Cookie Party at BakeLAB + Secret Tips for a Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

When a former Clementine and Providence/La Mill pastry chef opens a bakery ... Well, you can be sure she'll make some good stuff. But Kristin Feuer, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, goes beyond. With painstaking experimentation, Kristin at BakeLAB has perfected cookies.

Timed perfectly on National Chocolate Chip Cookie day, BakeLAB held a cookie party for some media and bloggers. All girls. It's a dessert party, mister.

Kristin Feuer (right) and her partner Jill (left)

I meant to just eat a little bit of cookies, I really did. But then ... they were unexpectedly good. I mean, ridiculously good.

From the iced oatmeal cookies that are like an upscale Mother's cookie...

... to the best ginger molasses cookies I've ever had.
It's the moistness of the inside of the cookie, juxtaposed with the nice sugar crackle on the outer layer. It's that chewiness, that nice gingery fragrance.

Of course, it won't be a proper Nat'l Chocolate Chip Cookie Day without chocolate chip cookies.
Kristin has perfected these chocolate chip cookies. Kristin demonstrated to us how to make them, giving us secret tips along the way and the science behind them. These are things you and I never think about while baking a cookie, but Kristin has spend all her time doing just that. This is a BakeLAB after all! (More on these tips later!)

Ultimately, it was the Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie that everyone raved about. Peanut Butter Sandwich? Yes, she makes it with a dollop of cookie dough, topped with peanut butter, and topped that again with cookie dough. Sandwich, see?
Now it's chewy cookie dough, creamy peanut butter center, and that nice sugar crackle crust. Oh, my ...

Bakelab also sells cupcakes, cakes, etc, all decorated with Kristin's cool artistic sensibilities -- their awesome science-themed shirts and aprons can attest to this.
I didn't get to try any of their cupcake/cake, but considering their amazing cookies, these are probably pretty good as well. I am inclined to order their Shark Attack! cupcake that's decorated with a sharkfin-shaped fondant ...

After we stuffed ourselves with these little morsels, Kristin and Jill took us to their kitchen/"lab" and gave us a little demo to make the perfect cookies.
You don't need a special recipe of list of ingredients to make way better cookies than you've ever made before. She made chocolate chip cookies using the basic recipes you can find on the back of any mass-produced chocolate chip packages.
The key is the little things Kristin had discovered after countless experimentations. Luckily, you don't have to go through the same effort and trials as she shared these amazing tips with us:

1. Don't cream the butter & sugar any longer than 1 1/2 minutes. Too much air from overcreaming=a flat cookie.
2. Beat the dough for a quick "one, two" count just beyond the point when the flour is incorporated. You'll make a little more gluten for plumper cookies.
3. Chilling the dough overnight allows subtle nutty and toffee flavors to develop.
4. Bake cookies from frozen dough; cookies will be much rounder.
5. Pull cookies from the oven when there is still a pale circle in the middle of the cookie.

You can order BakeLAB's treats online at www.bakelab.com or www.foordoro.com or call (310) 330-9055. Cookies are $2 each with a minimum order of a dozen.

You can also find them at Yummy.com (in Playa Vista, Santa Monica, West Hollywood), Oaks Gourmet in Franklin Village, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.

Oh, they're also holding a series of classes in the summer from cookie baking to decorating to S'mores! http://tinyurl.com/gotclass

Preview: Upcoming Nameless Restaurant in Downtown LA

There was a nameless underground supper club in downtown associated with Daily Dose Coffeehouse. It may still be nameless, but soon it will no longer just an underground supper club.
The supper club maintained by developer Sarkis Vartanian, Chef Christian Page, and Ran Zimon is about to go public. Soon, the loft upstairs at Industrial St will be open up to serve prix-fixe multi course dinners (priced around $35) and simple breakfast and lunches at the coffeehouse downstairs.
They recently held a friends and media preview dinner for this supper club.

Chef Christian Page had previously worked with Chef Brian Bistrong at The Harrison in New York (Chef Bistrong now owns Braeburn in New York), so when this project started, he decided he must get Bistrong on board.

