Wednesday, February 17, 2010

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!

11 comments:

Anna said...

i loved reading this! i saw some tweets about this but hearing the whole story...wow! what an amazing experience!

chelsea rebecca said...

SO JEALOUS!
this is incredible! and those cookies look to die for.
gotta love a good twitter story!

me said...

amazing.

dorie said...

You were so terrific to pipe up with your offer to pitch in and then to come and be such an enormous help. THANK YOU! Joshua, Michael, the whole CookieBar team and I appreciated your being with us. Hope we'll get to bake together again. xoDorie

Nadine said...

The cookies were SO good ;) thanks for the shout out! And so proud of you for going and actually DOING it.

Eliana said...

You really caputured the essense of Dorie in this post. She is one the the sweetest people I have ever met and eating cookies made by her was such a treat :)

Claire said...

I'm so jealous!!!! That sounds amazing!

Chou said...

What a wonderful chance. Hooray! Thanks for sharing.

Heather said...

what a wonderful experience!

Beth said...

Thanks all for the great comments! So glad I got to share this amazing experience with you. Definitely an unforgettable one in my book, and such a gift that something like Twitter could allow me to meet such wonderful people!

AmyRuth said...

I know time has passed, but just wanted to add my clap clap clap to you and the memory that will continue to make you smile at a moments notice from your brain to your lips. ;-) What a lovely experience. Thanks for sharing.
AmyRuth

 
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