Chocolate Chip Cookies (with a touch of peanut butter)

This recipe is from the New York Times Desserts Cookbook which is a ton of fun! Really, it's a very interesting cookbook, with a ton of great looking recipes. This is the first thing I've made from the cookbook, and they were excellent. They are basically chocolate chip cookies, but with a little bit of unsweetened peanut butter added in. They didn't taste peanut-y but they did have a more complex flavor than usual chocolate chip cookies. They were nice cookies, not my favorite chocolate chip cookie out there, but I really did like them!

James Beard Chefs and Champagne

From left to right: Susan Ungaro, the James Beard Foundation president,
two recipients of other scholarships, me, and Emeril!

Yesterday night I went to the James Beard Chefs & Champagne Event at the Wolffer Estate in the Hamptons! I was invited to attend because I won the James Beard Wolffer Scholarship for Food and Wine Studies. It was AMAZING!

Emeril Lagasse was being honored, so I got to meet him! He was really nice! I kind-of expected that, because he always seems nice on his cooking shows, but still, he was busy and it was really, really hot out (and the event was in a tent with only a few large fans) and I'm just a random scholarship recipient while he's Emeril. I have to say, I have always wanted to meet Emeril ever since he signed books at my local Barns and Noble on a school night, so I couldn't wait to meet him. (I did get a signed book though.) So this was especially special because I've been waiting to meet him for about 14 years!

Last year, they honored Martha Stewart (a fellow Barnard aluma). She was here this year, and I got to meet her as well. I love Martha! Anyone who knows me, knows I love baking, organizing, jewelry making, color coding, knitting, and general crafting. So I think Martha is just amazing, because somehow she makes crafting and organizing cool--well not cool, but something! She was quite nice too, which I suppose given her slightly aloof persona was more of a surprise than Emeril being nice.

In addition to meeting two people who I am in awe of, I also got to eat some amazing food! There were about 40 chefs there, each making one special dish. I had amazing creole shrimp (which Emeril handed to me!), a lobster sandwich and homemade potato chips from Per Se, a great chocolate and cherry cake from Epicerie Boulud, and much more. Not to harp on the star spotting, but I also saw Daniel Boulud, who I tried to talk to but never got to, and Richard Gere and Carey Lowell, because their restaurant was one of the ones that sent a chef. In case you were wondering, Richard Gere looks even better in person!

My mom and I had an absolutely amazing time last night. And of course the night is made even more special by the fact that I did actually go because I won a scholarship! I'm honored and thrilled to have won the Wolffer scholarship. And I got to go to a soiree in the Hamptons and meet Emeril and Martha!

Me, Martha Stewart (I love what she was wearing)
and the two other scholarship recipients.

Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have to say, while I really like Ina Garten, I am hesitant to make her desserts. They are always good, but often her recipe instructions aren't quite right and I have deal with something going wrong during the process. I think it's because she's more of a culinary chef than a pastry chef, but she tries to make her pastry recipes quite grand. But still, they do always come out delicious, so I took a chance and made her Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Barefoot Contessa Parties. They were quite simple to make and really, really good to eat. The cookies were tender and very chocolaty and not too sweet. The white chocolate chips added a lovely sweetness that cut through the slightly bitter cocoa cookie.  Yum!

Restaurant Week at Le Caprice

Eton Mess at Le Caprice

I love restaurant week! It's a great way to try out nice restaurants without spending a bundle.  I always do lunch, since at $24.07 (plus tax and tip) if you don't do drinks it's a great buy. So my mom and I tried out Le Caprice.  Well I tried it, my mom's already been there and loved it!

The meal was superb! But that's not what I want to talk about...I want to talk about the dessert, which was absolutely amazing! There were two choices on the menu so my mom got one and I got the other. Hers was a blueberry and peach pie.  It was actually a mini pie rather than a slice of a larger one. Now pie might not be the right word, it was a wonderful slightly cakey thing where the fruit was baked into a sort of light, nutty, cake-like tart/pie.  Whatever it was, it was excellent (and I don't even like blueberries). It was served with a very nice vanilla ice cream on top.

I had the Eton Mess. I usually like Eton Mess, but it doesn't thrill me. This thrilled me! It was made with fresh, not-too-sweet whipped cream; a perfect berry sauce; fresh strawberries; and perfect, crisp meringues.  Plus there was one piece of what I'd guess was a homemade strawberry jelly candy. I'm not entirely sure what it was doing there (as far as I know it's not a part of traditional Eton Mess) but it was really nice, so I'm not complaining.

Look at the lovely meringues on top. There was a bunch broken up in it too.

After we finished the desserts, they brought us a plate of lovely chocolate truffle logs. You see, my mom had mentioned that we were celebrating a number of different things including my graduation and acceptance to the FCI (because she was very proud and telling everyone), so they ended up doing that for me as a congrats gift!  I was stuffed, but that didn't stop me from eating them! They were wonderful dark chocolate ganache truffles coated in a thin shell of dark chocolate and cocoa powder. Yum, yum!

Cakey Chocolate Brownies

Another excellent chocolate brownie from Fat Witch Brownies. Not my favorite of all time, but really, really good. They were actually quite cakey, which is very pleasant, but let's face it, I prefer fudgy brownies.  Still, they were a very nice texture, and quite light and moist--like cake, not like dry brownie (which is what I find many so-called cakey brownies are). The taste was pretty darn good as well!  They were very, very chocolaty but not overly sweet.  Overall, it's a really nice brownie!

Blondies with Chocolate Chunks

I'm not a huge blondie fan. I feel like why have blondies when you could have chocolate brownies. But I do like them, and I thought it would be fun to change things up. So I tried these blondies with chocolate chunks (I figured at least I'm getting some chocolate). They are from the Fat Witch Brownies cookbook and they are as good as all their brownies! They were sweet and chewy and moist, with just the right amount of chocolate. I just have one more word to say: yum!

Apple Pie with Crumble Crust

What's more all-American than Apple Pie?! So, I figured it was perfect for July Fourth and fireworks watching. I found this pie in Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. It isn't the traditional double crust apple pie, instead it's made with an almond crumble crust and topping. It's excellent!  I love almond and apple together, and I absolutely love crumble toppings so this was great. Plus, I wasn't really in the mood to deal with proper pie crust dough. Well, it was really good...the crust, the almonds, the apples, the cinnamon, it just worked so well!

The crust/crumble is made with ground almonds, so I used almond flour which I picked up at the grocery store. Basically almond flour is finely ground almonds. So why don't I make my own? Well, I haven't worked out how to yet, every time I try to grind almonds in my food processor I end up with almond paste, which is good, but not right. I know that's because of the oils in the nut, but I don't know how to work around it.  Maybe I can't in my home kitchen, or maybe I just haven't learnt how to yet, I'll let you know if I ever work it out!