I didn’t grow up with crunchy granola parents; they didn't buy organic. One spring and summer season, my mom volunteered at a farm and received a CSA while I was a teen. That was my first introduction to eating locally, and I learned I was not a fan of mustard greens.

A couple of years later, I went to college in Vermont, which has an amazing farm-to-table focus across most restaurants, with plenty of food co-ops and farm stands statewide. I was a poor college student living off my student loans to pay rent and buy groceries. Healthy produce was on the back burner for this era of my life.

After college, I moved to New York City. It took me some time to make room for organic, local produce on my measly salary, but once I had the budget in 2018, I signed up for a CSA, and I've had one every year since. So, what is a CSA? The acronym stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and CSAs can take different formats.

CSAs come in different forms and I’ve had a variety of different CSA’s; everything from a weekly pickup of vegetables, with the announcement of what was expected in that week’s share coming a couple of days prior, to the you-pick model, where you have a set amount of cash to spend at the farm stand or farmers market and have more choice over what you can take home for the week. I’ve done CSA’s that include fruit, eggs, and meat, and I’ve done CSAs that are year-round, as well as seasonal.

If you are interested in learning how to get local food through a CSA, farmers market, or direct-from-the-farm items like produce, milk, and meat, I’ve included some resources below that helped me when I relocated to a new area.

• NOFA: Specific to the Northeast, I believe each state has its own website where you can look up farms. I am not sure what's available for other regions of the US, but I’ve linked the Massachusetts NOFA site here. In the top menu, hover over Organic Certification and click on The Organic Food Guide to find farms near you if you are in MA.

• Local Harvest (national): Not all-encompassing, but a great place to start!

Beyond that, I’ve dabbled with gardening, something I love and am somewhat decent at, but that is another story. Let’s dive into the benefits of buying organic and local. I’ll cover pesticides, the environmental impact, nutrient density (the whole reason we eat food), and community benefits.

Pesticides and Herbicides

Neonics, Glyphosate, Dicamba, Paraquat, and others! I am sure, reader, you have heard of at least one of these chemicals in the social media hall-of-mirrors horror discourse that runs rampant on all social platforms. Many countries in the world do not farm with these products, but lucky us, America does.

Thanks to word-of-mouth across social media using clickbait fearmongering, more people are becoming aware of the poisons sprayed on our conventional wheat, fruits, and veggies. So what exactly do these toxic elixirs do to the insects, plants, and to us?

• Glyphosate - This is an herbicide, hello Roundup! If you are not familiar with where the lawsuit stands for this product, check out an update here. This is the most widely used chemical in the world, and it is a probable human carcinogen. Calm down, soybean, oat, wheat, and corn farmers; there will be no cancer warning on this product, unfortunately. In all seriousness, they spray everything with this. Stay organic if only for this chemical.

• Paraquat - Another herbicide like Roundup, only worse. It is highly toxic if inhaled or swallowed; think burning, itching, lung scarring, liver damage, etc. According to the CDC, this has restricted use, meaning you need specific licensure to utilize this product. Vermont is currently the only state to have banned the use of this herbicide.

• Neonics - This is a petrochemical fertilizer. Plants, from root to flower, absorb this. These chemicals impact the nervous system specifically and are a major killer of bees. As you hopefully know, bees pollinate plants, keeping our plants growing, and without them, tragedy would strike. Simply put, no bees, no food.
  This fertilizer has also been linked to impacts on humans. The major bummer about this pesticide is that, while the EPA regulates it, seeds can be coated in neonics and planted. That way, it isn’t considered a pesticide, and corporations can keep using it without consequence.

This doesn’t cover all the pesticides and herbicides out there, and it doesn’t address the drift properties of some of these chemicals (which is illegal).

Lastly, as a side note, another interesting case is the Driscoll’s Berries lawsuit over their conventional vs. organic berry PFA content. Spoiler alert: conventional berries had PFAS (PFAS = forever chemicals); organic did not. Haven’t heard about PFAs? Read more HERE.

If you bothered to click the links above and in the footnotes, I think we can agree these aren’t good for the American food supply chain. Unfortunately, if producers stopped using these products tomorrow, the American food supply as we know it would be in absolute freefall, which is bad news for all of us. Large-scale pesticide use is a problem for our leadership to solve, but can we trust them to do it?

No doubt organic is the way to go since organic farming practices don’t use neonicotinoids, paraquat, or glyphosate. How you spend your dollars matters, people!

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As you can imagine, pesticide use cascades into the environmental side of large-scale farming, but in this next section, we will focus on resources.

Environmental Impact

A report I came across from Iowa State University cited the following:

“The Economic Research Service and the USDA indicate that only 7.6% of food in the U.S. is currently sold through local food channels. Nonetheless, sales from farmers markets, regional food hubs, and farm-to-school programs grew by 180% to 488% between 2006 and 2014.1”

With the data in this article dating back decades, I can only imagine it has continued to grow with the advent of social media, endless food recalls, and pesticides making headlines.

Despite this, a vast majority of the food found in grocery stores is not grown down the street, the next town over, or even in the state in which we might reside. For the USA, most produce is imported from other countries or grown, most likely in California, on large-scale farms.

These large farms use an incredible amount of water, much more than a household might use to grow their veggies, and much more than even a small to mid-size local farm as pictured in the image and caption below, pulled from A Life Cycle Assessment Approach for Vegetables in Large-, Mid-, and Small-Scale Food Systems in the Midwest US.2 Transportation is another factor. And if you are growing in a cold climate? Those greenhouses need to be kept warm.

