Home-made Cheesy Poofs

Yes, it's true.

So Sean has been teasing me for a long time about making him some Cheesy Poofs.

So I decided to Google the subject, and see what would come up.

Voila -- Homemade Cheesy Poofs.

OK, so they're actually "Spicy Cheese Gougeres" but we are in Oklahoma, where we say things like "Y'all bon apetit, you hear!"

Click on the link for the recipe, they were very easy and quick to make and quite tasty. Since I was making them for the first time, I went ahead and used white flour, but I'm going to make them again once I stock up on some more local cheese with whole wheat flour. Also I intend to try them with yogurt instead of milk.

I didn't add any sugar, I used crushed red pepper instead of ground cayenne, and all I had was regular salt instead of sea salt. I used local eggs and cheese.

Note that these are not "Cheezits", they're not crunchy. Their Cheesy Poofs -- think "pastry puffs".

Although I do wonder about deep frying the dough and may try that to see if something with a more crunchy texture emerges.

The trickiest part was baking. I made two pans and the second one burned. The recipe says 18-25 minutes. I looked at mine at 18 minutes and the tray on the bottom shelf of the oven had already burned. The tray on top seemed perfect so they came out and were devoured fairly rapidly. I should have (a) checked them sooner and (b) maybe have only done one pan at a time on the middle or top shelf of the oven.

Sean of course is the worst food critic on the planet and over the years he has said some really unkind about some of the things that I have cooked, lol. Of course, that's one reason I'm a good cook. You can't get good at anything without a certain amount of ruthless criticism.

We ate them plain, I suspect they would be good with dipping sauces.

This was a fun recipe that can easily be adapted to increase the local food content. It seems likely to me to be a hit at parties. The recipe says they freeze well, which is another point in their favor.