Raspberry brown butter deep dish chocolate chip cookie (for 1)

Wow, it’s been awhile! I didn’t mean to be gone so long, but between working such long hours that I neither had the time, nor the energy, to cook anything whatsoever, training for a new job, five (5!) weeks of vacation that included a trip to Montreal and one whole month lounging in America and slowly settling back into a new routine of commuting and working full-time, cooking and blogging about it has been complicated. Luckily for you I’ve got a lovely single-serving cookie recipe for you to make up for my absence!

Cinnamon chocolate macarons

One of my absolute favorite things about France is macarons. They’re the epitome of everything I love in a dessert: both slightly crunchy and chewy, like a mixture of cake and cookies with a fabulous texture, small enough that I can eat several of them and try tons of different flavors and diverse enough that they never get old. Even though they’re incredibly expensive, buying a small box of macarons always seems worth it and makes my day. Macarons are a notoriously tricky pastry to make at home and up until now I’ve mostly been content to buy them in specialized shops. Recently I learned a trick that seemed as though it might help me conquer the home-made macaron and decided to give it a go at home.

Mini dark chocolate moelleux (lava cakes)

This recipe is a real winner. It’s one of the easiest recipes in my repertoire yet the results seem so fancy. Lava cake seems like one of those desserts that we can only enjoy in a restaurant, somehow just too complicated to try and make at home. A rare indulgence. I’ll admit, these are so rich and fabulous that it’s probably a good thing that they remain a rare indulgence, but making them at home should no longer be a roadblock.

Chocolate coconut milk cake

Poor Jérôme is always being subjected to my endless food experimentations. I obviously do have dishes that I make time and time again, when I don’t feel like thinking too much or over-exerting myself in the kitchen. That being said, there is so much out there to discover and I have so many recipes ready to be tested in my Evernote, that I have a hard time making the same things all the time. In the beginning of our relationship, I couldn’t get over his French chocolate cake. More of a brownie, it was rich and simple and amazing. I still love it, but when he wanted to make one a few weeks ago with out one remaining bar of baking chocolate, I couldn’t help but scan my recipe list to make sure there wasn’t something better, newer, more interesting. I found this chocolate coconut milk cake, and once Jérôme was on board, I was in the kitchen making it.

Double chocolate macarons

This post is an ode to my fabulous new Kitchenaid Artisan, and a special thanks to my Mom who gifted it to me for my birthday. I tried my hand at macarons once before, a few years ago. They are notoriously tricky to master and any number of things can go wrong during the preparation and the cooking process. From what I can tell in my personal adventures, one of the most important factors is the quality of the meringue or egg whites. Beating nice stiff peaks into egg whites was just not possible during my first go at macarons, but with the help of my new Black Beauty, it was a cinch.