I didn’t choose the baking life… the baking life chose me.

Seriously–for someone who doesn’t really enjoy baked goods that much, I sure make a hell of a lot of them. And now that I bake as an almost-full time job, I am a bona fide slave to the oven. You’d think that I’d keep a large radius of distance between me and my new master on my days off, right? Alas, my friend: that is incorrect!

But I don’t mind jumping into my own kitchen after leaving the kitchen at work to prepare more food, which I suppose speaks to my passion for food and cooking. It’s still just as fun to me as it was before I started working at this bakery; perhaps even more so since I have complete control over what I make in my own house. When I’m at work, I’m following someone else’s recipes and directions–which, while educational, certainly doesn’t offer the same kind of creative stimulus that making recipes at home creates.

So how is baking for a living going for me? Friends ask me whether I still enjoy baking, and the answer is yes. Whether I’m at work or I’m at home, in the end, I’m still making food for others’ enjoyment–and that’s why I find it so gratifying.

Speaking of others’ enjoyment, that is definitely the purpose of these cookies. I can eat maybe one or two of these before I’m chocolate-ed out; based on the reception these had at a recent game night with friends, I am in the minority. I’m normally not a fan of white chocolate, but I really enjoy it in small bursts with this very chocolate cookie. And the best part about this recipe? It makes cookies with crispy edges and a chewy center. Definitely best on the day they’re baked, but you’ll still find them delicious for up to a week.

Recipe adapted from Remodelaholic.

Eight more days until Christmas. I can’t believe it! I don’t feel anywhere near ready for the trip back to Colorado, let alone for the whirlwind of activities that will be taking place over the next few days. James & I are going to Disneyland on Thursday–he bought us annual passes to the park, woohoo!!–and we’ll be having some of his fellow residents over for a holiday dinner party on Friday. The weekend will be a flurry of activity; we’ll be getting ready and buying last-minute presents before we fly out on Monday night. And when we finally make it down to my parents’ house on the 24th, we’ll be hitting the ground running; church, dinner, and a baking and cooking frenzy until guests arrive for our holiday potluck on the 25th. I think somewhere in that chaos will be presents… or possibly a few minutes to stop and enjoy ourselves and the fact that we can finally be together as a family on Christmas for the first time in two years. It sounds tiring and overwhelming, to say the least.

I can’t wait.

If I get the chance, I’ll try and make this hot chocolate for everyone (somewhere between baking and sleeping, that is). It’s decadent and rich–the servings are small, and for good reason. I know that there’s a lot of cream in it, and the healthy individual in you cries at the thought of its fat content. But hey, friends–it’s the holidays! The fat we’re putting on our hips is January’s problem! (At least, that’s what I tell myself when I go to town on the holiday fare.)

Rich, creamy chocolate with a hint of bitter cocoa and a sweet aftertaste of peppermint… perfect for those holiday nights with family. Now I’m tempted to make another batch for myself…

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not the biggest fan of sweets–which, if you follow the pattern of the recipes I post on here, seems pretty hypocritical. I think the biggest word in my tag cloud for this site is “BAKING” as of today (which is very closely followed by “DESSERT” of course.) So why all of the sweets love on this site? James has always joked about how “Baking Holiday” is a more apropos name for what I write about on here–and there is a whole body of evidence on my Recipes page to back up his claim.

I myself may not eat a lot of sweets or candy, but I do love how other people react to desserts and baked goods. Someone may love cheeseburgers–yet another may prefer quinoa salad. Tastes vary across a wide spectrum when savory foods are involved. Yet desserts seem to transcend these preferences; who doesn’t love a sweet note at the end of a meal? Baking to me is really baking for others to enjoy.

Baking is also simple in theory but complicated in practice. To really achieve optimal results, it’s important to know your tools, your techniques and your ingredients. Does your oven heat up evenly? When you mix your sugar into the butter, are you watching for total homogeneity? Have you tested your baking soda recently for its continued ability to cause a rising reaction? (Yep, my science geek is showing!) When you cook something and you mess up–you can usually supplement it with something else in order to salvage it from the trash. Once you place your baked good in the oven… well, if you made a mistake in the preparation, it is mostly a lost cause. The intricacy of the steps present a challenge to me, and I love rising to the occasion.

Lastly… and this is probably the most shallow reason I love baking desserts so much… desserts are pretty. So very pretty, and fun to photograph. Honestly, the only reason this isn’t a dessert blog (and the only reason my husband and I aren’t roly-poly) is because I don’t like eating sweets. And hopefully there is some self-preservation ingrained into that preference as well…

These s’mores cookies are a crowd-pleaser. They’re chewy on the inside and out. They’re liberally mixed with gooey, slightly bitter chocolate and salty-sweet graham cracker crumbles. They’re dotted with soft, pillowy marshmallows that are placed on top after baking to imitate the texture of a s’more–instead of meting into the cookie and being ignored. The knowledge of your kitchen and tools is what keeps the cookies chewy, and damn if they aren’t picturesque to look at. Baking is amazing, indeed.

In order to keep the dough easy to work with, make sure you place the bowl in the fridge while the baking sheet is in use–the colder the dough, the easier it is to roll it into pretty dough balls that turn into perfect round cookies when baked. Make sure you check on them 2 minutes before the suggested bake time if you’re unfamiliar with how quickly your oven cooks–10 minutes works for my oven, but it may not for yours. And if you’re really looking for an authentic campfire s’mores experience, you can eat the cookies after only a few minutes of cooling. I hope you enjoy these cookies as much as my friends do–I doubled this recipe and I still don’t think the cookies survived a full day.

