Choux pastry is a French patisserie classic. From profiteroles and eclairs, to savoury puffs and showstoppers like croquembouche, it’s a versatile pastry.
Choux is made from very few ingredients, but like many other pastries and doughs, there’s precision required to getting the best results. It has an unfair reputation for being difficult to make, but we’ll help you master making it with your Kenwood stand mixer in no time at all.
Our foolproof choux pastry recipe below can be used as a base, leaving you to be creative with piping different shapes and adding any flavour cream or toppings once the pastry has cooled.
Once you’ve learnt the basics, we’ll share some of our favourite choux pastry recipes for you to try making at home.
The 5 key ingredients
Choux pastry is an oddity in the baking world. With just 5 ingredients, when it is cooked, the pastry sits somewhere between a dough and a batter. And once baked, it forms a light, airy and crisp shell.
Here’s the 5 key ingredients you need to make choux pastry: Water Butter Plain flour Eggs Salt
With choux, butter gives the pastry a rich feel and flavour, whilst water makes the dough flexible. Flour provides structure and eggs give extra moisture and makes the dough more flexible and able to expand.
Why use a stand mixer to make choux pastry?
With choux pastry, using a stand mixer makes your bake much less labour intensive and ensures that the key ingredients are mixed together well.
Using a stand mixer to mix the eggs in will help to create that glossy paste in no time at all. The mixture needs to be well combined, so would use a lot of arm power if doing it by hand!
This recipe uses the Cooking Chef XL kitchen machine. You can take a look at our video for using the preset function on your mixer for using choux pastry to make croquembouche:
How to make choux pastry
Preparing ahead
Our basic choux pastry recipe takes around 40 mins to make and makes around 8 eclairs or 18 profiteroles, depending on size.
The ingredients you’ll need are:
Water – 250g (about 1 cup) Butter 100g (about ½ cup) Plain flour 150g (about 1 ¼ cups) Eggs – 4 (about 200g) Salt – 1 pinch
Tools: Parchment paper Wooden spoon Cooking Chef XL Baking sheet 18 x 13” Saucepan Kenwood bowl (Kenwood Chef)
You can get ahead by measuring all the ingredients listed above and preparing your baking area.
Step one
Add the water, milk, butter and salt into the mixing bowl, with the creaming beater attached. Set the temperature to 105°C and select stir speed 1.
Step two
When the mixture starts to boil, add the flour. Increase the speed to 3 and continue to mix for about 2 minutes. Set the temperature to ‘OFF’, mix on speed 1 until the mixture cools slightly.
Step three
Once cooled increase the speed to 3 and gradually add the eggs to the mixing bowl. Mix until the egg is fully incorporated. The mixture should be thick and glossy.
Step four
Place the mixture into a piping bag.
Step five
Pre-heat the oven to 220°C and line a clean baking sheet with parchment paper.
Pipe out the choux pastry paste into your chosen shape (eclairs, puffs etc). Use a wet finger or fork to smooth over any peeks on the surface.
Step six
Bake your choux pastry for 10 min at 220°C.
Then remove the tray from the oven and turn each pastry over, inserting a skewer into the base to allow steam to escape.
Reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for a further 15 minutes. Then let your creations cool entirely on a round wire rack before adding toppings and fillings.
Why not try…
Now that you’ve perfected your simple choux, why not try your hand making profiteroles or eclairs.
Try impressing your guests with our delicious profiterolesrecipe for dessert or simply pipe the choux into a longer shape for eclairs. Put your own spin on the recipe too, by trying different flavoured creams and toppings!
And if you’re feeling adventurous, why not try croquembouche – a tower of cream-filled choux buns, bound together with sugar caramel.
