The human heart is delicate and so is choux pastry, is the point of Corinne Bailey Rae's "Choux Pastry Heart." Bailey Rae is the soul-influenced British singer-songwriter who included the song on her easygoing 2006 self-titled debut; choux pastry, or pâte à choux, is the dough that's behind airy pastries like cream puffs,eclairs, andgougeres, as well as more elaborate projects like the towering Christmastime contraption calledcroquembouche. In a review, theNew York Timespointed specifically to this song as exemplifyinga certain "fluffy" qualityin Bailey Rae's work, but hey—what's wrong with something that's easy to like? That's what dessert's for, too.
A lover "broke my choux pastry heart," Bailey Rae sings; this is, as the title indicates, a forlorn love song. At the risk of ruining everything, though, let's get technical a minute. Pâte à choux starts on the stove, with the melting of butter into milk. Add flour, stir the mixture over low heat until it comes together as a dough. Transfer this to a mixer and add eggs, one by one; the dough will become glossy and weirdly sticky. And then you bake it into whatever shape you like—that's the whole thing. And so, while it's a nice analogy, I might quibble. Choux pastry seems fragile but it's hardy; it seems tricky when in fact it's completely uncomplicated. It usually turns out all right in the end. If only matters of the heart did too...
