Here is the recipe I use. (New York Times Cookbook) The proportions look the same as yours. About method. It is important to thoroughly incorporate each egg. I use a wooden spoon to beat in each egg. With each addition of an egg the dough will seem slimy. Beat beat beat and the texture will change and the egg will be one with the dough. Add the next egg. Ingredients: 1 cup water 1/2 cup butter(1 stick) 1/4 tsp. salt 1 cup sifted all purpose fur 4 eggs Cooking Instructions: 1. Pre-heat oven t0 450 F. 2. Combine water, salt, butter and bring to a boil in a deep pot. Remove from the heat and add the sifted flour all at once. Stir vigorously until mixture leaves the sides of the pot. If the ball does not form almost immediately, hold the pan over low heat and beat briskly a few times. Cool slightly. 3. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat until the mixture is smooth and glossy after each addition. 4. Drop pastry mixture by rounded tablespoonfuls onto greased baking sheet. Space two inches apart as the mixture will expand to several times its size. 5. Bake 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake about 30 minutes more until no bubbles of fat remain. 6. Cut each puff in half with a serrated knife. Fill with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or custard.

I use a Pampered Chef "Measure-All" Cup, similar to a Wonder Cup (which is the one that causes "interesting" comments each time it comes up in a post - LOL). You place the inner cup at the measurement line, pack the "solids" into the 2-piece cup, then push the inner cup up and you have a perfectly measured amount that you can cleanly remove from the bottom of the plunger cup. NO waste, no mess, no guessing.... Bless the person who invented this handy kitchen tool. -Grainlady

I just bought butter at costco today and stored in the freezer immediately, This thread turned a light on in my head and I checked out my frozen butter, BLOCKS! Thabnks for the wakeup, LOL. I've done this before but I always take out my frozen butter a pound at a time, store it in a plastic container, taking out a stick at a time. Just have to remember to thaw it long enough before I need it so I can cut it into sticks. A bit of a pain but no big deal. I have an "English" butter covered dish that seems to hold about a 1/3 pound square but DH doesn't like it because you have to scoop it up rather than slice down into it.

OMG!!! I'm so sorry, Amck! That's totally my fault. I sometimes omit words when I type fast because my mind has moved on before my fingers have caught up, but, since I was giving directions, I tried really hard to do a good job proofreading and still didn't catch that I'd omitted the word "half" (since childhood, I always think of it as one box is one pound is two cups is four sticks). I've fixed it now. I'm so sorry to have caused the panic! Deepest, sincerest apologies!!! I hope the cookies are fab and the presentation is even better. Regarding the measuring, if your wrapper isn't labelled with TBSP and cup measures it it looks wrong, you can soften the butter and pack it into your standard measuring cup and you'll see that a stick is half a cup. You could weigh it to see if your stick really is a quarter pound. Or you could check the labelling on the box for the package weight to make sure it's not one of those three quart "gallon" jug of milk kind of innovation. Again my apologies!