Gougères

New Year's Eve is coming up and I was hoping to try my hand at a new appetizer that I have not made before. After looking through my stack(s) of untried recipes, I settled on Gougères, which are like savory and cheesy cream puffs. These taste good when they are cool but I think they taste better warm from the oven so I would plan to put them in the oven about 25 minutes before your target eating time. When I bake them again for New Year's Eve I'm going to add 2 teaspoons of a chopped, fresh herb like thyme, rosemary, or chives to make them extra yummy. Happy New Year!

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

½ cup milk

½ cup water

½ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

4 large eggs

1 cup Gruyère cheese, finely grated

Kosher salt or coarse sea salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Measure the flour and set aside. In a medium saucepan combine the milk, water, salt, and butter and bring it to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Add the flour all at once and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a dough-like consistency. (This happens rather quickly.) Continue to cook and stir for about 1 minute more to eliminate excess moisture. Transfer the dough to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until you no longer see steam rising from the bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, beating the mixture into a smooth dough between each addition. Beat in 2/3 cup of the cheese and set the rest aside for garnish. Drop walnut-sized spoonfuls of dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets. (You can pipe the mounds through a pastry bag but it will look about the same and create less mess if you just use a spoon. The trick, though, is to mound up the dough so that they will puff up while baking.) Sprinkle the remaining cheese and a few grains of the garnishing salt on top of the mounds. (For shinier tops, you could make an egg wash of one egg mixed with water and apply it before the cheese and salt.)

Bake the Gougères for about 25 minutes, until puffed and golden brown.

Changes I would make next time:

1. I would grate my cheese more finely than what is pictured above;
2. I would not use a pastry bag, I would simply use a spoon to make walnut-sized mounds;
3. As mentioned in the introduction, I would add 2 teaspoons of finely chopped, fresh herbs.