I use nothing but the best ingredients. My cookies are always baked fresh. I price cookies so that you cannot make them at home for any less. And I still give cookies away.
No matter how bad your day is, when you start talking about cookies or cakes or pies, or you bring someone cookies, there's just not bad news. The worst news is, 'Hey, there's sugar in that.'
I think cookies are sort of the unsung sweet, you know? They're incredibly popular. But everybody thinks of cakes and pies and fancier desserts before they think cookies. A plate of cookies is a great way to end dinner and really nice to share at the holidays.
When the urge to bake strikes, it strikes hard and fast. You want to get in the kitchen and start breaking eggs right away, so it can be real buzzkill to find out that the recipe you're using calls for room-temperature butter.
Temperature is the key to making a smooth custard butter cream. Some add the butter when the mixture's still hot but it tends to split and you end up with a grainy result. Wait for it to cool.
I grew up in Louisiana, a lot of carbohydrates, fried foods, all very good. Butter, lots of homemade cakes and cookies. Here I am in Los Angeles and just really educating myself about food. Once you know better, you do better.
I burned down my dorm room freshman year. I was that kid. When you live in small quarters with two guys, the smell in the room starts to take over a little bit. So we decided we wanted our room to smell like fresh baked cookies. So we order a cookie-dough-scented candle off eBay, and then we accidentally burn our room down with that candle.
I love to make Christmas cookies, chocolate chips, peanut butter cookies, pecan pies, coconut macaroons, fruitcakes.
I do not know how I developed the interest for baking. If I am not shooting, I head back home and start baking my favourite cakes and cookies.
My brother liked sewing and sculpting and making things, and my sister sewed and painted and cooked and baked. She's a professional baker now and makes the most gorgeous sculpture-like cakes. She's the queen of wedding cakes in the Lake Tahoe area.
You need chocolate with enough cocoa butter. If your chocolate is high-quality, with a good content of cocoa butter, the chocolate will melt inside and create layering. That's very important. Those chocolate morsels don't melt. So, for the best chocolate chip cookies, I use the chocolate we sell, which is a 60 percent cocoa.
When I'm developing a recipe with brown butter - I know how much butter I want in the end and I so I start with more butter than I'll need.
It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.
For a decade, I was a stay-at-home mom. I sent my husband to his law office, sat on PTA boards and baked cookies - great cookies. All of a sudden, I had no husband, no job, few prospects, and two small children who had grown accustomed to eating.
A meat temperature gauge is a priceless tool. You can get a very inexpensive one at most hardware or sporting goods stores, which will easily help you determine the temperature of your meat so it is not over or undercooked. Pork is normally done at about 160, internal temperature. Steaks are cooked medium rare from 145 to 150. 165, medium. Well done is about 175, internal temperature.
The new specialty at the Iowa fair this year is fried butter on a stick. Of course, if you're like me and you want like to eat healthy, get your stick of butter baked.