Ingredients

• 75 g unsalted butter, diced
• ½ tsp fine sea salt
• 150 g flour, sifted
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tsp whole cumin seeds ground cumin
• ¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
• 150 g freshly grated Comté or Gruyere, substitute a good Swiss cheese

Instructions

1. Measure all ingredients before you start. Combine butter, salt, and 200 ml water in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat.
2. Remove from heat, add the flour all at once, and stir quickly with a wooden spoon until well blended.
3. Return the pan to medium-tow heat and keep stirring until the mixture forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
4. Let cool for 3 minutes. Add the eggs one by one, stirring well between each addition, until incorporated. (What you have just made is a _pâte à choux_.)
5. Sprinkle with cumin and pepper and fold in the cheese. The batter will be thick. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes, or up to a day.
6. Preheat the oven to 390F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
7. Remove the batter from the fridge, and use two tsp to shape small balls of batter (about 2½ cm in diameter) that you will plop onto the baking sheet
8. leaving 2 cm of space between each. If you have to work in batches, cover the batter and return it to the fridge.
9. Bake for 20 minutes, until puffy and golden - however much you want to peek inside, do not open the oven door during the first 10 minutes of baking, or the _gougères_ will not rise well.
10. Turn off the oven, open the oven door just a crack, and leave the _gougères_ in for another 5 minutes
11. (This helps prevent an abrupt temperature change, which could cause the _gougères_ to deflate and nobody wants that).
12. Transfer to a cooling rack for 5 minutes and serve warm, or let cool and serve at room temperature.