Foie Gras Gougères

Recipe and photos by Lily Morello

Featuring light-as-air cheesy choux pastry puffs filled with a silky mousse of rich foie gras, this edible wreath manages to be delicate and super decadent at the same time. If your goal is to impress, this is the centerpiece to make for a holiday hors d'oeuvre table, and your guests will be so surprised when they bite into one of these little gougères to find a secret ingredient inside so luxurious, it is typically only experienced on fine dining menus.

If you are a fan of French pastry, then perhaps you might be familiar with croquembouches, which are Christmas tree shaped towers of choux pastry puffs, held together with caramel and spun sugar. A simplified version of this to make during the holidays is a less-precarious Christmas wreath arrangement of cream-filled choux buns or profiteroles. But as someone who will always choose savory over sweet, I thought cheesy gougères with a rich umami filling would be just as worthy of, and delicious for, using in an edible wreath arrangement. I hope that fellow fans of savory bite-sized snacks will agree with me!

Ingredients for the gougères:

1 cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 cup water
1 cup all purpose flour, sifted
4 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 packed cup finely grated white cheddar
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 tsp ground pink pepper (optional)
1/4 cup mascarpone, at room temperature
1 package (6.5 oz) Three Little Pigs Bloc de Foie Gras de Canard, at room temperature

Ingredients for decorating (optional):

fresh bay leaves
winter savory or rosemary
edible flowers, such as sweet alyssum
1–2 tsp white cheddar cheese powder, for dusting

Procedure:

Make the gougères: Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400°F. Line baking trays with parchment paper.

Combine the butter, salt, and water in a medium pot. Bring to a boil and make sure the butter has melted. Turn heat down to low and add the sifted flour. Stir together with a spatula until the ingredients begin to combine.

Remove the pot from the heat and stir until all the lumps are completely gone and the mixture is smooth. Let sit until the pot has cooled slightly (the dough should feel warm but not burn when touched). Crack open and beat one egg in a small bowl. Scoop out 2 tablespoons to save for later. Then pour the remainder of the egg into the dough mixture. Stir with the spatula until fully combined and the dough looks homogenous again. Beat and add the next egg, again making sure it is fully combined before moving on to the next egg. At times, the dough mixture may look broken/curdled, but continue to stir vigorously with the spatula and the mixture will eventually become homogeneous.

After the eggs have been added, mix in the grated cheese and spices.

Use a 1 tablespoon cookie scooper to scoop the dough into even mounds onto the parchment paper, making sure the mounds are at least 2 inches apart to allow for puffing. If the dough is sticking to the scooper, dip it into warm water in between scoops.

Use your fingertip to apply a bit of the reserved beaten egg over the tops of each dough mound to smooth them into a tidy shape; take care to keep the egg only over the surface of the dough without any excess dripping onto the parchment around it.

Bake the gougères for 30 minutes and do not open the oven during that time. After 30 minutes, if they still look pale, bake them for up to 5 minutes more, watching carefully to avoid excess browning. Then, leave the gougères in the oven, turn off the heat, and leave the door cracked for an additional 10 minutes to allow them to fully set before removing them from the oven. The gougères will deflate too quickly if the resting step is skipped.

After the gougères have adequately rested in the oven, transfer them to a cooling rack.

Fill the gougères: Use a spatula to combine the foie gras and mascarpone until homogenous.

Use a sharp paring knife to poke a small hole into the side or bottom of each gougère. Transfer the filling mixture to a piping bag, or fill one corner of a sturdy zip-top bag and cut off the corner to use as a makeshift piping bag. Pipe the foie gras mixture into each of the gougères—use as much as will easily go into the hollow pastry without oozing out.

Assemble the wreath: If desired, use kitchen shears to cut the bay leaves to resemble the shape of holly leaves.

Arrange the filled gougères into a wreath shape on your serving platter. Tuck in the herbs and edible flowers as desired.

Use a small fine mesh sieve to dust the wreath with cheese powder right before serving.

Notes from the author:

What are gougères? Gougères are savory choux pastry puffs that have cheese mixed into the dough before they are baked. Choux pastry is a French style of pastry that is quite delicate and bakes up into puffs that are super airy and hollow inside. Cream puffs, profiteroles, eclairs, and gougères are all made with a choux pastry base. But making choux pastry puffs is way less fancy than all the names of these finished treats may imply. It does require two different phases of cooking, starting on the stove and finishing off with a bake in the oven, but as someone who is more comfortable as a cook than a baker, there is actually something about starting the dough off in a cooking pot that is a relief to me, and I am hoping that others who might otherwise feel intimidated about the prospect of baking might be able to relate. Gougères are typically served as just the lovely cheesy puffs of air that they are, but in my opinion, they are just as deserving of carrying a delicious secret inside as their sweeter counterparts, which is why I chose to fill them with a gorgeous foie gras mousse.

