Choux Buns
Light, hollow choux pastry buns filled with whipped cream and dusted with icing sugar.
Photograph credit: Cherry Cream Choux Bun - Caffè Nero 2025-12-28 by Andy Li · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Where This Goes Wrong
Do not open the oven door early.
Beat the eggs in gradually.
If your oven runs hot, check at 20 minutes.
Fill just before serving.
How to Make Choux Buns
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Heat the oven to 200°C / 390°F and line a tray. Bring the water and butter to a boil in a pan, add the flour and salt and beat hard for 2 minutes until the paste leaves the sides.
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Cool for 5 minutes, then beat in the eggs a little at a time until the paste is glossy and falls from a spoon in a V.
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Pipe 12 mounds on the tray. Bake for 25 minutes until puffed and deep golden. Pierce each base and dry for 5 minutes in the switched-off oven.
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Whip the cream with the 2 tbsp icing sugar and pipe into the cold buns. Dust with the remaining icing sugar.
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Why the Method Works
Quick tip: do not open the oven door. That is the most useful instruction for choux, since the buns rise on steam and collapse if cold air gets in.
The paste is made in a pan, with water, butter and flour, and it must be beaten hard until it leaves the sides. Add the eggs gradually, beating each in, and stop when the paste drops slowly from a spoon in a V shape. The paste should be glossy, not stiff and not runny. Too many eggs and the buns spread, too few and they do not rise.
Pipe or spoon 12 mounds onto a lined tray, leaving gaps. Bake at 200°C / 390°F for 25 minutes, until puffed, deep golden and light when lifted. If your oven runs hot, check at 20 minutes. Pierce the base of each with a skewer to let steam out and dry them for 5 minutes in the cooling oven.
Fill once cold, with whipped cream piped through the hole, and dust with icing sugar. Filled buns soften within hours, so fill them just before serving.
After You've Cooked It
Unfilled buns keep in a tin for 1 day. Fill at the last moment.
What to Serve Alongside
- Hot chocolate
- Fresh raspberries
- Strong coffee
- Chocolate sauce
Choux Buns Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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