We don’t need to beat a dead horse; this argument is practically baked into the common man or woman’s food supply chain knowledge at this point. We all know changing how we eat won't make a global impact on climate change; instead, we must put our fate in the hands of the Fortune 500 C-suite and board members to enact real change. All we can do is vote with our dollars, and that is what I plan to keep doing.

Nutrient Density: Conventional vs. Organic

Do you think organic food is more nutritious than conventional? Many studies are inconclusive. However, some benefits have been found.

As mentioned earlier, specific to pesticides, this is undoubtedly beneficial to the organic camp. The pesticides used in conventional products are, to put it mildly, a drawback.

Additionally, some evidence suggests organic produce provides more antioxidants and may reduce pre-eclampsia in pregnant women, but the findings were not significant enough to determine an impact.

I came across an excellent PubMed article HERE that aggregates the information across a good number of clinical trials and studies. The authors analyze the data from these sources and attempt to parse a solid answer on whether organic matter. As mentioned above, the analysis was inconclusive but shows promise for future research.

So what can we do? The key takeaway is that eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will do much more for us than choosing organic. If you can eat organic, you certainly should, but organic produce is expensive and not accessible to everyone.

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I highly recommend consulting the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen list as a guide for when to buy organic if you want to pick and choose what to buy.

Supporting Your Local Community

The world would be a less healthy place without our local farmers. Buying local helps farmers reduce costs for their business and for us by cutting out the middlemen.

Supporting local farmers also strengthens communities by creating jobs and directly contributing to the local economy and community growth. Simply put, money stays within the community, allowing success to flourish.

Additionally, you get to know and form a bond with the people producing your food. For example, every Saturday when I was living in Vermont, we would go to the farmers market to get our veggies for the week. I was pregnant, and after I had my son, I was speaking with the farmer. He said it was a privilege to have supported my son and me with the food he and his family had grown. He mentioned that he has seen babies turn into children, turn into teens, and grow up eating the food and meat he produced, and what a beautiful thing it is to have a hand in that.

Now that isn’t something that you can get at a grocery store; this is what it means to support and strengthen the community. He helped me, and I helped him.

To Wrap it Up…

If you can afford to buy organic, I recommend it. Given the recalls running rampant across the US food supply, this is the best thing you can do for peace of mind. BUT…don’t fret if you cannot afford to buy organic, as studies and trials have shown there is not too much of a difference in nutrients.

In this day and age, with inflation and everything else going on, it is tough for all of us normies. Do what you can, and hopefully you can walk away from this article, if you made it this far, a bit more informed about the options available to support your community and your health.

Please drop a like below; it means a lot in the Substack-verse, and I want this topic to reach more people.

I hope this inspires you to try making something new - this made me really happy, and it wasn’t hard!

Have you ever made ice cream? Were you surprised at how easy it was? Let me know below.

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Highlights

This was a busy month; it flew by! The Fourth of July feels like it was last week, and it is about this time of year that I start wondering where the time has gone.

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Hello again! I was initially writing this over a month ago, and would have kicked this off by saying, “I am taking this Memorial Day weekend to do some light research.” It is now 6/28, less than a week from the 4th of July.

I went on to write: “Like the last five Memorial Days, this year in the northeast, we have had absolute trash weather; so much rain and frigid (for May) high temperatures of 55 degrees. I digress, back to the croissants.” Luckily, the weather has improved since writing that, and summer is coming around! Now, really, back to the croissants.

Without a doubt, croissants are one of my favorite baked goods out there. If a bakery doesn’t have a good one, I likely am not coming back. I expect a croissant to be in the lineup and, to be honest, if there isn’t one, I start questioning the bakery’s technical ability.

The Path to Today’s Croissants

Despite being synonymous with French culture, croissants originated in Austria. According to an article on the Institute for Culinary Excellence’s (ICE) website, the croissant began as a crescent-shaped roll made from yeasted dough, called a Kipferl, dating back to the thirteenth century.

The ICE article also references the rumor that the fabled Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette, may have brought the treat to France. But is this true? In my research, this is repeatedly dismissed as a rumor, and the evidence instead points to a man named August Zang, who opened a Viennese bakery in Paris in 1838. This man had a knack for marketing and knew enough to create compelling displays in the shop window and creative adverts to draw in the people of Paris, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

In France, croissants are considered Viennoiseries (along with pain chocolat, pain aux raisins, etc.), which I can only assume ties these back to their origins in Vienna and gives credit where credit is due. So, if a croissant is originally an Austrian creation, why is it so closely linked to France?

Inherently, French people know when something is good, and after Zang opened his store, others jumped on the bandwagon. However, as previously mentioned, the croissant of this age was made with a yeasted dough, not dissimilar from what we know as Brioche today.

The lamination technique used in modern croissants was introduced by the French and is what makes this baked good quintessentially French: solidifying the nation’s claim on it.

What to Look for in France for Authentic, Non-Industrialized Croissants

According to Smithsonian Magazine, up to half of the croissants and pastries sold in France’s boulangieries are produced industrially. This has pushed bakeries to differentiate themselves by touting their croissants as “fait maison”, which means home-made, or made in-house, as opposed to the industrially produced variety.

In addition, looking for a croissant au beurre is important. This indicates the croissant is made with butter, not margarine or another butter substitute. It would seem obvious, but in this day of industrialization, we crave authenticity. Of course, we want real butter!

