In honor of Halloween, I slaved away last night and made Halloween cookies. After I got started, I realized I only had three gel colors left… blue, purple and bright yellow. So they are not quite as colorful as I was planning, but there was just no way I was going to the store for food coloring.

Decorating cookies brought me back to when I worked as a Pastry Chef. It seemed there was always a reason to decorate cookies or cakes. Anyway, this is a really great cookie recipe. Its a bit soft when rolling out, so you must chill it well, but the flavor is very good. This recipe is adapted from Cookies Unlimited by Nick Malgieri.
{ Read the rest }

Although this Swiss roll is not French, I’m still calling it a “French Pastry” as its the same size of a traditional petit four. So if you’re French and offended… pardon moi!  :) I used the same Genoise recipe as the Chocolate Layer Cakes from the last post.

{ Read the rest }

We had this past weekend off… no weddings, no photo shoots, just relaxing and hanging out with friends. So of course, I baked something. Originally, I had planned to bake a Genoise sheet and make a multi-layered chocolate ganache filled cake (aka Petit Four). Then, when I took it out of the oven, I thought, oooh… what about a lovely swiss roll? Vat to do, Vat to do??? So I made both. I split up the cake and made half of it into the Petit Fours, and the other half into the Swiss roll. You will have to come back tomorrow to see pictures of the Swiss Roll, though! :)

{ Read the rest }