Every time I flip through my copy of Pierre Hermé’s Pastries, I find myself coming back again and again to the recipe for Choux Infiniment Citron – partly because it brings together two of my favorite things, cream puffs and lemon curd, and partly because of the sweet tart dough which, once baked, mysteriously disappears from the page altogether (It took five read throughs and all the patience my friends could muster to finally confirm that this was indeed a mistake and not a symptom of my own inability to read).

Vanishing pâte sucrée aside, the recipe still serves as a wonderful source of inspiration. With a little help from my trusty friends The Joy of Cooking and Cooks‘ Illustrated, I came away with a simplified version that’s easy enough to include in my regular potluck rotation. Because face it, potlucks are always at least a little bit of a competition.

Choux pastry

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp granulated sugar

1 tsp salt

1 stick butter

1 1/4 cups flour

5 eggs

Lemon filling

zest and juice of 3 lemons (comes out to about 3/4 cups)

1 cup granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 400F and  fit 2 sheet pans with silicon baking mats or parchment paper.

Bring water, milk, sugar, salt and butter to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the flour all at once and beat with a wooden spoon until dough pulls away from the sides of the saucepan. The dough should be shiny, with tiny beads of fat forming on the surface. There will be a film of dough stuck to the bottom of the saucepan. This is totally ok.

Move the dough from the saucepan to a food processor and blast it in short bursts to release some of the heat. Adding eggs straight to piping hot dough will result in cooked scrambled eggs in your cream puffs – something you definitely don’t want. Once the dough has cooled enough not to burn your finger, add eggs one at a time, processing until thoroughly mixed between each addition. The resulting paste should be just runny enough to pipe; the consistency should be a bit like cooling lava… delicious, ooey gooey lava.

Fit a pastry bag with a pastry tip and fill it with the choux paste (if you don’t have pastry tips yet, get some, stat. They make a huge difference). Pipe the paste onto the prepared sheet pans – I do them about an inch to 2 inches apart, in rounds the rough shape and size of half a ping pong ball. Tap your finished sheets a couple of times on your countertop to get rid of air bubbles.

Bake the puffs for 10 minutes at 400F, then lower the heat to 350F and bake for another 10 minutes. Then, using a wooden spoon, prop open your oven door and bake for another 10 mins before pulling them out. Your puffs should be firm, light, fairly hollow, and golden in color. Make a small slit near the top of your puffs to let out the remaining steam and let them cool completely before filling (if there’s anything I learned from Masterchef, it’s that trying to fill warm pastry shells with cream will only result in heartbreak and tears).

While your puffs are baking, make the lemon curd. Bring a saucepan of water to a simmer. In a metal bowl, mix the sugar and the lemon zest with your fingers until the sugar is damp and the lemon zest is evenly distributed throughout. Add the juice and eggs to the sugar mixture and mix thoroughly. Set the curd mixture over the simmering water and whisk until it reaches 180F and is thickened. Transfer to another bowl and refrigerate until completely cooled. If you are one of those people who admirably plans ahead, you can also make the curd a day or two ahead of time as well.

Stick the bowl of your stand mixer in the freezer for 15 minutes. In your chilled bowl, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Mix a  generous cup of the curd with your whipped cream until smooth. At this point, you can keep adding more of your leftover curd to the filling until it reaches the desired level of lemony-ness, or you could keep the rest for another project like filling a layer cake, or, heck, even for eating right out of the container with a spoon. The curd will keep in your fridge for about 3-4 days.

Right before serving, using a pastry bag, fill up the puff shells with the lemon cream. While your puffs will still be ok the next day, the less time the cream spends inside the shells, the less chewy  your shell will be.