In the culinary realm, some people prefer to do easy things. Some prefer to do hard things. I’m on the fence there—I like to do easy things, obviously, because it generally means I get to eat sooner. I also like to do hard things, mostly just to see if I can. What l like best is to do easy things that turn out a product that looks like it was hard to make.

Thus it was that I made profiteroles for dessert recently.

Profiteroles are just puffed up dough filled with ice cream, and drizzled with sauce. The combinations of ice cream and sauce are pretty limitless, restricted only by your imagination. In this case, I used a recipe from the March Gourmet for Profiteroles with Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce. Instead of coffee ice cream, however, I used Bailey’s Irish Cream flavored ice cream.

The chocolate sauce is a pretty standard one, made by caramelizing sugar, adding heavy cream, chocolate, and a shot of cognac. It’s deep and velvety and complex, and would make a fabulous go-to recipe for chocolate sauce any time chocolate sauce is needed (daily? Hourly?)

The part that makes this recipe look so tricky is the cream puffs. Too daunting, just can’t do it. No indeed, I promise they are the easiest things in the world.

After making the dough, you pile it all in a pastry bag…

Hold it—you lost me. I don’t have a pastry bag.

No problem, use a plastic bag with the corner cut off. Pipe the dough into little mounds…

Nope, hang on again. That word “pipe”: sorry. No piping.

That’s OK, there’s another way. Take two teaspoons out of the silverware drawer. Scoop up a ball of the dough just a shade smaller than a ping pong ball. Plunk it on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake. Remove from oven. Marvel that these look like restaurant-quality cream puffs—golden and crisp and airy. Allow to cool slightly, then continue with recipe. Serve to guests who will think you are amazing for having made something so hard.

The only part of the recipe that may be slightly panic-inducing the first time around is when the eggs are added. I looked at the slippery, slimy dough I had created and wasn’t sure this was going to work out. I kept stirring, and eventually the egg was incorporated in, and the dough became shiny and smooth, just as I was promised. And they turned out to be stunning. I’ve never looked back.

Profiteroles with Bailey’s Irish Cream Ice Cream
adapted from Gourmet, March 2008
serves 6

For profiteroles
1 quart Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream
3/4 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 large eggs

For chocolate sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
7 ounce fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (no more than 60% cacao if marked), finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Cognac or brandy (optional)

Make profiteroles:
Chill a small metal baking pan in freezer. Form 18 ice cream balls with scoop and freeze in chilled pan at least 1 hour (this will make serving faster).
Preheat oven to 425°F with rack in middle. Butter a large baking sheet.
Bring butter, water, and salt to a boil in a small heavy saucepan, stirring until butter is melted. Reduce heat to medium, then add flour all at once and cook, beating with a wooden spoon, until mixture pulls away from side of pan and forms a ball, about 30 seconds. Transfer mixture to a bowl and cool slightly, 2 to 3 minutes.
Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well with an electric mixer after each addition. (I used my spoon and skipped dirtying the beaters on my electric mixer.)
Transfer warm mixture to pastry bag and pipe 18 mounds (about 1 1/4 inches wide and 1 inch high) 1 inch apart on baking sheet.
Bake until puffed and golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes total. Prick each profiterole once with a skewer, then return to oven to dry, propping oven door slightly ajar, 3 minutes. Cool on sheet on a rack. (I forgot to do both the pricking and the proping of the oven door–they still turned out fine.)

Make chocolate sauce:
Heat sugar in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring with a fork to heat sugar evenly, until it starts to melt, then stop stirring and cook, swirling pan occasionally so sugar melts evenly, until it is dark amber.
Remove from heat, then add cream and a pinch of salt (mixture will bubble and steam). Return to heat and cook, stirring, until caramel has dissolved.
Remove from heat and add chocolate, whisking until melted, then whisk in vanilla and Cognac (if using). Keep warm, covered.

Serve profiteroles:
Halve profiteroles horizontally, then fill each with a ball of ice cream. Put 3 profiteroles on each plate and drizzle generously with warm chocolate sauce.

Of course there are the obvious uses for it: lining cookie sheets or cake pans, making fish en papillote. But there are other uses for it beyond just keeping things from sticking.

A cartouche is a circle of parchment paper cut to fit a pot in which you’re cooking rice, or a braise or stew. Cut a little hole in the center to allow steam to release, and most of the heat and moisture will be kept in the pan, but just enough will be released to allow the liquid to reduce. If you have trouble with cooking rice—and many people do, finding that it either comes out underdone, or gummy and sticky—a cartouche may be a trick for you to try.

Of course, parchment paper is a staple in baking, for lining cookie pans and cake tins as aforementioned, but a sheet of parchment paper can also be a handy tool for moving ingredients. Lay a sheet out on the counter, and measure out all the dry ingredients on to it. Then lift it in a funnel shape and slide the ingredients right into the bowl. You can also use parchment to make stencils for cakes or cupcakes. You’ve probably seen the doily trick, where you lay a doily over the cake, then sift powdered sugar or cocoa on to the cake to make a design. Parchment paper can play the same role, only you create the design yourself. If you’re not much for drawing, cookie cutters can be used to trace shapes, or you could even get fancy and use a craft knife to cut out freehand anything you can think of: shapes, designs, words.

I confess I’ve never been much for fish en papillote (more because I’m not that avid a fish eater). The suggestion for cooking pasta in a parchment paper parcel, however, really piques my interest. Cook rigatoni quite al dente, and combined it in a parchment paper parcel with goat cheese, pine nuts, and some quickly sautéed greens (kale and radicchio cut into strips are what’s recommended, but of course any combination of greens could be used: spinach, mustard greens, broccoli rabe). A squeeze of lemon juice, a grind of pepper, and a scattering of chopped flat leaf parsley complete the mix, pop the packets in the oven, and you’ve got a quick meal with easy clean up.

This idea of cooking pasta en papillote has really got me thinking. The variations are endless. I think I know what I’ll be doing this weekend: getting cozy with a roll of parchment paper!

Photo from kingarthurflour.com