friday with dorie

Here it is, the post I alluded to and have been so excited to share. To be honest I needed a few days to soak it all in and just enjoy the fact that it really happened. OK, ok... here goes :)

Two weeks ago, the NYC food blogging community was abuzz about Dorie Greenspan's CookieBar shop that popped up just in time for Valentine's Day. If you're not a food blogger or avid home baker, you might not know Dorie - here's a quick recap: she's a long-time contributor to Bon Appetit magazine, she's written 9 cookbooks (including the Cafe Boulud Cookbook with Daniel Boulud and Baking with Julia with... um... Julia Child) and won 5 James Beard awards for them. Oh, and someone named a blog after her. With her 10th cookbook Around My French Table on the way, she and her son Josh decided to give Manhattan cookie fans a treat with some of her famous recipes (including sables and world peace cookies) ready for purchase.

My co-worker and I made the trek uptown last Tuesday at lunch to pick up some tasty treats and I was thrilled when we walked in the door and spotted Dorie (and her tall, dark and handsome son) behind the counter. I waffled through my cookie order and my less star-struck and more charming friend finished our order and got me out the door before I embarrassed myself with any "OMG! I'm such a faaaan!!!" moments.

I followed @cookiebarnyc on Twitter and noticed a link posted on Wednesday morning from a blogger who helped a short-staffed Dorie & co. bake on Tuesday night. I read the article, almost started hyperventilating, and immediately tweeted to the CookieBar that I would LOVE to help and could come out whenever they needed me. Like all tweets, it went into the Twitterverse and I hardly expected to hear back from them. BUT I DID.

We made the arrangements and I ended up on the R train to Queens last Friday night to lend a hand. What happened over the next 6 hours was this Baking Therapist's dream. 5lbs of cashews chopped, 1200 cookies baked, 1 take-out veggie taco eaten, 5 new friends made. What kept amazing me was how many times they thanked me for being there! The Greenspan's are the loveliest people and Dorie was so gracious - especially on almost no sleep (they'd been baking/selling cookies non-stop since Monday)!

I don't think I stopped smiling from the time I stepped into the commercial kitchen until I stepped out of the Greenspan's Prius around 1:30am on Saturday morning, with my newly signed Baking: From My Home To Yours cookbook under my arm.

I also scored almost 5lbs of "scrap" cookie dough from the CookieBar kitchen and chose tonight to bake sables (pronounced SAB-LEY's - they're French), espresso-chocolate shortbreads, and coconut-lime cookies (pictured below from top to bottom). Can I just tell you that my entire apartment smells like glorious BUTTER right now? Julia (and I hope Dorie) would be proud. Many thanks to the Greenspan's for a wonderful experience I'll never forget, and hooray for social networking at its best!