Tuesdays With Dorie #1

This was my first week baking for "Tuesdays with Dorie". Checking out the website and looking at members' blogs and photos, I determined some of the people in the online baking club are professional-no really, they have their own businesses in the food industry. So let's just say I felt like I had a lot to live up to. Not that this is a competition, I just didn't want to have "the ugly cookie". I also determined that I needed to add some photos to tell my cookie story. Well, things got a bit out of hand with the camera in the kitchen. I'm pretty sure I uploaded over 100 photos and felt kind of creepy as I sat in front of my computer oogling each one. But I've had an addiction to photos of food for awhile, sitting up late thumbing through cookbooks and I'm certainly not going to seek help for this problem now. Thankfully, for you, I've included just a few to go along with the cookie story.

I've had Baking for a couple months now. I got it for my mother as a gift and she said, "You have to get this book for yourself.", so being the good daughter that I am, I went about purchasing myself a copy. I've made a couple things already: the Yogurt Marmalade Cake I've been making for a couple years since it was featured in a Bon Appetit section Dorie did on desserts French women actually make at home and last month I tried out the jam filled Linzer Sables.

Saturday morning I set out to make the dough. Everything was going fine until I took the chocolate out to chop. I only had about half of the bittersweet chocolate I needed. I know-this wouldn't have been an issue if I had my mise-en-place, but since I'm not in culinary school, missing ingredients happens from time to time so I just supplemented with semi-sweet. No harm done. At least at that point I was hoping no harm would be done. I let the dough setup in the fridge overnight. The next morning it had definitely taken on a more golden color and I let it rest on the counter while the oven came up to temp.

My favorite disher, (for ice cream and cookie dough), is a 2 tablespoon scoop so that's what I used. I thought they were the perfect size. Maybe that's because I feel better eating 6 cookies rather than 3, regardless of their diameter.

I checked them for 15 minutes, but ended up leaving them in around 17 minutes. Maybe my oven's off temp since I don't currently have a thermometer in there, but they were golden brown on the inside and had a great texture once they cooled.

So I had one that was warm and I had one, (or two), when they cooled. I hear hey're good before bed and also good for breakfast, well brunch.

There was one casualty-an adventurous cookie tried to explore the world around the cooling rack-but it turned out to be just as tasty as its round little friends.

I'm excited to check out the other TWD blogs to see how everyone else fared and I'll keep my fingers crossed that I didn't have "the ugly cookie" in class.