Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Some Boys in the Kitchen


The coincidence of the release of 250 Treasured Country Desserts by Andrea Chesman and Fran Raboff and a rainy weekend with the boys seemed too good to be true. My chef-husband was off to the horse races at Saratoga, so I knew I had the run of the oven and the pantry and there wouldn't be any comments flung out from behind my back like, "Are you sure you want to use that recipe?" or "I don't know if I'd use milk chocolate for that." First up was Ben, the older, who requested brownies; since we didn't have baking chocolate, I was thrilled that Andrea included a recipe in the book for Cocoa Brownies, for which we used the prized Scharffen Berger cocoa.

That's Ben checking the batter for imperfections. . . .
No, really — he's about to dive in.


And here is the first taste, hot from the pan.
They were amazingly delish.


Then the younger Greeman requested Chocolate Chip Cookies, and I was really interested to see how Andrea's stacked up against the back-of-the-chocolate-chip-bag recipe for Original Toll House Cookies.

Carefully adding the flour to the creamed butter and sugars . . .


The all-important big cup o' chocolate chips . . .

Gratuitous product-placement shot with
our first batch out of the oven . . . and

A happy first-baseman

The cookies were wonderful, and the recipe made a really generous 75 or so cookies, although the book noted that if we had made smaller cookies we should have expected about 100 (which seems like a lot of chocolate-chip cookies to have on one's kitchen counter). And to me they were better by far than the Toll House originals.

The best part? Aside from licking the spoon, the beaters, and the mixing bowls for two yummy chocolate projects? Watching two boys have the best time cooking with me and not once saying, "Can we go on the computer?"

No comments:

LinkWithin