Sausage Fest

Every Friday some of my friends and I have a potluck. Last week, my friends' wife was out of town so he decided the food theme should be sausage. I realized that if everyone brought sausage, that could be a bit overwhelming, so instead I made meat balls and manly desserts.

The Balls. Skagit Valley Ranch ground beef with an egg, some bread crumbs, minced onion, and some wicked garlic powder that was slipped under the table to me at the farmers market. I seared them in bacon grease and then added a wee bit of tomato sauce and chicken demi glace:

Then for dessert I made cream puffs, here they are in the oven:

I followed Julia Child's recipe for Pate-a-Choux. They puffed up nicely in the oven, but then when I took them out to cool, they deflated in such a way they were almost impossible to re-inflate with pastry cream. So I just made a dish of pastry cream for everyone to dip their cream puff in.

The thing about pastry cream is it requires a lot of egg yolks, which means you have a lot of egg whites left and when life give you egg whites - make meringue!

I added a pinch of cinnamon to a traditional meringue recipe which one these cookies the title of "dickerdoodles" because they tasted reminiscent of snickerdoodles.