The bigger question is: can businesses use these words and phrases in marketing without investing in what these terms mean to uphold? Frenchies and bakers, I am curious to get your thoughts on this.

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Croissants are Having a Moment: My Thoughts

Overall, I love that this bakery item is getting the accolades it deserves. Bakeries are popping up left and right, and along with it, a burgeoning croissant scene has arrived. 10 years ago, these smaller towns would never have had a great croissant available, with only the industrialized croissants referenced above available. This has changed.

With all of the change, we are seeing everything from a most basic croissant to wild mutant creations that, in my opinion, take away from the very essence of the croissant ethos: beauty in simplicity.

To put it bluntly, I hate an overdone croissant. I draw the line at an almond croissant, and depending on the bakery, even that can be over the top. A combo pain chocolat x almond croissant? No, thank you. Don’t even get me started on the wilder croissants.

You can check out some “innovators” in this Infatuation article on the Best Croissants in America. Additionally, check out this Eater article on savory croissants that go beyond just ham and cheese.

To sum it up, I love that croissants are getting the platform they deserve, even if it makes getting one in the morning from a favorite bakery more of a competitive event. The overdone croissants aren’t to my taste, but this is America, and here we take good things and redefine them. Is this good, or bad? I don’t know, but for me, I prefer the simple beauty and delicate deliciousness of the classics.

As Éric Kayser, an iconic French baker, says, “A derivative may be good, but it is not a croissant.”

Please feel free to share your thoughts below in the comments section. Likes and engagement go a long way; it is nice to think people are actually reading what I write :)

Things have been a whirlwind lately, with both Substack and my baking ventures falling by the wayside.

A quick summary of what I’ve been up to, which is really all the energy I have for any of this:

• I spent a long weekend in Scotland with one of my best friends.

• I rehomed my dog. This was one of the hardest things I’ve done since leaving New York. The new owners and I are on great terms; I even saw her this past weekend.

• Since early April, I’ve been living at Rob’s mother’s house.

• I transferred territories with work - I’m new again! Same job, different customers.

• Rob is starting a new job in the Boston area in June.

• We signed a lease for a place in Worcester, MA, starting June 1st.

• We found a daycare for our son.

• We packed up our place in Vermont.

Is it any wonder I’ve been absent from writing? I am just totally overhauling my life, no big deal.

This Past Week

I was mindlessly scrolling Instagram when feelings of sadness and dis-ease came over me. None of the content I was seeing was giving me anything positive. I felt sad, and I wanted to exit the app.

As performative as this is, I made a story that said: “This app is depressing and isn’t doing anything for me, so I’m signing off.” I then promptly deleted the app from my phone, with no date in mind to come back for a while.

This lasted all of seventy-two hours, when I was forced to redownload the app because of pizza. I know, it sounds insane. You downloaded it for pizza? Doesn’t this joint have a website? No, they don’t. Instagram only, and I’m not hating. Rob and I showed up at the spot on Friday, and it was closed for a private event. Naturally, I had to check whether we could get our fix on Saturday instead. I’ve since deleted the Instagram app again after I got the information I needed.

I’m sure you are all just dying to know what pizza we were seeking. Readers, I am referring to Pizzeria Ida. If you are an Ida trash talker, please see yourself out. We don’t like you here.

Dan, the owner, catches a lot of flak for being passionate and outspoken about his food and stands behind his, what some call, “exorbitant,” pricing. Vermonters take issue with this, saying he is “bad for the community”. The way I see it, busybody Vermonters are bullying a business owner, and then get upset when the dog bites after you hit it. If you don’t like it, be gone. No one is forcing you to eat a meal at Ida, for Christ's sake. What is with the thorn in your side?

Anyways, Rob and I love Ida. The unwritten rules of the place are charming, if you know, you know, and I like that.

The meal did not disappoint - we had a chicken cutlet and a square pie. Admittedly, this sounds basic, but simple food, when done well by highlighting texture and clean flavors, yields a 10/10 meal.

Lastly, it was 100 degrees in MA yesterday. Since I’m in an in-between place in my life, I don’t have all my warm-weather clothes with me. I’m wearing all of the dresses I’ve got, and I remembered to grab a pair of Denim shorts when I was in Vermont this past weekend.

Moving to Massachusetts

At the end of this month, the family and I are moving to Worcester, MA, the second-largest city in the state. With over 200,000 residents, it is eleven square miles smaller than Boston. Being in the middle of the state, it is known as the “Heart of the Commonwealth,” and all the street signs in the city have hearts on them. Cute!

Known for its academic institutions, this is a town where many things have been invented: smiley faces, shredded wheat, the birth control pill, and some rocket stuff. You can read more about all that here.

We can still train into Boston, it is less than an hour and a half from both of our families, and we can afford to live here. We now have a guest bedroom, a garage, and a driveway. Fingers crossed this will be a good move for all parties involved.

I am looking forward to being in the same town as my tattoo artist, having public transit available, and a short hour-ish drive to my parents’ house, especially with summer around the corner.

I Have Been Baking

Being separated from your kitchen tools for a long time is sad. I miss them! I haven’t been baking much. In the 6 weeks we’ve been here, I have made almost exclusively recipes from the one cookbook I brought, one that I have mentioned before: Sally’s Baking 101.

Thus far I’ve made:

• Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Birthday Brookies

• Red Velvet Cupcakes with whipped cream cheese frosting

• Baque Cheesecake with Cinnamon and Vanilla

The weather for Memorial Day looks like it may be less than ideal, so I’ll be looking for something fun to make, probably pulled from Sally’s cookbook or NYT Cooking.

