Desserts | Sunny Days, Good Food ~ by Kathy Strahs

Dominique Ansel’s Mini-Me’s

February 4, 2015 by Kathy Strahs Leave a Comment

I expected I’d leave Dominique Ansel’s book signing eager to try my hand at making his famous Cronuts™, but I ended up feeling a bit inspired to bake my way through his entire cookbook, Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes. It’s not that I can handle all of these desserts in my house (although, I’m not bothered by this prospect) but I feel like by the time I work through all of the incredible technique that Chef Ansel handholds you through in great detail I won’t just know how to pull off these showstoppers…I’m going to be a way better baker.
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My Mom’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

February 7, 2014 by Kathy Strahs 2 Comments

Before I ever watched Julia, Ina or Giada, I watched Nancy…my mom. She cooked dinner for my dad, sisters and I pretty much every night (and breakfast and lunch too, for that matter), a feat I did not fully appreciate until I had a busy (and clamoring!) family of my own.

My mom cooked and baked all kinds of things when I was growing up, but there came a point in the ’80s when she really honed in on chocolate chip cookies. The empire of Mrs. Fields was on the rise — we never left the mall without a half dozen “semisweet, no nuts”. She took it on as a challenge to tinker with her own chocolate chip cookie recipe, which we fully supported as taste testers. To this day, she continues to tweak the ratios of butter to sugar to flour, but as of right now My Mom’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies are pretty perfect, if you ask me.

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