If the choux fits: the secrets of perfect profiteroles

Choux pastry can inspire fear in even the most confident of cooks. There’s a good reason for it: it’s difficult to give a very precise recipe for choux pastry, as the amount of egg needed to create the correct texture depends on the flour you’ve used, how long the choux has rested, and how fast and how thoroughly you have cooked the choux mixture out. It’s the water content in the egg that primarily causes the choux to rise and puff in the oven into those distinctive domes or elegant eclairs: not enough and they will fall flat, but too much and the pastry will be too sloppy to pipe properly. It’s the Goldilocks of pastry recipes.

I am not unfamiliar with choux-dread. One of the first dishes I ever cooked was profiteroles, following the recipe from the First Cookery Book that I had been given for my sixth birthday. Mum and I did our best, but our choux was burnt and unpuffed, shrivelled and prune-like.