Friday, October 1, 2010

FFwD - Gougeres


Welcome to the very first of French Fridays with Dorie (or FFwD)! Thanks to Laurie for setting up this new group. You can find out more about FFwD (and join yourself!) here. We will be cooking from Dorie's new book, Around My French Table.


This month, Dorie herself has chosen the recipes. First up, she logically chose the first recipe in the book - gougeres, or cheese puffs. Gougeres are a savoury choux pastry, similar to profiterole dough. Because it is an authentic French cheese, I used Gruyere in my cheese puffs. It was certainly on the pricey side, but at least I can say that I have tried it. I also flavoured half of my gougeres with pink peppercorns, because I saw this done on another blog, and I had had unused pink peppercorns in the cupboard for ages. I liked the addition of the peppercorns - the pepper and the cheese went well together, and had a bit more zing.



Unfortunately, my gougeres weren't particularly puffy. I put this down to two things - first, after the addition of five eggs, I had a very sloppy dough that couldn't be spooned out, so I added extra flour; second, my oven tends not to be as hot as it should be, as I found that when I baked the second batch at a higher temperature (ie without turning the oven down from 425F or gas mark 7), they puffed much better.



Regardless, the end result tasted delicious - although my gougeres were fairly flat, they were like pleasant cheese biscuits, and they quickly disappeared at work.



To check out how the other members of FFwD went with their gougeres, check out the
FFwD blogroll.

15 comments:

Tammy said...

I think you are right, the hot oven is quite important. I actually halved the mixture and only used 2 eggs, so my mix wasnt quite as eggy

Hindy said...

As long as they were tasty, that's what counts. I love that you added peppercorns.

Anonymous said...

I bet these tasted wonderful - Gruyere and pink peppercorns sounds delicious!

Gloria Baker said...

These look really yummy dear Cakelaw, x gloria

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

hehe Cakelaw I made gougeres the other day too! Great minds think alike :P

Nutmeg Nanny said...

They look tasty to me! I would gladly eat one...or two :)

Trevor Sis Boom said...

I adore peppercorns and didn't think of that for my effort. Did you add more cheese? I have heard that will make for a flat gougeres as well.

Trevor Sis. Boom.

Finla said...

Pity it didn't puffed up after spending the money for the good cheese, still it must have tasted good.

Johanna GGG said...

will be great if some of the group's baking is savoury - Dorie's baking always sounds wonderful so this should be an interesting group - I'll just continue to lurk but enjoy watching

Unknown said...

I really want to learn to make choux pastry so I can make gorgeous things like gougeres and eclairs and stuff.
Have a fabulous weekend daaaaaahling!
*kisses* HH

Ivy said...

Must be great with gruyeres.

natalia said...

Now I want to try them again with pink peppercorn which I particularly like !

TeaLady said...

Great idea to add the Pink Peppercorns. They look just right to me.

This is going to be fun cooking from AMFT.

Conor @ Hold the Beef said...

Ooh, I am not heightist, I'd love to help these quickly disappear.

AmyRuth said...

clap clap clap for you. Your gougeres look perfectly wonderful. Even if you oven is unreliable in its temperature. Way to go
AmyRuth