High Altitude Adjustment (for my lovely Colorado friends): Add 2 Tbsp. of AP flour & 2 Tbsp. of water, subtract 1 tsp. of white sugar from the recipe. Set the oven to 365ºF (+15ºF from recipe) and reduce the bake time by 2-3 minutes.

A few weekends ago, I was given a bounty of persimmons from my aunt. Her sister has a large persimmon tree in her yard that apparently inundates their family with persimmons come fall–her family, in turn, tries to give away persimmons before they spoil. When she asked me on the phone about my persimmon preferences, I figured I was getting maybe 2 or 3 at most. Imagine my surprise when I met her & her family for lunch and saw ~10-12 persimmons in a bag for me!

I was determined to not let this gift go to waste and soon set about looking for recipes involving persimmon. To be honest, however–there isn’t a large amount of literature dedicated to baking or cooking with persimmons. Its subtle sweetness is best carried through the fresh fruit itself–the meatiness of the flesh gives the impression of an almost savory sweetness. I finally settled on a recipe that I found by Martha Stewart–the household goddess herself. How can you go wrong with her? (Well, let’s forget that little stock trading fiasco of yesteryear of course…)

Because my Fuyu persimmons were hard as rocks I puréed them with my food processor before carrying on with the recipe. If I had the choice, I would wait until they were much softer and more ripe then mash the fruit instead; this would have left more chunks of persimmon in the consistency of the bread itself. But after waiting 2 weeks to make this recipe–no kidding, I really waited  in hopes the fruit would ripen!–I figured that I would rather carry through than wait any longer. NOTE: you can only use hard persimmons if they are Fuyu persimmons, or the persimmons with a flat bottom. If you have Hachiya persimmons, which taper to a point at the bottom, you must wait until they are fully ripe and soft before baking with them–otherwise they are quite sour.

The brioche used was from a recipe by Dorie Greenspan, from the fantastic cookbook Around My French Table. (I received it as a gift from my younger brother a few Christmases ago and have been in love with it ever since.) Yes, that’s right–I made my own brioche! It was just as finicky as I had anticipated, and I definitely found that my experience with baking my own bread in the past was a huge resource and help for baking brioche. Honestly, I think the most important part about making brioche is having a stand mixer. Trying to make brioche without one is downright masochistic. I didn’t document my brioche adventure because it was my first attempt, but I’m sure you’ll see something pop up on this site in the future about it..

I’ve not been a huge fan of bread pudding in the past–I found it dense and overpowering–but I think I’ve been eating the wrong types or at the wrong places, because this recipe is delicious. I loved the subtlety of the white chocolate and persimmon; if anything, I would probably reduce the amount of cinnamon and nutmeg by a little more so that they don’t overpower the main flavors. I’ve made a few changes to the recipe and the methods involved in order to get a more consistent bread pudding than my first attempt–I hope you find the recipe helpful and easy to follow! I also cut the recipe in half since James & I can barely finish one serving each on our own.

This dessert would make a great statement at the end of any autumn night with a cup of coffee or glass of milk; a lot of the other folks who have made this pudding have served it as an elegant dessert after Thanksgiving dinner. Whichever way you choose to serve it, I hope you enjoy it!

Recipe adapted from Martha Stewart.

I really like my optometrist and his office—I just saw him recently for my second check-up (wow, almost two years of living in LA already?) and I actually had fun. No, really! Instead of saying ‘do you prefer 1 or 2’ for various eyeglass prescriptions, he used fruits (apple or orange?). I was laughing so much during the exam that the Eye Puffs of Doom—er, I mean the pressured air to screen for glaucoma—were minimally startling. And I got re-educated in eye anatomy (aqueous vs. vitreous humor)—anatomy just geeks me out, period. I love it.

I don’t even remember how we got to the subject of cooking and baking, but we talked at length about it… and I made my mind up, right there and then, to bring in cookies for his office when I picked up my order of contact lenses. I bake all of the time anyway—and since James is constantly complaining that I’m going to either make him: a) fat and/or b) diabetic, I figured I could share the wealth. So on a bright and early Saturday morning, I pulled this recipe from a list of ones I’ve been meaning to make for a while and went for it!

I dropped the cookies off a few hours later and they looked genuinely happy to receive them.

“I can’t believe you remembered!” my optometrist said with a smile on his face. Totally made my day.

I actually ran off to do another errand in the same area and ended up walking past the office on my way back to my car, but I was too nervous to run in and ask how they liked the cookies… but judging by my friends’ reactions to the leftover batch at the Superbowl gathering I had the next day, I think they probably liked them?

The beautiful images for this particular recipe inspired me to actually purchase the cookie cutters with scalloped edges… so pretty! I’m sure I’ll find other uses for these cutters… right? Right?

All jokes aside, I had no issues following the recipe and felt no need to make any adjustments to any of the amounts. I did use the weight measurements as opposed to the volume ones (except for the small amounts), but only because I’m trying to wean myself off of volume recipes—I think replicating recipes will be much more accurate using this method.

I also tried cookies at different levels of thickness and I preferred the cookie dough rolled out to ¼ inch—then again, I also have the Sadistic Gas Oven of Overbakedom, so the thinner cookies might be more up your alley. I liked how they softened slightly the next day after being kept in a Tupperware yet didn’t lose any of the characteristic ‘shortbread’ consistency.

The cookies themselves are fantastic—I only used 100g of sugar to emphasize the bittersweet chocolate I used (60% cacao, Ghiradelli) and felt it made the cookies even easier to snack on because the sweetness didn’t linger on the tongue. I think it would be interesting to add espresso powder to the recipe next time I attempt to make it, namely because I’m not sure these cookies can get any more intensely chocolate than they already are!

Original Recipe: Smitten Kitchen