Petits Choux au Citron

Having terribly failed at making éclairs once for my mum's birthday several years ago, I felt it was at the time to give choux pastry a go again. In preparation for a Gâteau St Honoré that I had planned to bake for the event "East meets West" back in January organised by the Edinburgh Cake Ladies, I decided to make a few choux buns filled with the traditional cream "crème chiboust" but flavoured with lemon instead of vanilla. Sadly, a nasty virus prevented me from baking the final gâteau and going to what looks like was a great event. But I'd like to share the following recipe for a few choux buns as they are not as difficult to make as I thought and very pretty and light. I turned to my trusted book, the "Larousse Gastronomique", for the recipe and was very pleased with the result.

The following ingredients will make about 15 choux of the size of a golf ball - if well-risen, that is :-)

Ingredients for the choux paste: 

• 80ml water
• 13g butter
• 1/2 tsp caster sugar
• small pinch of salt
• 30g flour
• 1 medium egg (I found that large eggs make the paste too liquid)

Heat the water, butter, sugar and salt until the butter has melted. Add the flour in one go, remove the pan from the heat and stir with a wooden spoon. Add the whisked egg and beat the mixture very hard. You really have to work on this one. Fill the paste into a piping bag or, as I did, use a sandwich bag with the corner cut off and pipe walnut-sized balls on a baking tray lined with greased baking paper. Bake in a hot oven at 200 °C for 20-25 minutes until nicely puffed up and golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Crème Chiboust: 

•          125ml full-fat milk
•          1 lemon, zested
•          1 egg, separated
•          30g caster sugar
•          3g powdered gelatine
•          15g cornflour
•          small pinch of salt

Soften the gelatine by adding 1 tsp of water to the powder. Heat the milk with the finely grated lemon zest. Using an electric mixer, whisk together the egg yolk and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the cornflour. Add the warm milk slowly while mixing and return the mixture to pan. Bring to the boil and whisk in the softened gelatine. Cook over low heat while constantly mixing with a hand-whisk until the cream starts to thicken. Take off the heat and chill for at least two hours.

Assembly

When set, fill the cream into a piping bag. Pierce small holes into the bottom of each choux bun using a chopstick. Insert the nozzle of the piping bag into the hole and fill the bun with cream. Dust with icing sugar and enjoy!

Small choux filled with lemon crème chiboust