Pumpkin and Spice

I always think I don't have much of a sweet tooth... But I think I may be deluding myself. Really, what is a "sweet tooth"? It's just a label, isn't it? I do know that I'm impulsive and impatient, and I want what I want now- regardless whether it's candy or pizza or that cute dress at Betsey Johnson. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) when the sweet tooth starts screaming, there's plenty of ways to quiet it here in Park City. Aside from work (which is where I get my cookie dough/lemon bar fix) two of my favorite sugar emporiums here in PC are Dolcetti's Gelato and Sugar Buzz Candy Boutique.

Dolcetti's Gelato

 Hoo-ray! I got Flickr to upload my photos. It was slooooooow, but it worked!
This is yesterday's (Friday) post- I didn't change any of the wording to reflect that. I'll combine today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) together, since I'm going to be doing the same thing at work.

This weekend is opening weekend at the resort, so it's been a busy past few days at work. Since most of the staff just arrived within the last week, yesterday there was an employee fair. There were vendors of all sorts, employees with crafty ventures selling their wares, as well as free food. Since they anticipated about 600 employees at the fair, I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday assembling and plating enough pumpkin roulade for everyone. After plating, I worked the dessert station. Everyone got one ticket for dinner and one ticket for dessert, so I took tickets and gave out desserts.

This weekend, there were two banquets at work. That meant it was a busy, busy, busy weekend for me!

Yesterday, I was in early, which meant I was in charge of all of the breads for Saturday's banquet. The bread baskets were going to feature the resort's signature sourdough bread and one other kind. Since the second bread hadn't been specified in the banquet order, I got to choose the type of bread I got to make for the second one! I know it sounds silly, but I was really stoked about getting to choose which bread to make for the banquet. I flipped through the big, thick, notebook o' bread recipes (it's one of those 3" ring notebooks, filled with recipes) and selected onion bread. It looked so good- a soft bread, mostly white, with a touch of whole wheat, gobs of finely minced onions, garlic, and poppy seeds. Yum! The kitchen chef had also requested rye baguettes to be used for canapes. So, I made 11 loaves of sourdough, 15 loaves of onion bread and 15 rye baguettes. While my breads were proofing, I made two starters for Sunday's breads. I also rolled out more (!) chocolate tart dough and made ganache filling for the chocolate noir tarte for Sunday.

These brownies almost didn't make it to the blog. There was a potluck at work, and I boldly ignored the unwritten rule of not trying new recipes on the day of a dinner party. I had this awesome idea of brownies with gooey swirls of caramel... In my head, they were fudgey brownies with golden pockets of oozy caramel. Sadly, they came out of the oven looking like total hell. The surface of the brownies reminded me of pictures I've seen of cooled lava fields in Hawaii. They were really hideous. I wasn't going to post them, they were so ugly. I almost didn't even bring them to the potluck- but it was the morning of, and I didn't have time to make another batch. I toyed with the idea of buying baked goods at Publix, but decided that, as I work with a bunch of chefs, that would be more embarassing than ugly brownies.

To add to my horror, I was the only one that brought a dessert, which meant I couldn't hide my brownies inbetween other, more asthetically pleasing sweets. Everyone was so excited about them, too... I just prayed they were at least edible...

For some reason, lately I've been craving coconut macaroons. I love them so much, but I really feel like they're an underrated cookie. Maybe it's the coconut. People seem to be either on the "love it" or "hate it" side of the coconut line- there is rarely middle ground.

Personally, I love it! I'm especially fond of Mounds bars. (I like Almond Joy, too, but I prefer the chocolate-coconut equation sans nut.) So, when I decided to make macaroons, I decided to add a Mounds-inspired touch and include some dark chocolate. Specifically very dark chocolate ganache.