Additionally, I’ve been looking across Central MA for the best bakeries, and so far, at least in patisserie, it’s just Tatte Bakery. Please share all suggestions if you know of something good in the area.

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In other news, I’ve finished 3 books this past month, and I’m going to share my thoughts here in two sentences or less:

• Intermezzo - Sally Rooney: I found this book boring, and I was told to drop it, but I kept going and didn’t feel it was worth it. This story did a good job highlighting the struggles of different kinds of love and the minutiae of emotions that fall under that umbrella.

• Famesick - Lena Dunham: This memoir had me laughing at times and feeling empathetic toward her struggles with her health. Certainly not focused on her TV series with HBO Girls, great if you want to know the other side of a public person.

• Lost Lambs - Madeline Cash: What an odd read, I did enjoy it, but it came across a bit stilted. It didn’t keep me hooked, but I wanted to know how it ended.

I have read a lot of memoirs this year - I think this may be a fairly new genre for me if memory serves, and I am enjoying it.

That is all for now. I am tired and am going to go spend the rest of my night with family. I look forward to getting back into the swing of writing here - I miss it!

I had grand dreams of making a Galette des Rois, which I did, but I neglected to provide ventilation for the pastry, and thus sacrificed the quality of the bake. It would have been gorgeous otherwise!

This past weekend, I had aspired to make a chocolate and hazelnut version, but I went off recipe and used pastry flour instead of AP, which made the dough far too wet. This sent me into a reality-worthy chef meltdown where I chucked the ball of tacky dough into the trash bin while vocalizing my frustration with a groan/scream. “What is up with you?” Rob asked me. I abandoned the project for the day, I had no AP flour anyway.

Diva moment aside, my schedule has been busy. The product I sell has some new updates, and I have hit the ground running to reach my targets. Ahead of this, I had to go to Denver for a 4-day-long sales meeting. Needless to say, I haven’t had much time for relaxation.

Besides the king cake, I’ve been focusing on baking things that are fairly quick and easy. On Monday this past week, I made a chicken pot pie. My son likes to eat the crust specifically, which I take as the deepest compliment. I used the recipe out of Sally McKenney’s cookbook (Sally’s Baking 101), and I typically use Alison Roman’s crust recipe, but Sally’s did not disappoint at all! 10/10 recommend this recipe from her new cookbook.

I also made her chocolate chip cookies, which are excellent. This is the second time I’ve made them, and I like to make half and then freeze the other half to save for days when a cookie is needed. Rob gifted me this, from King Arthur, which is what I use to freeze cookie dough.

So, are you picking up on the trend for this past month? I am short on time and looking for efficient recipes to fit with my busy schedule. Keeping on with the theme of quick and easy, I also had a box of pumpkin quick-bread/muffin mix from King Arthur that I made into muffins two weeks ago.

Beyond baking, I did make a bolognese sauce, which was surprisingly time-consuming. I used the recipe from The Food Lab, by J. Kenji López-Alt. If you are not familiar with this book, it is a science-backed exploration of how to get the most out of your food. This was a bit of a high-maintenance recipe, meaning too many dishes were used and mixing of ingredients required before hitting the pot, compared to a typical bolognese recipe. The effort was worth it: Rob loved it, Casper loved it, and since it was made with three (!!) pounds of meat, it lasted quite some time.

Outside of focusing on work, I’ve been trying to journal every day and list three things I am grateful for. I read five books in January, and have been trying to get my son to walk. I’m planning a trip to Japan and a trip to Scotland.

Fear not, I’ll be back to my French baking in no time. I may try to make my own Madeleine recipe this weekend, as they are quick and straightforward to make. Stay tuned for that soon.

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Please allow me a moment of reflection before I get into my list. This year, I used baking as a way to help me through postpartum depression and feel more like myself in the tumultuous first year of my son’s life. I think I've grown as a baker, challenged myself, and become a better person for it.

Along the way, I found myself using the following tools the most out of everything in my kitchen. The qualifiers for this were my usage of these items in nearly every bake and how sorrowful I’d be to not have them. Plus, a majority of these items translate well to cooking and in our house we love anything multifaceted.

I ranked the items as well. See the list below, and let me know in the comments if you agree that these are must-haves, and let me know if there is something that you’d include in your list that I didn’t outline below!

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My 10 Most Usefil Kitchen Tools, Ranked

1. Kitchen Scale - Can one even bake successfully without one? I promise, if you are still using measuring cups, you’ll become twice the better baker for weighing your ingredients according to a recipe, I promise you!

2. Baking Sheets - you need something to bake on! I recommend having two half sheets and one full sheet. I like Nordic ware.

3. Standing Mixer - Again, this makes things much easier. It will whip your egg whites to perfection nice and quick, and you don’t have to hold anything. You can multitask. Need I say more?

4. Rolling Pin - If you are making any dough for pie, quiche, vienoisseries, etc, you will wish you have one if you don’t already. You can make do with a wine bottle I suppose, but you will want a rolling pin

5. Fine Mesh Strainer(s) - Good for sifting, straining fine particles out of a fruit puree, etc. Extremely useful to have you won’t miss it until you find yourself wishing you had one.

6. Pastry Bags & Tips - If you want to add some wow factor to your desserts, you’ll need piping bags. you can get facy with it, and it can be fun! You don’t even necessarily need tips, but that adds some extra pizazz into the visuals of your finished product. From tiny to massive, there is quite the variety out there. See some of my favorites here, here, and here.

