use real butter

Recipe: choco-crisp cookies

One night during my pastry skills course, I was in a discussion with two other classmates over cookie recipes and how to achieve the proper texture at elevation. I’ve learned from Shan to try removing the leavening agent for my elevation and it seems to work well with most of the cakes I bake. He was passing by during our conversation and couldn’t help but interject, “freeze the dough”. I made a mental note to give it a try.

I used to bake a lot of cookies. It was easy in graduate school because I could bring in a double batch of cookies, set them in the office, and send the email out to the department. They’d be gone in a couple of hours. Graduate students are always hungry. I made cookies at least twice a week for stress relief and I fine tuned my recipes to the perfect texture – at sea level. When we moved to Colorado, I was disappointed with how many of my recipes had to be readjusted. I didn’t feel like wasting my time because I didn’t know where to start tweaking.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: triple fudge kahlua torte

Jeremy’s birthday was over a week ago, but he was away at two meetings and I was visiting my nephew for his eighth birthday. Since Jeremy and my birthdays are nine days apart, we decided we would celebrate later, when we weren’t so short on time and money. We both tend to be fairly unsentimental about these things, so that worked out fine.

But… I did promise I would at least make him a special dessert. I asked what he would like and as usual, Jeremy couldn’t make up his mind. He’s so easy going that it is downright frustrating at times. I found a recipe in an old issue of Chocolatier which I modified somewhat, but it contains several of Jeremy’s favorite components such as chocolate cake, booze, espresso, and chocolate.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: almond toffee

We didn’t get around to making toffee during my pastry skills class. I just remembered Chef Shan shouting, “and if you add cream to this, you end up with toffee!” Toward the end of the ten weeks, I asked him for a toffee recipe and he said he couldn’t give the secret recipe away. Okay, I understand – confectioner’s secret. Chef Will was the same way with his toffee recipe. I watched his perfectly square blocks of gorgeous toffee while he demonstrated tempering to the professional pastry students.

I looked online, looked in books, looked online some more and settled on a recipe in Candymaking (Kendrick and Atkinson) to begin my foray into toffee today.