A gathering of the clan: meet the cream puff family

The elders are hundreds of years old and the kids are young and sassy — they’re all worth a bake

Top image photo credit: Dina Belenko Photography via Getty

Hello! Hello!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been living in CreamPuffLand, thinking about, dreaming about, writing about and making dozens of cream puffs, éclairs, gougères and something that for now is “Top Secret,” which means I haven’t gotten it right yet. Pâte à choux, the dough you use to make puffs and company, is what the members of Playing Around // xoxoDorie are riffing on this month, and so I’ve been going deep on it.

Here's what I learned — you can go deep, you can go wide, but you can’t cover it all! Pâte à choux seems infinitely variable and it’s been that way for more than half a millennium.

When the dough was first made, it was called “pâte à chaud,” or hot (chaud) dough, because unlike all other doughs, it was cooked and then baked. Can you think of another dough that’s worked like that? I can’t — except maybe bagels, which are boiled and then baked — but I don’t think that’s really the same, do you?

Over the centurie…