Notes About Ingredients for Foie Gras Gougères

For how fancy these little puffs feel, the ingredient list is really not all that fussy! Here’s what you need to make them:

Butter, Salt, and Water: The first step of making the gougères is to combine butter, salt, and water in a pot on the stove. Like I mentioned before, choux pastry is unique in that there’s a cooking element to it before it gets baked in the oven. If you cut the butter into tablespoon-sized chunks, it’ll melt at the same time that the water comes to a boil and that’ll be when you are ready to add the flour.
Flour: No fancy specialty flour needed here—just use regular all purpose! But be sure to sift your flour so it is easy to incorporate into the liquid.
Eggs: Make sure your eggs are at room temperature when you are ready to make this recipe and don’t forget to set aside a little for smoothing the tops of the scoops of dough before baking. Beating each egg and adding it one at a time to the dough allows for a smooth and even dough. This is where the process might seem scary as you are making the dough because the mixture may look “broken” or “split” as you are mixing in the eggs, and it might seem like there’s no way all the liquid from the egg will get incorporated, but trust me, it will! Just keep calm and carry on stirring and eventually the flour mixture will be mixed homogeneously with all the eggs and a wet, sticky, but even dough will form.
Cheese: The cheese I see more commonly used for gougères is gruyère, but I always have some sharp white cheddar on hand so that’s what I used for this recipe. I love the sharp, tangy, cheesy flavor that the cheddar brings to these puffs. You could use any hard to semi-hard white cheese of your choice, just make sure to grate it finely.
Nutmeg and Pink Pepper: I wanted to give the gougères a little Christmas spice to their flavor profile so I incorporated some freshly grated nutmeg and ground up some pink peppercorns in a spice grinder to add to my choux pastry dough. These ingredients are subtle and optional.
Foie gras mousse: Three Little Pigs Bloc de Foie Gras de Canard is a rich mousse made with pure foie gras, sauternes, cream, and spices. Many sweet preparations of choux pastry, like cream puffs, profiteroles, eclairs have a thick, creamy filling inside so I wanted to create a savory version of this concept. The smooth texture of the Bloc de Foie Gras de Canard makes it very easy to use as a filling in the gougères and the creamy mouthfeel of the fattened duck liver feels rich and savory without overwhelming the delicateness of the pastry.
Mascarpone: Since a little bit of decadent foie gras goes a long way, I mixed in some mascarpone with the block of foie gras in order to get the amount of filling I needed to fill all the gougères for a nice, full wreath. At room temperature, the mascarpone and foie gras mousse combine very smoothly. And since the flavor of mascarpone is fairly neutral with just a subtle taste of sweet cream, it bulks up the filling mixture without taking any of the spotlight away from the foie gras.
White Cheddar Cheese Powder: Holiday desserts often get a dusting of powdered sugar for a lovely snowy look, but how did I create this look for my savory wreath? I used a fine white cheddar cheese powder instead! This ingredient is typically used to season popcorn but it worked great for the purpose of a savory dusting of faux snow over my cheesy choux pastry puffs. If you can’t find this ingredient, some substitution ideas are: a powdered dip packet like the ones for ranch dip or french onion dips, the powder that comes in a white cheddar mac and cheese kit, or milk powder. You can also omit this step entirely if you are fine without having that snow-dusted look.

Does This Recipe Need Special Tools?

Most choux pastry recipes call for the use of a piping bag to pipe the dough in small mounds on the baking tray. I tested this recipe with a 1 tablespoon cookie scooper and found this to be very successful for scooping the dough into even mounds. You could also use two small spoons to shape the dough before dropping it onto the baking tray, in a similar manner to which you would make a quenelle.

You could save your pastry bag for piping the filling into the puffs if you desire. If you don’t own pastry bags, you could simply fill a sturdy plastic zip-top bag and cut off a small corner to pipe the mousse mixture through.

Making the Savory Choux Pastry Wreath

This recipe makes about 30 gougères and I assembled my wreath on a large dinner plate with an 11-inch diameter. Don’t expect the gougèress to stack perfectly on top of one another; it may take some trial and error to figure out how they fit together to form a stable wreath.

When I decorate my food, I’m honestly a little overly persnickety about making sure that all my decor is food-safe. I wanted a festive wintery look complete with holly leaves but I didn’t want to use anything from an actual holly bush, which can be poisonous. To be extra safe, what I did instead was get fresh bay leaves and I used kitchen shears to cut them into that spiny shape that makes holly leaves so distinct.

I also used winter savory to simulate the look of a fir wreath. Not to be confused with “savory” as a flavor profile that is enhanced with salt, savory is also a type of herb. Rosemary is another good option here, but I loved the more vibrant forest green color of the savory sprigs.

For a finishing touch, I used sweet alyssum, an edible flower. To me, their delicate white blossoms remind me of gentle snowflakes on a forest floor during the first snowfall of winter. I thought they were perfect for adding a pretty elegance to the edible wreath but of course, you can omit these if you don’t have them in your garden. Popping a few sugared cranberries among the gougères would be another great option. The point is to have fun creating something that you’ll be proud to show off on your holiday table!