An Experiment of Delicious Proportions

Alright. This is not the project mentioned in the previous post. It might be better.

I’m a bit lame. Sometimes I stay home on a weekend. I’m a bit of a lone wolf sometimes whether people can tell or not. I’m cool with it.

Enough. Tonight. Project night.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot more baking, and tonight, I tested a new recipe. One I made up all by myself.

I was actually trying to model it after a dessert I had from a cafe on the Lower East Side called “Ciao for Now”. It’s a sweet little place, opened up by a woman and her husband. They do all of the catering for our office meetings, and everything I’ve had was GREAT.

Well this dessert was kind of like a little cupcake, but it had the light crisp flaky outside surface and the taste of a brownie, the center being just slightly raw. After a little experimentation in 3 batches, I may have nailed it (in cookie form.)

I made three different variations in order to test the variables.


^One: has the same ingredients as Two, just cooked on different racks in the oven for different amounts of time and cooled on the sheet for different amounts of time. One has a really soft consistency… almost to the point where it will break when you pick it up. Some of them are raw in the middle, which is nice and has a great texture, but I think they’re too soft.

^Two: baked longer and cooled longer than batch One. I feel like the flakiness on the top of this one was right, but the consistency was too baked. In achieving the right external texture (these cookies hold together) the center got TOO baked. Le sigh.

^Three:baked longer, cooled longer, and has a secret ingredient the others don’t. The outside is flaky. The inside is soft and the center is just on the edge of raw. Like in the cafe’s cupcakes, they crumble a bit when you bend them very slightly; breaking off pieces crumbles it a little. If I made this in a cupcake, it would be perfect.

I know I’ve been talking about pastry school, but some recent developments have caused me to think that I won’t going when the fall rolls around… don’t worry though. Positive developments 🙂

By the way, I’m watching Borat on USA. I didn’t realize they could actually put that movie on television. Oh wait, the film got neutered to significantly that it had a sex change. OH WAIT, nevermind. They kept a lot of important stuff there…