Friday, November 30, 2012

Welcome!

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Let’s just get this out of the way – I do not claim to be a writer (although I am a stickler for spelling so while I hope you won’t find any spelling errors you will likely find grammatical errors). I have a passion for cooking and baking and completed a Certificate of Culinary Arts at Bellingham Technical College back in 2001. I decided to go to Culinary School after dropping out of Western Washington University (just a year or so shy of my Bachelor’s Degree). The Food Network was taking off back then and I started to entertain the thought of going to school for cooking. My experience up until starting culinary school was following the recipe on the back of a Kraft Mac and Cheese box. I sat on the idea for one year and then decided to give it a go. Culinary school was by far the hardest school I have ever been through and I was definitely the most inexperienced student out of the 30ish students in the program  (99% of the students were already working in the industry so I was the 1%).  I had quite the learning curve but I gave it 110% and passed with flying colors. I completed three quarters of culinary and one quarter of baking. At first I hated the thought of baking however I ended up loving it and baking became one of my favorite things to do (plus I have quite the sweet tooth so it was a win-win).  

Since graduating I have never worked professionally in the industry however throughout the years I have played around with different recipes but never to the extent I desired. I recently left my job at a digital marketing agency in downtown Seattle to stay at home with my newborn son, Nash, who is now 6 months old. One of my favorite things to eat while pregnant was sweet baked treats (i.e. peanut cookies from Dahlia Bakery).  Now that I am home it’s not so easy to just run to the Dahlia Bakery so I started baking (sometimes daily) so that I could have sweets at my disposal. There is nothing better then a warm chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven. My passion for cooking and baking has resurfaced with a vengeance and it’s also something I look forward to doing with my son.

This past Thanksgiving I stumbled upon The Dahlia Bakery cookbook by Tom Douglas in a little store in Chelan called the Culinary Apple. There was a stack of autographed copies that my mom pointed out. I instantly opened the book to see if the peanut butter cookie recipe was there and there it was (page 30)… SOLD! To purchase your own copy on Amazon click the following link: http://amzn.to/WQ999t.

This blog is dedicated to my husband and son. I want to thank my husband for having a high metabolism and being able to eat endless amounts of food that I cook and for taking the extra sweets into work so I don’t eat them.  I also want to give a shout out to my son for being patient in the exersaucer while I bake and falling asleep to the sound of the beaters in his vibrator chair.

My goal is to make every single recipe in the book (not in any particular order). I will document which recipe I choose, if I followed it exactly, and how it turned out. I promise to be honest with my reviews – good and bad. If it turns out to be a flop I will try again and if it fails more then three times I will be contacting Mr. Douglas to find out what I am doing wrong. He has promised in the book that each recipe has been tested again and again so I am going to hold him to it. 

I commit to making two recipes per week plus or minus two based on my son’s nap schedule and activities for the week. I also plan to mix in some of my other favorite recipes just for fun.

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