Cream Puff Shells -- Denise’s Dinner Rolls and the Art of Being Ready

The week began with a list, as most weeks do, and the list got shorter, as most lists do. The week was a summer week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan, 20, is in the Philippines on his mission. He sends emails on Mondays. I read them on Mondays. The day is now structured around his email. Olivia is 18, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason, 15, is in Brazil on his mission. His weekly emails are short and full of jokes. He does not write much about the work. He writes about the food. Lily is 13, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 11, the comedian, the performer — the kid who does an impression of my disappointed face in front of company, and gets away with it. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

I do not preach in this blog. I never have. My faith is in here the way air is in a room — invisible, essential, not discussed. I am still a Latter-day Saint. I am also a woman who has sat in front of a casket the size of a bread box. I do not see those two things as contradictions, but I do not pretend they sit easily together either. The bench in the chapel where I sit on Sunday is the same bench. The woman is not. The faith makes room for the woman. That is what I have learned to ask of it.

The recipe of the week was Denise's dinner rolls, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. I taught a freezer meal class this week and someone cried at the cost-per-serving column on the handout. I took the cry as a compliment. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

The week ends the way most of them do — with a labeled bag, a tomorrow, a kitchen light I leave on for no one in particular, and a quiet that holds.

The rolls I mentioned — Denise’s rolls, the ones I’ve made enough times to have printed instructions I hand to other people — are actually built from a light, hollow shell that fills the house with the kind of warm smell that makes a Sunday feel like it earned itself. I reach for this recipe when I need something that looks impressive, costs almost nothing, and can move through a freezer bag without losing anything essential. Brandon chopped. I shaped. The kitchen light was on. That is the whole recipe, really — but here is the written version.

Cream Puff Shells

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 12 shells

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs, room temperature

Instructions

1. Heat the liquid. Preheat oven to 400°F. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine water, butter, and salt. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring until butter is completely melted.
2. Add the flour. Remove from heat and add flour all at once. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a smooth ball, about 1 minute.
3. Cool slightly. Let the dough rest in the pan for 3–5 minutes so it is warm but not steaming. You do not want to scramble the eggs when you add them.
4. Beat in the eggs. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until the dough is smooth, glossy, and thick enough to hold a slow ribbon when dropped from the spoon.
5. Portion onto the pan. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough (or use a piping bag) about 2 inches apart — you should get 12 mounds.
6. Bake. Bake at 400°F for 25–30 minutes until puffed, deep golden, and firm to the touch. Do not open the oven door during the first 20 minutes.
7. Dry them out. Pierce the side of each shell with a thin knife to release steam. Return to the turned-off oven with the door cracked for 10 minutes. This keeps the interiors from going soggy.
8. Cool completely. Transfer to a wire rack. Fill when fully cool, or freeze unfilled in a zip bag for up to 2 months. Refresh frozen shells in a 325°F oven for 5 minutes before filling.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 112 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 8g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 75mg