7. Thermometer(s) - Typically, and instant read should do just fine. An oven thermometer is helpful for calibrating your oven, and a candy thermometer is helpful if you are doing sugarwork, or making candy.

8. 9” Tart Ring - Great for making short crust tarts, whuch is pretty much the basis for a majority of french tarts. Very useful to have on hand!

9. Parchment - we don’t NEED parchment, but it makes everything easier. Lining Cake pans, baking sheets, tracing shapes for piping, etc.

10. Gelatin - Gelatin made me nervous the first time I used it, but now that I have, I find it extremely useful. I’ve used it to stabilize whipped cream, thicken purees for tarts, creating mirror glazes, etc. Having both sheets and powdered geletin is useful.

Honorable Mention:

2 TSPB Cookie Scoop - A birthday gift from Rob this past year, I love this for cookies and meatballs. This size is perfect for cookies, in my opinion.

Immersion Blender - You can use an immersion blender for many things: pureeing soup, fruits, mixing a chocolate sauce or pudding. Yes, you can always use a standard blender, but for smaller quantities or easier clean up, I pick my immersion blender nine out of ten times.

At the beginning of the holiday break, I used a NYTimes Cooking recipe as the base for a shortbread I had been thinking about for a few months. Orange and Earl Grey shortbread.

One of my goals for 2026 is to publish more recipes created by yours truly. If you want to be kept in the loop on the latest and greatest, click the button below to subscribe.

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I primarily selected this recipe to riff off of because it combined two flavors of shortbread dough. I made some modifications (my own flavors, a reduction of salt, and two egg yolks). In fact, I think the salt could even be reduced slightly less, and perhaps a swap for table salt if a little pop of salt in an occasional bite is not what you are after for your shortbread.

This is one of the things I LOVE about a shortbread recipe - they are adaptable; you can make them your own. If you don’t want Earl Grey to dominate the marriage of flavor (like I do), feel free to increase the amount of orange zest or reduce the amount of Earl Grey. If you don’t have oranges, feel free to swap for lemons, as that works too. My favorite part is the texture Earl Grey adds to this cookie, complementing the smoother texture of the orange dough.

Making these cookies again, I’d roll out a swirl instead of a stripe pattern - it seems easier than the technique shared in NYTCooking by Sue Li, which I adopted here. BUT, I will say it again: shortbread is so wonderfully flexible, I urge you to make this recipe your own.

Happy baking!

Earl Grey Shortbread Dough

• 1½ cups/190 grams AP flour

• 2 tbsp Earl Grey Tea (roughly 6 bags)

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt (Morton)

• ¾ cup/170 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature

• ½ cup/100 grams sugar

• 1 large egg yolk

Orange Shortbread Dough

• 1½ cups/190 grams AP flour

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt (Morton)

• Zest of 2 medium navel oranges

• ½ cup/100 grams sugar

• ¾ cup/170 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 1 large egg yolk

Make the Earl Grey Shortbread Dough

Step 1

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, tea, and salt, and then set it aside.

Step 2

Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or a hand mixer, set at medium speed to cream butter and sugar. Scrape down the sides as needed until light and fluffy, 2 - 3 minutes. Add the yolk and combine.

Step 3

Scrape down the sides a final time and add the flour mixture. On low, mix until the dough comes together and the tea is consistent throughout. Scrape the dough onto parchment paper and shape it into a 6-inch square.

Make the Orange Shortbread Dough

Step 1

Whisk together the flour and salt.

Step 2

Zest a whole navel orange and add the zest to the sugar, and rub the zest into the sugar until the mixture looks tinged orange throughout. Add this to the mixer bowl.

Step 3

Add the butter and cream the mixture until fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down the sides as needed. Add the yolk until it is combined.

Step 4

Scrape the sides and add the flour, mixing on low until the dough comes together.

Make the Cookies

Step 1

Put the orange dough onto the Earl Grey dough you previously shaped. Gently pat the dough into shape so it fits evenly on the Earl Grey dough. Transfer the dough to the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Step 2

Cut the dough into 4 strips. Place one strip on top of another and ensure the flavors alternate (orange/earl grey/orange/earl grey) for a total of 4 layers and press them lightly together. Do this again with the remaining 2 strips and press them lightly together.

Step 3

Use a fresh piece of parchment and place one stack of dough on it. Lightly roll the dough in the parchment to round it out, keeping the dough tightly tucked into the parchment (see video). The log will end up roughly 7/5 - 8 inches long. Repeat with the second stack of dough and a new piece of parchment.

Step 4

Wrap the logs in plastic wrap or tie off the ends of your parchment and chill the dough until firm, or at least 4 hours.*

Step 5

When ready, heat the oven to 350 degrees. For clean cuts through the dough, let it warm up on the counter while you preheat your oven.

Step 6

Line 2 half-sheet baking sheets with parchment paper. Trim the rough ends of each log, and then slice the cookies roughly ¼-inch thick. These cookies don’t spread much, so place them 1.5 - 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake 13 - 15 minutes. Rotate the trays around minute 7 and bake another 6-8 minutes until the edges are lightly golden.

Step 7
Repeat with any leftover dough. Let cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

* Prepared dough wrapped in plastic wrap can be frozen up to 3 months in advance. When you are ready to use it, thaw it in the refrigerator, slice it, and bake according to the recipe.

