Chouquettes - A Tea Time Treat I Could Eat Every Day

I have risen to the challenge from Lavender and Lovage and What Kate Baked in their NEW Tea Time Treats for May!  Get FLORAL in the kitchen with Floral Flavours and Flowers - this month being hosted by Lavender and Lovage.

I've recently read "Lunch in Paris" by Elizabeth Bard - a wonderful story interspersed with recipes - I can wholeheartedly recommend it as a good read.  Last week I made Chicken and Sweet Pepper Stew from this book (which I will blog about on my other blog Jennifer's Journal) but today just had to be Chouquettes.  Elizabeth says in her book that "This was my first and most beloved Parisian breakfast".  Surprisingly this was not my first introduction to Chouquettes since I have been following the BBC2 program The Little Paris Kitchen with Rachel Khoo - aah, I loved this series and shall miss it from my Monday evenings.  Rachel Khoo made Chouquettes also and it is her recipe that I used this afternoon for mine.

The recipe is taken from Rachel's book The Little Paris Kitchen which accompanies the series and is listed under "Snack Time".

Ingredients:

125ml water

125ml milk

100g butter, cubed

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

170g strong plain flour

4 eggs

Icing sugar for dusting

100g nibbed sugar (also called pearl or hail sugar)

Chocolate chips

I didn't have any nibbed sugar so simply used icing sugar to sweeten.

To begin I preheated the oven to 180C and buttered two baking sheets which I then lined with baking parchment.

I added the water and milk to a saucepan together with the butter, sugar and salt.  Melted the butter on high heat - once melted turned heat to low and added the flour in one go.  I then proceeded to beat this until it stopped looking like a lumpy mess and turned into a ball of dough which came away from the sides of the saucepan.  Once it had reached this point I took it off the heat but still beat the dough until it was cool enough to touch.  Then I mixed in the eggs (one at a time) beat them into the dough.

Once all the eggs had been added and it had been beaten smooth again it was time to spoon onto the baking sheets using two teaspoons.  Rachel Khoo used a piping bag, but to be honest, I had run out of piping bags so had to resort to the two teaspoon method. 

I then sprinkled these little babies with icing sugar, some with chocolate drops and icing sugar and then put them into the oven for twenty minutes.  This recipe made approximately 24 chouquettes.

These are absolutely delicious straight from the oven with another sprinkling of icing sugar.  We ate them this afternoon accompanied by rose petal jam and lightly whipped cream.

With tablecloth ....



Without tablecloth .....



One of each with jam and cream .......

They will keep for several days in an airtight container.  When removed can be crisped up in a 150C oven for five minutes.

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