verbicide | rosemary cheese puffs

This is from a cookbook that I really like, quite a lot. It's called Star Palate: Celebrity Cookbook for a Cure. It has recipes from various celebrities and the proceeds from the sale of the book go directly to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation in New York and The Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research in Seattle. Everything I've made from it so far has been a big hit.

Makes about 50 puffs (though I always end up with about 36--probably making them too big)

Ingredients

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup whole milk
6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon finely minced fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 cup flour
4 large eggs
3/4 cup grated, high-quality Parmesan cheese

Directions
Place the water, milk, butter, rosemary, salt, and garlic in a heavy, medium-sized saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. All at once, add the flour and stir in quickly with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring--mixture will come away from the sides of the pan and become thick and stiff. Keep stirring and turning over for about 1 minute. (You want to dry the mixture out a bit.)

Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl and, with a handheld or standing mixer, mix on medium-high speed. Add 1 egg. As soon as egg is partially incorporated, increase mixer speed to high. Add remaining eggs ONE AT A TIME when each previous egg is well incorporated. Mixture should be smooth. Mix in the Parmesan.

Preheat oven to 400F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. You will need 2 or 3 baking sheets or work in batches. (If you don't have parchment, lightly spray baking sheets with nonstick vegetable spray and watch the cheese puff bottons closely to prevent over-browning.) Drop mixture by heaping teaspoonfuls--they should be the size of large marbles--onto parchment; or you can pipe it from a large piping bag fitted with a large plain tip.

Bake on upper rack of oven for 22 to 25 minutes, or until puffs are golden. Serve warm.

If you're short of baking sheets, have more balls ready on sheets of parchment. When a batch of puffs is done, remove the baking sheet from the oven, pull off the parchment filled with cooked puffs, and quickly add the next parchment sheet of balls.