Let me know what you think of the recipe in the comments below, and please tap the little heart to like my post <3

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A couple of months ago, I took a trip to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, VT, and impulsively bought a bag of their choux pastry mix. Typically, I’m a diehard from-scratch gal, but my from-scratch choux wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be, which was a land of eclairs, profiteroles, and Paris Brest.

Reading the label for the mix before buying, I saw that I would have to add the eggs and cook the dough, which I used to justify the purchase. Two weeks ago, I finally used the mix and was so pleased with the result.

My expectations were low, so I was not prepared to go all out, making pastry cream and glaze. However, the bake was successful, and I finished the job. I made a couple of chouquettes and four éclairs. I filled the éclairs with a coffee pastry cream with a coffee glaze, and was very pleased with the result.

I am still determined to make choux from scratch, but in the meantime, if I have to make something with choux urgently and without risk of failure, I have this mix in my back pocket.

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Goodbye Thanksgiving and Hello Christmas Prep

Thanksgiving was last weekend, and it is safe to say I’m done traveling epic (more than 2 hours) long journeys with my baby via car. The whole house was sick or recovering from being sick, and we had to deal with an upset, crying baby for our 4.5-hour drive home.

On top of all that, I forgot to put the caramel I made in my apple pie, and I also overworked the crust for the first time. Still fully edible, but not what I was expecting of myself. My parents made a delicious meal, but the weekend was exhausting. It is too much for us to travel these days (she says as she packs for a trip to NYC this coming weekend).

I did order a few things for candy making for the holidays - the only thing left to procure is a copper pot. After some additional research, the weekend of 12/20 is going to be the time for me to crank out all the candy. The only thing I need to consider is, do I hope for beginner’s luck, or practice the candy technique beforehand?

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My Absence from Substack

I have been silent here for 2 or 3 weeks now, and that is because my life is demanding a lot of my time. Sickness has hit the house (I had a sinus infection in early November, followed by a cold roughly 10 days later). Casper has been sick and seems to be getting sick again, Rob also has a cold and has been extremely busy at work.

Pair that with pressure on work performance while covering 3 states from the Canadian border down to Hartford, CT (and I live in the most useless one for business) I AM TIRED!

Additionally, there has been a lot of negative energy, hopelessness, and dissatisfaction swirling around, and I feel like I’m responsible for turning the doomsday vibe to something more positive.

The good thing is I feel more at ease as a Mom - every day with Casper seems to get easier, or I’m better at empathizing with the struggles of babydom. This is the one thing I am clinging to for hope these days.

I’m also looking forward to traveling in 2026, although my excitement has been overshadowed (crushed?) by a few things, I’m hoping I can find some anticipation and excitement in this again.

Anyways, I’m hoping to show up more consistently this month, as I feel like there might be some more space for “me” coming up this month. Keep your fingers crossed!

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Thanksgiving: The Plan

Thanksgiving is a minor bump in the road compared to Christmas, in my humble opinion, but I am not hosting. My partner, son, and I are heading to my parents for the weekend. Naturally, both of my parents are readers of this newsletter, so the question came: “What are you going to bake for Thanksgiving?” I have only spent one or two Thanksgivings with my parents in the last ten years, so I am making what I always make: Sally’s Baking Addiction Caramel Apple Pie filling but using Alison Roman’s recipe for pie crust.

Of course, I do feel compelled to do more. By this, I mean bake some Parker House rolls and maybe make this leek dish from . I say this like I’m showing up to my parents with a store-bought pie, when, in reality, I have a 5-hour drive and a multi-day plan for the pie alone. The pie can be done in a day, no problem, but I don’t want to feel overwhelmed, so I am breaking it into two or three days.

So here is my plan:

Day 1: Make the salted caramel and the pie crust (can do the caramel one day and pie crust the next if you want to really spread it out).
Day 2: Assemble and bake the pie on the travel day (avoid lattice crust if you feel stressed/short on time).

Holiday Gifting

I love giving gifts, and I love receiving them. Anyone who feels otherwise needs to ask themselves why they feel the need to be Scrooge and yuck everyone else’s yum. Who put coal in your stocking?

This year, I am challenging myself to make some delicious treats to gift, which might be biting off more than I can chew, since I have never made any of the items I am planning to make. This is primarily in the confectionery space and will require me to procure a few things for my kitchen that I don’t have on hand (various thermometers, mold for confections, pectin, etc).

As of now, I’m feeling optimistic. Talk to me in the 2 weeks following Thanksgiving, and I may feel differently. Please let me know if I’m deranged for trying 3 - 5 new things for gifting. Do we think I’ll find success? I am hopeful.

See below for my list of ideas:

• Nougat

• Fruit Jellies

• Candied/Chocolate-Coated Nuts

• A chocolate treat?

• Marshmallow

• Madeleines

The only thing I have actually made is the Madelines, and I did that this past weekend. They came out really well, despite overfilling the molds a bit. Perfect with a cup of tea.

I do wonder if the craftsmanship of these would be appreciated. But at the end of the day, gifting makes me happy, and I want to challenge myself to try new things - so really it is a win-win.

Please leave me a comment on what you are planning for the holidays, I am always open to ideas for (edible) holiday giving. A tap or click on the heart also means a lot.

Until next week!

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The beauty of this overwhelm is that I often turn to cooking and, more specifically these days, baking to quiet my mind. Over the last 2 weeks, I have made a few different things - a Pumpkin Baque Cheesecake, a Tarte Bourdaloue, and a Chocolate Tart.

