There is now a brand new template that generates a complete starting point for your application on the NetBeans Platform:

When you complete the wizard, you have an empty application, i.e., unlike the module suite template, which comes with all the IDE's modules installed. Simply run it, without doing anything special beforehand, and you have an empty application, with all the basic bells and whistles (i.e., menus and toolbars) available. This is the template, in the New Project wizard: