Cheese Choux Nibbles

Choux pastry rings alarm bells with many people who presume it to be the domain of the professional pastry chef. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth: as pastry goes, it’s one of the simplest. It doesn’t require a light touch, cold hands or any of the other ‘special’ things that many other types of pastry do.

It uses a 2:4:8 ratio of butter, flour and water when made using imperial measurements:

2oz/56 g butter
4oz/113 g plain flour
8 UK fluid ounces/227 g water (about 7.7 US fl oz)
3 eggs, beaten
½ tsp mustard powder
½ tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
a good pinch of salt

Method

Firstly, melt the water and butter in a pan without them boiling.
Mix the flour with the salt, mustard powder and cayenne pepper.
Bring the butter mixture to a boil and immediately tip all of the flour mixture into it, stirring as you do so
Stir vigorously to mix it, and continue mixing it over a gentle heat until it forms a ball.

Add about an ounce of grated cheese – Sparkenhoe Farmhouse Red Leicester from Leicestershire Handmade Cheese is nice.
Then add the 3 eggs, one at a time, mixing each one in before adding the next; I use a handheld electric mixer to do this. You might not need all the egg, maybe only 2½.
The ‘dough’ should be loose but still able to hold a shape. The ones in the picture could have done with a little less egg.

Pipe the mix onto baking sheets covered with a ‘baking liner’ or parchment; you could do the same using a teaspoon.
Sprinkle more cheese over the top – Cheddar in this case; posh folk in big houses could use Gruyère, Parmesan or something more expensive – they won’t taste any better, but it sounds awfully posh!

Bake for about 10 mins on 200°C then prick each one with a skewer and return to the oven for about another 3 minutes until nice and brown.

This makes ‘loads and loads’- probably 120 or so; it’s cheap, and for some strange reason people are impressed. Even better is to make them fractionally larger, then, using a piping bag and small nozzle, fill them with cream cheese and chives or another filling of your choice; but that’s a lot more work.