These 3 desserts are all appropriate for gatherings. I haven’t had a gathering, but it seems I’m leaning into the holiday season without realizing it. Today I’m going to focus on the two tarts I’ve made over the last couple of weeks.

Short Crust - Please Help

Both tarts are made with a sweet short-crust pastry shell. The crust is very easy to make, and yes, I do chill it before I roll it out, typically for at least 2 hours. My biggest gripe with the short-crust is that I have a hard time setting it in the tart ring in an easy and orderly way. I have tried two different methods and would love some feedback on what works best.

1. I draped the rolled dough over the tart ring and pushed the dough into place, doing my best not to stretch it.

2. I have rolled the dough out and used the tart ring as a massive cookie cutter. Then I cut the band piece (or the crust “wall”) and place it in the tart ring.

Option 2 always ends up being a bit of a disaster becasue the dough isn’t stiff enough to hold itself in place, and as a result, it flops down and becomes a problem for me that feels too chaotic to be correct. Should I be chilling the dough more? Is it just the nature of short crust?

As a PSA to all bakers reading this, I’m sharing a piece of advice that was news to me: when blind-baking a crust, one wants to avoid stretching the dough because the dough can slump down during the blind bake.

So if you have any tips on how to have success with rolling and skillfully placing short-crust pastry, please don’t hesitate to share in the comments below.

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The Good Part - The Filling!

Both of these tarts were full of firsts for me, and truly, both came out good. I tend to have beginner’s luck when I bake something new; it is a blessing and a curse. Allow me to get into the details of each below.

Tarte Bourdaloue

This tart is essentially an almond cream (not frangipane) and pear tart. I love pears, so naturally this was a draw for me. The pears needed to be poached, which was a first for me. The recipe I was following gave no context for how to poach, so I went rogue. I did a very simple poach of sugar (probably not enough) and water. I wish I had added some spice like cinnamon, nutmeg, or cardamom because the route I took resulted in under-flavored pears.

While the tart was a bit lackluster in flavor, it came out looking great! I do think it could have used extra time in the oven, but overall, this was a success. Lesson learned for the pears, I’ll take that with me for next time.

Chocolate Tart

I find chocolate recipes extra daunting because they often require heating and cooling, tempering, plus chocolate has an aversion to water, and in general, can be finicky. Supposedly, it is also important to pay attention to how much cocoa butter is in the chocolate, which isn’t really disclosed on the packaging that basic consumers like you and me purchase.

Anyway, I felt intimidated, but this was a great jump-off point, and now I have it in my head that everyone in my life is getting confections like chocolate and nougat for Christmas from me. What a change in perspective!

This tart was filled with two different chocolate creations. The first was a dense choclate filling made of dark chocolate, egg, milk, sugar, and cream. second, was a mirror glaze which used cocoa powder as well as a decent amount of geletin.

I’m still lacking in an instant read thermometer, so I was using my sons thermometer on the point and shoot setting for the filling and the glaze, but this didn’t keep me from succeeding. I do think there was some improvement to be made in the texture for my chocolate filling, but I had never made a mirror glaze before, and it came out beautifully.

Plus, this was only my second time working with gelatin, so that in itself felt like a success for me.

Overall, I am enjoying making tarts. Next up may be a walnut or an apple tart. Comment below if there is another tart I should attempt, and please, click the button to subscribe, or click the heart to like the post - it means a lot!

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Welcome back to another week at Bake Frenchie. I have made a few treats over this past week, but work has taken me down to Massachusetts plus a weekend day of solo parenting has left me short of free time. This week, I am writing an article as I sit in my hotel bed on some of my favorite bakeries in Vermont.

I do have to apologize in advance, I don’t have my laptop, and have been unable to format the photos here correctly with their captions. I am sorry to my email readers!

Before we dive in, allow me to be clear on my criteria for the analysis:

1. Diversity matters and I appreciate a range of options: bread, scones, cupcakes, cookies, sweet, savory, etc.

2. I am a sucker for a flaky pastry. Anything croissant-like or croissant adjacent, merits a try, and croissants are at the core of my analysis and carry the weight in what I consider to be excellent in a bakery.

3. I’m not a food critic; this is just my personal preference and what I would recommend to friends and family.

Without further delay, and in no particular order, let’s jump into it.

Melanie’s Three Favorite Bakeries in Vermont

Boxcar Bakery

11 Park Street, Suite 101 Essex Junction, VT

Boxcar is my favorite. So much so that I am already mourning the loss of no longer living a mile away when we move in eight months. The viennoiserie is on par with what you could find in France. Pain Chocolat, Croissants, Almond Croissants, and Ham & Cheese are available daily. The ham and cheese specifically includes a cornichon, and also has grain mustard alongside the ham and cheese *chef’s kiss*.

Additionally, they offer items that are croissant adjacent like Walnut Rings, Cardamom Buns, Apple Danish, and some kind of Boston Cream Pie Croissant Cup (pas français mais trés délicieux). Plus, they have numerous cupcakes, cookies, and scones daily. I have tried them all and have yet to be disappointed by a single thing. One thing to note, though, is that they do not sell bread, so look elsewhere if that is what you are after. OH and another thing, get there early because they will sell out.

