Bugeyed Guide: June 2010

Food = Love ya too (Dessert)

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 cooking, louisiana

I finished off the Birthday Feast with cookies instead of birthday cake. Why?

Last time, my dad and I were in NYC we fell in love with Levain Bakery cookies. They will change your life. Just check out the Yelp reviews. 600 people have taken time out of their lives to write reviews about how good these cookies are. So when I got home I did some research to find a copycat recipe and decided to try it out as a special treat for the birthday feast. It went well. It's hard to go wrong with Ghiradelli chocolate morsels, sugar, and cocoa. The verdict is that they were good, but they weren't Levain Bakery good. Oh well, I'm heading to NYC in November to bite into the gooey center of the holy grail of cookies. Until then these bad boys will have to do.

Fold Butter and Sugar

Fold Flour, Eggs, Cocoa, and Baking Powder

Blend Ghirardelli chocolate morsels by hand

Bake for 16 minutes

Enjoy!

Floating in ice cream, these cookies were superb, but to put ice cream on a real Levain Bakery cookie would be a sin.

Find the copycat recipe on My Baking Addiction.

Food = Love ya too (Main Course)

Sunday, June 27, 2010 cooking, louisiana

As you know in my post Food = Love, my dad cooked a birthday feast for me back in April. So to share the love, I did the same for him. For Father's Day, I whipped up my new specialty, chocolate waffles.

Today, we celebrated his and my step-mom's birthdays. I tried to make it as nice as they did for mine. Key word, tried. My shortcomings were a lack of homemade bread and a last minute run to the grocery for ice cream, but all in all everything tasted great.

Prepping takes the most time

Got these the first week of the oil spill. Breaks my heart that I may never get these beautiful Gulf Shrimp again.

Paprika, Cayenne and Salt... Sauteed in Butter and Olive Oil

Smoked Sausage, Yellow Onions, Green Onions, and Garlic

Finish off with tomatoes and shrimp stock

Grits with butter and white cheddar cheese

Plate and garnish with Parsley

Happy Family

I am a terribly slow cook so it took me all day, but the finished product was so good and so worth it. Everyone, including my dad, loved it. The recipe comes straight out of Emeril's new cookbook, Farm to Fork, which I won from NOLA-Eats! I'll follow up this post with dessert!