Chouquettes (Or Empty Cream Puffs)

Mom decided to let me make dessert for a dinner she hosted on Saturday night. On Thursday evening I poured over recipes and decided to make a second attempt at cooking a Napoleon. (Some of you may remember my first rather unsuccessful attempt...) A few hours later I promptly abandoned that idea after completely destroying yet another batch of pastry cream.

So instead of a Napoleon, I spent Saturday morning baking chouquettes--essentially cream puffs without the pastry cream inside sprinkled with some coarse sugar. I followed three almost identical recipes (David Lebovitz, SmittenKitchen, and a cook book by Nick Malgieri "How To Bake"). All three are pâte à choux recipes with the only difference being the amount of sugar used in the dough and the baking temperature.

My dough was a little too liquidy, but the chouquetts puffed up sufficiently anyway. Next time I may try to deep a few of them into chocolate.