High Altitude Choux Pastry (for Cream Puffs and Eclairs)
This high altitude choux pastry (pâte à choux) can be used to make homemade cream puffs, profiteroles, chocolate eclairs and churros.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- 16-inch Disposable Piping Bag (plus piping tips 2A and 6B)
Ingredients
Choux Pastry
- ½ cup whole milk
- ½ cup water
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 cup bread flour (high protein flour)
- 4 large eggs (2 oz each), room temperature
Filling
- 2x recipe Stabilized Whipped Cream
Ganache (for Eclairs)
- 3 ½ oz heavy whipping cream
- 3 oz semi sweet chocolate, finely chopped
Instructions
Getting Ready
- Preheat the oven to 375 F, and position two racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Cook the Flour Mixture
- In a saucepan, measure the milk, water, butter, sugar, vanilla and salt. Heat the mixture over medium heat until the butter is melted and the mixture comes to a boil.
- Turn the heat down to medium low and add the flour. Cook the dough, stirring with a wooden spoon, for no more than 1-3 minutes, just until the dough easily pulls away from the pan and forms a ball sort of resembling mashed potatoes. You should also see a thin film on the bottom of the pan. Immediately remove the pan from the heat. If the dough splits and becomes oily, you've cooked it too long.
- You can continue to mix the dough in the saucepan, or scrape it into a bowl, but let it cool for 2 minutes before adding the eggs. If the dough is too hot when you add the eggs, it will cook the eggs, giving the dough an overly eggy flavor.
Add the Eggs
- Crack the eggs into a liquid measuring cup and lightly beat them with a fork. You should have close to 8 liquid ounces of eggs.
- Add 1 egg to the dough (1/4 of the beaten eggs), and use your wooden spoon to stir it into the dough. The dough will seem kind of slimy at first, but after a minute the egg will mix in. Add the second egg, mixing it in, then the third egg, mixing it in.
- When you have 1 egg left, just drizzle in about 2 teaspoons at a time to mix it in gradually; you may not need to use all the egg. The dough should become much smoother at this point, and you're looking for a consistency that's smooth, thick but pipeable, and with a slight sheen. If you lift your wooden spoon out of the dough, the dough should slowly drip off the spoon in a "v" shape. This will tell you that the dough is the right consistency.If you add too much egg, your cream puffs and eclairs can deflate when they're baked, so don't add more egg than is needed. Too little egg, though, and the dough will be dense and may not puff up.
Pipe the Dough
- Fit a 16-inch disposable piping bag with tip 2A (medium round tip) for cream puffs or tip 6B (large open star tip) for eclairs. Fill the bag half full of the dough; you can refill it as needed.
- For cream puffs, hold the piping bag at a 90 degree angle above the baking sheet and pipe a smooth mound of dough. You're not piping it like the swirled frosting on a cupcake. Just hold the piping bag still, and let the dough spread out around the tip as you squeeze the bag.For small cream puffs, pipe mounds of dough measuring about 1 - 1 1/2 inches high and 1 1/2 - 2 inches wide, leaving 3 inches between each on the baking sheet. This size will yield about 30 small cream puffs. You can also pipe them larger, if preferred.
- For eclairs, pipe a line of dough measuring about 4 inches long and 1 - 1 1/2 inches wide. This will yield about 15-20 medium sized eclairs.
- I used approximately 1/3 of the dough to pipe 10 cream puffs and the other 2/3 of the dough to pipe 10 eclairs.
- Dip your finger in water, and use your moistened fingertip to press down the points on the dough so the tops of the cream puffs are smooth.
Bake
- Place the pans in the oven, and set the timer for 25 minutes. Do not open the oven until then.
- At 25 minutes, use a toothpick to prick a hole in all the puffs and eclairs, then rotate the pans and close the oven door again, doing all of this as quickly as possible so you don't let too much heat out of the oven.Pricking them allows the steam to escape from the inside so they can dry out. If you don't do this, the moisture inside can cause them to deflate.
- Bake them for another 5-15 minutes, checking them every 5 minutes until the color is a deep golden brown and they sound dry and hollow when you tap on them. If you want to be sure, you can test one by cutting it open and checking that the dough inside is no longer wet. The total baking time will be 30-40 minutes.
- Prick them again with a toothpick, then let them cool and dry out completely.
- If you can, turn off the oven, leave the oven door open, and let them dry out in the warm oven. If you're unable to leave a hot oven door open (due to small children or pets in the house), let them cool in a draft-free place.
Filling and Ganache
- When your pastry is cooled, you can fill them with stabilized whipped cream. If you like, just poke a hole in the side of the pastry, insert a piping tip, and pipe the cream into the hollow center.
- Or, cut them in half using a sharp, non-serrated knife and a gently sawing motion. Pipe a mound of whipped cream onto the bottom half, then place the top half on the whipped cream. I used tip 1M to pipe the whipped cream.
- Just before serving, lightly dust the top of the cream puffs with powdered sugar.
- Eclairs are usually topped with a chocolate glaze or chocolate ganache. To make the ganache, combine the cream and chopped chocolate in a small saucepan. Over medium low heat, heat the mixture gently, stirring with a spatula, just until the chocolate is melted and the mixture smooths out into a creamy ganache. Carefully spoon the warm ganache over the tops of the eclairs. Ganache will set and firm up in about an hour.
Notes
Freshly baked cream puffs and eclairs will have a crisp shell, but the pastry softens as they sit, especially with the cream filling. They are still just as delicious, though.
You can freeze unfilled puffs in an airtight container for up to 3-6 months. After thawing, re-crisp them in a 300-degree oven for about 5 minutes, before filling with whipped cream.
For filled cream puffs and eclairs, store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 day, or in the freezer for up to 3-6 months. Let thaw for several minutes, then eat them cold.
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