Chouquettes

An impromptu visit to Financier, the local patisserie, last week ended up being a trip down memory lane. I hadn't seen chouquettes in years, so today's word is my personal equivalent of Proust's madeleine.

Une chouquette is a small puffy ball made out of choux pastry and topped with chunks of sugar. They're not that different from les pets-de-nonne (fritters) except the latter are deep-fried instead of baked. Interestingly, pet-de-nonne literally translates to "nun's fart". One story has it that pets-de-nonne are a culinary incident that happened when nuns started laughing when one of them farted, and accidentally dropped some dough in hot oil. I'd love to know the true meaning... this may even be worth a bag of chouquettes.