French Fridays with Dorie (FFwD): Gougeres

Hooray for Dorie's new book - Around My French Table is here at last!  Which makes today, October 1st the very first day for the new group - French Fridays with Dorie (FFwD)!

Today is the first post for the group and all of October's recipe selections were chosen by Dorie herself, who is currently on tour with her new book (see the schedule here).

The first recipe for the group to make together is appropriately enough the first recipe in the book - gougeres.

These are light little cheese puff rolls made of the same type of dough (pate au choux) like cream puffs.  These really are a lot easier to make than most people tend to think - but the results are so amazing that it's hard to believe.  After all, can anything with a significant amount of gruyere melted in it not be delicious?!

I actually made the recipe twice in the past couple of weeks.  The first time we ate them with soup and the second time we just munched on them before dinner. Both times they were wonderful.  The second time I actually froze half the dough on the baking sheet. It was several days in the freezer before I ended up baking them - they had thawed a little bit before I put them in the oven to bake, but they baked up just as beautifully as the fresh batch did.

My most favorite way that I ate some of these this time was split with a little piece of leftover steak that I had - that was one heck of a little sandwich.

Make sure to visit the new French Fridays with Dorie site and see more gougeres on the Leave Your Link post.

You can also see the gougeres I posted over on Examiner.com last year that we made for a picnic.  They really are a wonderful little finger food and those ones had a little black pepper in them for an extra kick - so good!

Caramelized Onion and Gruyere Tart

These are obviously not the cookies for this week's TWD post, but I knew that, since fried foods + pregnancy + me = general disaster, that I should probably pass on the Scherben recipe chosen by sweet Teanna at Spork or Foon? for now and not press my luck. My apologies on missing out on this week to my fellow TWD bakers. I hope to make this one up down the road (when my stomach agrees with fried foods a bit better than during pregnancy mainly :) I've really eyed that recipe for a while and wondered what they are like.

I did want to share this recipe I found on Country Living's website a couple of week's ago for an easy and incredible tart to share. It wasn't difficult to make at all and everyone really enjoyed it. It makes a lovely appetizer or could even be served along a nice warm soup this Winter.

Gougeres - Gruyere Cheese Puffs

With all the times I have made choux pastry for cream puffs and the like in my life, I can't believe it took me so long to make these! I know it won't take me long to want to make them again. I think they would be perfect in a picnic basket... perhaps for Memorial Day? I hope you all have a beautiful day tomorrow and remember those who came before us and all they did for us.

For the recipe you can visit my page as the Salt Lake City Baking Examiner here.