Nun's Puffs

Baking during the summer isn't always a pleasant endeavor. Here in Maryland, we've been going through a nasty little heat wave involving multiple days of temperatures at or above 100 degrees. This results in me not wanting to crank my oven up to 400+ degrees... which means that there isn't much baking for me during the summer months. I happen to love baking (and am quite good at it, if I do say so myself), so I get cranky when it's too hot for extended oven usage.

Today, we had a bit of a break in the heat wave. Nothing substantial, but the high today was right around 90. It felt downright cool outside. The first thing I did was dust off my recipe for Nun's Puffs:


I chose these for a couple of reasons. First, I have a major love for eggy quickbreads. More practically, a lower oven temperature (375) combined with the fact that they bake in a muffin tin means that the oven's on, but isn't cranked up super-high for a long time... it may be a bit cooler out, but it's still 90 degrees.

The batter for these is made in the same method as a pâte à choux; bring butter and your liquid (milk in this case) to a boil, add your flour and stir like crazy, then add eggs one at a time and continue stirring until you think your arm will fall off. The batter then goes into a greased muffin tin, and you sprinkle some sugar on top before baking. They end up being mostly savory, with a nice hint of sweetness on the top crust... very nice breakfast fare, drizzled with some honey.


I used a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, which is something of a ubiquitous cookbook in many kitchens. However, if there's no copy handy, you can also see the recipe at Recipezaar or Everything2.

(I did have the recipe posted here, but I removed it because I don't want to go against anyone's copyright.)

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