Gruyère Choux Buns with Mushroom Duxelle

This recipe is a great little canapé recipe, with or without the duxelle, although the duxelle helps make them more substantial. The choux recipe makes ~50 buns and the duxelle enough for around 25.

Gruyère Choux Buns

More or less a standard choux recipe with added cheese

The piped choux pastry

Ingredients

• 190ml milk
• 190ml water
• 150g unsalted butter
• 4.5g Salt
• 225g Plain flour
• 55g Gruyere Cheese, grated
• 6 eggs
• 50g Gruyere Cheese, grated

Method

1. Add the milk, water, butter and salt to a wide pan and bring to the boil, and keep there for 1 minute.
2. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 1 minute and sift in the flour.
3. Mix thoroughly and return to a medium/low heat and cook the dough gently, while stirring, for a further minute or until the dough starts sticking.
4. Remove to heat and either transfer to a stand mixer or a mixing bowl.
5. Add the first measure of cheese and mix in.
6. While mixing, add the eggs one or two at the time, mixing until smooth between each.
7. Reserve for up to 36 hours in the fridge, it may turn dark and spotted, but its still fine to eat.
8. To finish, preheat the oven to 220C and transfer the dough to a piping bag (with a ~1cm tip if you have one, otherwise cut the bag off at ~1cm width).
9. Pipe roughly dessert spoon quantities onto a baking sheet covered with oiled greaseproof (one can stick this down with blobs of dough).  The best method to do this is to start with the nozzle close to the sheet, start piping while lifting the nozzle to a height of around 3cm, then relieve pressure on the bag and jerk the nozzle up quickly, to break off the dough. Space the pipping 5cm apart at minimum.
10. With liberally wet fingers, pat and smooth the tails of dough from the top of the mounds.
11. Place small pinches of cheese on each mound.
12. Place in the oven and throw a cupful of water into the bottom of the oven.
13. After 5 minutes, open the door slightly and turn the sheet round (if your oven is uneven).
14. Cook until a mid golden. Do not under-cook or they’ll collapse!

Duxelle

Frying the duxelle

Ingredients

• 300g Chestnut Mushrooms
• 2 small onions or shallots
• 20g Butter
• Salt, pepper and Thyme
• 10ml Sherry vinegar
• 50ml White Wine or Vermouth
• 50ml Double cream

Method

1. Dice the onions fine (2mm if possible, the more consistent the better) and fry gently with the butter and thyme until translucent.
2. Meanwhile dice the mushrooms to the same size as the onions and add them.
3. Fry the whole lot over low heat until the mushrooms soften.
4. Push the mix to the sides and add the vinegar and wine and allow to mostly boil off, bringing the mix back in before it dries.

The finished duxelle

1.  Add the cream and a good grind of pepper.
2. Add ~1g of salt at first and adjust to taste. It should be slightly under seasoned hot.
3. Allow to cool

Assembly

Cut the buns in half once cooled bellow body heat and spoon in a heaped teaspoon of mixture. Serve.

Mid assembly

Banoffee eclairs

The finished product!

Every so often one feels the need to get down to some desserts,

The choux pastry

something I tend to find a little tricky. Whats better than banoffee? Eclairs!

This wasn’t really made to a recipe as such but I’ll walk through it. For the choux, I used James Martin’s recipe from his “Desserts” book which made about 10 small eclairs, I let these cool while I tackled the (salted) caramel cream.

Caramel

The caramel cooling

Caramel isn’t that hard to make (especially if one is looking to put it with cream). Start with around 150g of caster sugar with 60ml water over a medium heat, letting it bubble until it starts to colour. Wait until its going a dark golden brown (wait as long as you dare, but don’t let it burn!) and splash in around 100ml cream, whisking rapidly (DISCLAIMER: Please please be careful, this will probably spit at this point, although you should be okay, you are pouring waterery stuff into boiling sugar!). To make salted caramel, simply add salt to taste.

Caramel

cream:

The caramel cream, just a little over whipped

Whip 200ml whipping cream (if you are using a machine, stop when the mixture beings to thicken and come off the whisk in ribbons and finish by hand, this gives a muchmore repeatable and runnier cream) until soft peaks then fold in some cooled caramel.

Chocolate sauce

The chocolate sauce

Make a simple syrup with 50g sugar and 50ml water and bring to a low simmer. Add well broken up chocolate (or chocolate chips) and stir rapidly while the chocolate melts. To finish add a splash of double cream.

Assembly

Loading the inside up with bananna

Cut the cooled ecllairs lengthwise and open them slightly. Place thin slices of banana along its length and pipe in the caramel cream. Spread the chocolate sauce on top and enjoy.