I'm back! What felt like a lifetime was really only 10 days. In those 10 days, I made multiple batches of cookie dough, ate an insane amount of sugar, and worked straight through a holiday. If you've worked in a bakery, YOU KNOW what holiday weekends are like. So I'm pretty tired, but also feeling accomplished. This course has immediately taught me something. I never felt that it was necessary to create a backstory to any recipe, hell I'd CHOOSE for things to be impersonal. And that's just about when I realized how nervous I was to put my heart into something with the chance of someone else not enjoying it the way that I did. I think that's a story for a different day, but I just never realized that it had found it's way into my baking and creative process too. Regardless, the space for creativity that you are encouraged to give yourself is exciting. Plus, you aren't alone! There's a whole peer group of nationwide bakers who are doing the exact same thing that you are, and you all get to talk about it together. So cookies. We started with the Milkbar Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow cookie recipe, and yes it is as intense as it sounds. I had a friend over while I made this first batch and while I'm adding the ingredients I hear over my shoulder, "that's a LOT of sugar". And it was - about 400g just in the dough alone. It used a technical process that was new to me, and was definitely very interesting to make. While it was a bit too sweet for even my taste, it was a great example of turning a story directly into a recipe. I completely understood how the qualities and combination of tastes related to this particular backstory that the Milkbar team created. This first recipe helped get the gears turning by trying a Milkbar classic - but I was ready to move onto my ideas. We started with a brainstorm session, and after 10 minutes I had an entire page filled with ingredients, lines, scribbles and things pointing to other things. It was no holds barred up in here. My plan was to take the bright smell of the orange blossoms that bloom in Arizona, and translate that into a cookie. Something soft and citrus-y, with tons of the texture that Tosi is known for. I had learned from one of my last jobs that fruity pebbles can really be traced back to orange and citrus flavors, and for the sake of truly experimenting, I went for it. With a base dough of cereal substitute and another with using lemon-y animal crackers, I went through my many combinations. After a while, I landed on my final recipe. How fun are those colors!
I'll be starting the next project tomorrow, and will see you back here after section 2 is done!
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