Cream Puff Day

What the day is

Cream Puff Day is observed on January 2. The pastry is choux: a dough cooked on the stove before it is baked, piped into rounds, and puffed hollow in the oven, then filled with whipped cream or pastry cream.

Choux is the basis of a whole family. Profiteroles are the small ones, usually served with chocolate sauce. Eclairs are the same dough piped long. Croquembouche is a tower of them glued with caramel. Gougeres are the savory version with cheese folded in.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented. The pastry's history is usually traced to sixteenth-century France and a pastry chef named Popelini, said to have come to France in the household of Catherine de' Medici, with Antonin Careme refining the technique into its modern form in the nineteenth century. The early part of that story is repeated everywhere and evidenced thinly, so it is best treated as tradition.

What makes choux unusual is the leavening. There is no yeast and no baking powder. Flour is cooked into boiling water and butter to gelatinize the starch, eggs are beaten in, and in the oven the water in the dough turns to steam and inflates each puff from the inside while the shell sets around the cavity.

How to take part

Choux has an intimidating reputation and a short list of actual failure points.

• Dry the paste properly. After adding the flour, keep stirring over heat for a minute or two until a film forms on the pan base; excess moisture makes flat puffs.
• Cool it before the eggs go in, or they scramble. Add them gradually and stop when the dough falls from the spoon in a thick V.
• Do not open the oven for the first twenty minutes. The steam holding the puff up escapes and the shells collapse.
• Pierce each puff when it comes out and return it briefly to dry the inside.
• Fill only once completely cool, and as close to serving as you can manage. A filled puff softens within hours.