Gougeres have been around for a long time in France. There puffy crisp balls made with gruyere cheese and baked in the oven. The high amount of egg in this recipe creates a giant air bubble inside the dough creating a melt-in-your-mouth bite every time. Made with the classic pate-a-choux pastry that cream puffs are made of with just a few tweaks. Cheese, nutmeg, and black pepper. You got to try these! It’s like a cheese cracker in a puff!

This recipe is based on the technique of how to make pate-a-choux. This is a specific way to create a sticky dough using water, butter, flour, and eggs. That’s the base recipe. Creating this into a savory appetizer involves cheese, like all delicious savory appetizers.

Melt your butter in a pan with water. Once the water melts, add the flour. Cook the flour in the pot for one minute over low heat. Add the eggs one at a time into the pan one at a time until the mixture becomes one with each egg. Stopping here will result in a delicious cream puff. You can fry it and make churros. We will move on to adding the savory ingredients. Gruyere cheese, freshly grated nutmeg, and cracked black pepper. Fold these and your dough should look like dough!

Use an ice cream scoop to evenly portion the dough onto the parchment-lined sheet tray. Roll each into balls once all the dough has been scooped. Time to bake these in the oven. Starting at a high temperature at first to get the maximum over spring we can, then reducing the heat to fully cook each puff without burning. Once the puffs are baked, turn the oven off and leave the door ajar. It’s time for cream puffs to dry out a bit more. Taking these out now will result in fallen cream puffs that are too wet.

You can serve these as your bread basket, you can serve these as your appetizer, you can serve these as mini sandwiches. I love how cute and round each one of these come out. I’m a big fan of gougeres after this recipe. They come out flawless everytime!