as a member of French Fridays with Dorie! SO excited to be a part of this new group. Dorie selected the five recipes for October, and each one sounds delicious.
We start off with gougères. Basically, they're cheese-flavored cream puffs, but oh, they are so much more than that! Plenty of shredded cheese gets added into a savory (no sugar) pâte à choux, and the dough bakes into golden, cheesy, incredibly addictive little puffs.
The ingredients are basic - milk and water, butter, salt, flour, eggs, and, of course, cheese.
You bring the milk, water, butter and salt to a boil…
Add the flour and mix vigorously for a while… (see that film of damp flour sticking to the pot? That’s just what you’re supposed to see at this stage of the game, so don’t feel you have to scrape it back into the rest of the dough.)
Then move the dough to your mixing bowl and, one by one, incorporate the eggs.
And once the eggs are in, you mix in the cheese.
Mmmmm…cheese….
I used a blend of cheddars, in case you were wondering.
Anyway.
I only baked a dozen of these, and froze the rest of the little mounds for another time.
The smell, as they baked, was torture. The recipe should come with a “Do Not Bake on an Empty Stomach” warning.
Bill wasn’t home yet, but I summoned my kids so they could have a sample, once the gougères had cooled slightly.
Initially Alex nodded his head approvingly, but then he changed his mind for some reason. Julia didn’t like them at all.
And you know what?
That’s okay.
ALL THE MORE FOR ME!
Okay, I did save some for Bill.
Really.
~~~
Wanna join in the French Fridays with Dorie fun? Go out and get yourself a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table, and dive in!
