Ok so if I’m craving cheese, I’d usually go all out and enjoy a cheese board, but I thought I’d try out these cute choux pastry, cheese balls commonly made with Gruyère, Emmantel or Comté and known by the French as Gougères. The dish is said to have originated in Burgundy in the 17th century, and gained its popularity all around France in the 19th century.
The French eat these savoury delights as aperitifs, or in Burgundy especially, when tasting wines (apparently the “terroir” of Burgundy wines matches quite well with gougères).
I chose to try my luck at making these nibbles, because they looked relatively simple, granted I had heard about how difficult choux pastry could be. But I like to be adventurous in the kitchen, and thus took up the challenge.
Making the choux pastry was not as hard as I expected. However, having to ensure each egg was mixed into the dough before adding the next egg, did kill my arm just a bit. Nevertheless, I powered on and after piping out the balls and pulling the golden balls out of the oven, I was quite pleased, and was even more proud when I tasted them!
In terms of presentation, I simply placed about 40 balls into a large container/dish and left my babies for everyone to enjoy. I didn’t have too many left by the end of the day and was told that I did pretty well with the choux pastry, so overall, I was pretty happy with how my gougères turned out and will 100% be making these again!
Ingredients and recipe can be found here (I did use comté instead of gruyere):
Cravings of a uni student 