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Recipe: savory bread pudding

I had attempted a savory bread pudding earlier in the year, only to discover that marjoram tastes like soap and ruined the whole dish for me. I swore to myself that my next version would include bacon and omit marjoram. And indeed, I did just that and then some. I am a huge fan of sweet bread puddings. I prefer to work with chocolate when making desserts, but I love to eat non-chocolate desserts, if that makes any sense? So I thought that a savory bread pudding with some of my favorite ingredients would work out.

the cheeses and green onions

I replaced 2 cups of swiss with 2 cups of gruyère because I love the intensity of a good cooked gruyère. And I used broccoli instead of asparagus (because broccoli was on sale), and added mushrooms and of course – the beloved bacon. All hail the piggy! Such a magical animal…

an undeniably delicious combination

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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.

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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.

i started with chocolate cake

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