Provolone Puffs!

When the temperature gets cold, the oven gets hot!

Provolone Puffs 4⅜ fluid ounces milk 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for brushing 2 eggs ¾ teaspoon salt, 2½ oz flour 2 eggs 1 oz diced provolone ½ oz shredded provolone Coat a six-cup muffin pan with cooking spray. Select a small saucepan that can handle using an electric mixer in it without getting ruinously scratched. (You can beat this entirely by hand if you don't have one, but if you use a mixer you'll be glad.) Put milk, olive oil, and salt in the saucepan. Heat slowly until the milk boils. Toss in flour all at once. Allow to boil for a few seconds until the milk begins to bubble over the flour. Turn off heat and beat until smooth. Then set the spoon aside and switch to an electric mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, beating on high speed until very smooth after each. Stir in the diced cheese. Spoon into the muffin cups. (Push the dough off the spoon with a knife to prevent sticky fingers.) Let them sit until they get completely cold (you can refrigerate them to speed this up). Otherwise, they won't bake right. When ready to bake, heat oven to gas mark 8, 450°F, or 230°C. Brush the tops with olive oil. Shake salt generously over each one, then sprinkle all of them with the shredded cheese. Bake for 20-25 minutes (12-15 hectoseconds), or until the tops are a deep golden brown. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then carefully cut out of the pan if they don't fall right out. Serve warm. Leftovers can be placed on baking sheet and reheated at 350°F (180°C, or gas mark 4). Note 1: You want to wait until right before baking before brushing the tops with olive oil. Otherwise it will just soak into the batter and disappear. Note 2: You can make the batter ahead of time, get it into the pan, and put it in the refrigerator until ready to bake. If wrapped airtight, it should keep for at least a day before baking. There's no need to bring it back to room temperature. Just take it directly from the refrigerator to the oven. Adapted from Fanny Cradock via Keep Calm and Fanny On

I usually feel bad about running an extra-hot oven. But winter has paid us a temporary visit, bringing the temperature down to 29 degrees. (That's -2° for our celsius friends). Therefore I felt no guilt whatsoever about running the oven up to 450° (which, depending on where you live, is either gas mark 8 or or 210°C).

I may be understating things a bit. Actually, I said "Well, as long as the oven is already turned on..." and made a lot more than today's puffs.

Carbs taste better with frost outside.

Getting back to today's recipe, we're revisiting Fanny Cradock's gougère with one slight change. Instead of butter, we're using this:

Yes, that's a generous splash of olive oil in the pan. It's probably the last time I will to dare to be so extravagant (even though this is only a couple of spoonfuls). We happened to use up the last of the bottle, so I asked someone who was already out of the house to detour to the grocery store and replace it en route back. It turns out the price of olive oil has at least doubled since the last time I bought it. By the time I knew the price, it was too late.

Setting aside the cost, I didn't know if these would bake right. Does the choux paste need the butter to re-solidify before going into the oven? Is that why we're supposed to let it get cold? I set my worries aside and figured either these would be good, or the kitchen would be extra-cozy while they baked.

 

Naturally, our batter needed to cool off before we baked it. As anyone watching Fanny Cradock knows, choux paste must get completely cold before baking. Otherwise you get a lot of hot goo in the middle instead of steamy puff-bread.

These are exactly the airy, cheese-infused bliss you think they are. And as a bonus, I think they were actually a bit better the next day when I reheated them in the oven (which I was preheating for something else). It gave them a final crisping that made them absolutely divine.