Chef Bistrong flew in for a day just to help prepare this preview dinner.

Guests mingled over hors d'oeuvres , including Nick Griffith from Intelligentsia since the supper club plans on serving Intelligentsia coffee once they open.



Our meal started with some French Onion Soup with oxtail, broth poured tableside.
I enjoyed this variation of french onion soup with the tender oxtail meat, though I did miss the melted cheese.

Blue Prawn with vinaigrette and heirloom tomatoes
A crisp, well prepared shrimp and sweet juicy tomatoes. A nice dish although compared to the other dishes to come that night, this became unmemorable.

Pappardelle with Braised Osso Buco
Pappardelle with some type of meat ragu is a dish I would order anywhere. The version here does not disappoint. A hearty dish with al dente pasta, tender meat and flavorful sauce.

Roast chicken, spinach, paprika sauce
I'm always wary about eating white meat at restaurants, but this one is surprisingly moist. The paprika sauce had a nice restrained spice as well.

Skirt steak, served in cast iron skillet
Have I told you I love skirt steak? More so than any other cut, skirt steak always has more flavor. If done well so that it doesn't become tough, that is. The one Chef Page and Bistrong prepared was certainly both flavorful and tender.

This main entree also came with three different sides.

Sesame-crusted asparagus

Roasted cauliflower

Carrot Puree
This sweet and creamy carrot puree ended up being my favorite side. If they fed me this when I was a kid, my eye sight might not be as bad now ...
(instead they fed me carrot juice. )

Ran Zimon runs his own pastry company and will providing all the desserts for the supper club.
During this dinner we had Chocolate mousse cake

Chocolate walnut tart
Rich with dark chocolate and crunchy. It's a great decadent end to my meal.

After dessert, Ran Zimon decided to bring out a special treat. I don't know if you'll get this at the supper club or not but you should hope you will: a plate of middle eastern-style tartare.

We're still not sure when the supper club is opening its doors to the public or what its name will be, but stay tuned,

Daily Dose Coffeehouse's Nameless Supper Club
1820 Industrial St.
Los Angeles, CA 90021

Real New York Bagel and Lox, at its Best

Anthony Bourdain listed it as one of the 13 places to eat before he dies, but this place goes beyond that. Russ & Daughters has been a specialty purveyor since 1914 and this institution has been handed down four generations of the Russ family.

You can get their smoked fish to go, or some caviar, or a gift package. Bourdain talks about their traditional Jewish style herring and their smoked sable. Me, I was there to grab a bagel and lox for my flight back home. I didn't think I should attempt taking herring on the plane and eating it. (Should I?)

There's always a line to order, and when you get to the front you better know what you want. Which can be difficult. Very difficult.

The bagel: plain, onion, everything, sesame, etc?
The cream cheese: plain, scallion, tofu, or - if you want to be extra indulgent - caviar?
The lox: Scottish, Nova, Norwegian?

I wanted to focus on the cream cheese and lox, didn't want to splurge extra, and for bagel it's always scottish salmon for me, so this is what I ended up with:

Plain bagel, scallion cream cheese, scottish smoked salmon

Priced around $9, how was it? First, the bagel. It was the only bagel I ate in New York and it was better than the ones in L.A. Anything better in NYC? Probably, I wouldn't know. The scottish salmon was of course excellent. Russ & Daughters definitely acquired high quality products for their smoked fish. But I can get high quality lox elsewhere, so in the end, it's all about the cream cheese for me. It wasn't just the variety, it's the fresh double-whipped creamy spread, with the fresh chopped scallions.

Was it worth the $9? Oh yes.
(Was it worth the extra cab fare for the detour between Times Square and JFK, plus the wait time while I get the food? Well ... maybe if I had walked down the street for Katz also, because that ended up being one expensive cab fare :P )

Russ & Daughters
179 E Houston St
New York, NY 10002
(212) 475-4880
www.russanddaughters.com