Coasting with Cookies

This was a nice break after the 2 day affair with croissants.  I was afraid these would turn out flat (as chocolate chip cookies usually do when they have a cup of butter and only 2 cups of flour) and in fact these did, but overall they were a very good cookie.  I love the idea of making these mocha and using a menagerie of chocolates.  For me that meant I could use up little bags of white, bittersweet and semisweet chocolate that were taking up space in my fridge. I left the mocha out of half the batch so they would be kid friendly and so my husband I wouldn't eat all of them!

Crossing the finish line with Croissants

This was a hard one!  I've baked a wedding cake before and I thought this was harder.  I guess harder in that it took more physical strength (my arms are sore today) and croissants are just plain high maintenance. I had a heck of a time getting the dough to roll to that magic 24 to 26 inches. The ruler quickly became my friend and enemy.  Friend when I reached 24 inches and enemy when it would show me I had to pull out some more muscle to makde the dough stretch some more.  It was a stubborn dough. I also had a issue of the butter seeping out of them when the were rising in the oven.  Obviously I made my oven too hot.  But then the butter also seeped out when I baked a second batch and let them rise on the counter.

So was as it worth it?  I didn't try one because I'm participating in a Whole30 challenge so all that flour is out for me.  My son loved them.  My daughter was non-committal and my husband commented that they were quite a bit smaller than the ones at our favorite French bakery.  But I'm glad I did make them and more glad to be finished.  Ever since I saw Martha Stewart make croissant dough on her show years ago, I have wanted to at least say "yeah, I've made croissants."  No biggie.  (but actually we all know it was!)