Boule

462 Railroad Street Saint Johnsbury, VT

Located in Saint Johnsbury, a town very close to my heart, Boule is an exceptional sourdough bakery. They offer sourdough leavened breads and a blend of sourdough and yeast leavened croissants and baked goods. Every time I find myself in St. J I stop in for a special treat. It is tough to achieve a delicious Sourdough Croissant, and they carry it off without a hitch. The dough is flaky, and buttery and absolutely delicious.

Of course, they are diverse in their baked goods, a bit less so than Boxcar, but as mentioned previously, they offer bread and it is a core element of their business. Shortbread Cookies, Cardamom Buns, and more are available daily. I also tend to opt for a coffee beverage with their cardamom syrup added in. Paired with a Pain Chocolat, this is the ultimate combo.

August First

149 S Champlain Street Burlington, VT

This is the exception to the rule around my favorite bakeries being based on croissants. August First is all about the bread. Best bread in the whole state I must say. The Olive Loaf and Baguette are favorites in our household. The bread is crusty and moist and I LIKE IT. It is unlike the other bread out there, and I don’t know why this is. The croissants are alright, a bit dry, but you would be missing the point if you walked away without the bread. I don’t have any photos of the bread because I eat it too quickly, sorry!

If you need bread in the Burlington area, feel free to visit the bakery downtown, but if you want to avoid the chaotic line set up (it could be so much less annoying if they oriented the cafe differently), you can find their loaves at either City Market (Downtown or South End) or Healthy Living (South Burlington or Williston) locations.

August First also does food and coffee, but like I said, the way they have the cafe set up is absolutely chaotic. My suggestion is to grab and go.

Honorable Mentions

I could go on and on but I had to cut myself off at my three favorites. The beautiful thing about Vermont that I didn’t have in Rhode Island as a child was an excellent bakery. Vermont is lucky enough to have so many excellent bakeries across the state, and I know my list isn’t comprehensive. These are some other bakeries that I ALSO love. There are even more than what is outlined below, but I said I’d list my favorites, not a comprehensive list of all spots (I keep reminding myself of this as I could go on and on but bedtime is approaching).

Red Hen Bakery Middlesex, VT - Red Hen distributes their bread far and wide across the state. Their HQ is right off I-89 exit 9, making it a great pit stop on a road trip. They have a wide array of baked goods as well, and their sandwiches are not to be missed! The croissant is a bit dry for my personal preference.

Goldfinch Gourmet Foods Morrisville, VT - This spot is fairly new to me, and it didn’t disappoint. They have Macarons, the first bakery I’ve seen in Vermont to offer these, as well as a classic fruit tart. The vibe is very Parisian corner boulangerie. I have only been once and more visits are required for me to have my full download, but I like what I’ve seen.

Vergennes Laundry Vergennes, VT - Another sourdough croissant! And very good bread. I know their original location shut down, and they are slated to open again soon pending some setbacks according to their Instagram. I lived 15 minutes from here for a couple years. I have nothing but good things to say about this bakery.

Poorhouse Pies Underhill, VT - Donuts on (some) Sundays, and pies every day (except Mondays). This is a self serve shop that offers a huge variety of pies for preorder, and a wide variety to walk in and take home as well. They sell individual hand pies, fruit, cream, and also savory bacon egg and cheese type hand pies as well. Poorhouse is more specialized in what they offer, but this is a great place to stop on your way to or from a hike.

Please let me know what other bakeries you all love in the comments below, or what you like from anywhere I’ve listed. As mentioned, this is not a comprehensive list, and I always want a new treat to try so please don’t be shy about leaving suggestions in the comments.

I have never made meringue in my life, or at least not that I can specifically remember, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I read and reread the directions for the different types of meringue (French, Swiss, and Italian). After getting some inspiration from and her poached pear pavlova, I opted for a more pared-down raspberry and vanilla cream version for my rookie attempt.

The night prior, I made the raspberry purée for the raspberry gel I’d be using. As a side note, I’m saving some of that puree to use in more meringue later this week. I was inspired by Leslie’s showstopper color palate on this week’s Bake Show episode. I mean, did you see how the pink and white meringue came out?*chefs kiss*

Back to the Pavlova, I used a Swiss meringue. I didn’t use anything to flavor it, and I struggled with air bubbles in the piping bag; this will be easy enough to avoid in the future.

My favorite discovery, and what I now consider the joy of Pavlova, is that you have room for error. The base is covered with cream and fruit, so only the meringue rosettes show. This meant the many divots from the bubbles in my piping bag wouldn’t be on display. Instead, my priority for the meringue was eliminating holes in the base to curb leakage in the event my raspberry gel didn’t “gel” enough.

Mel, why wouldn’t it “gel” enough? Well, reader, I forgot to order pectin NH and ended up using agar agar instead, which I have never used. It did well enough, but I kind of winged the proportion of agar agar to liquid when I was boiling the raspberry gel mixture, so it was a bit loose.

Let’s go back to the fact that Pavlova does allow for error, and my problem with the gel didn’t hinder me, and neither did my cream layer. Like the meringue, the cream, a mixture of heavy cream, marscapone, sugar, and a scraped vanilla bean pod, only needed to look decent on the outside since it would be covered in berries.

Overall, I’m so happy with this creation! With minimal cooktime and a bit of assembly, this dessert makes an impact, and there are so many variations you can do. This was a basic entry level version and I’m looking forward to making another.

If you don’t follow Bake Frenchie on Instagram, check out the video of the Pavlova coming to life. Have you all ever made Pavlova, and how did you find the process? Let me know in the comments.

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I haven’t formally introduced myself here, so I wanted to carve out some space to do so and share some information about who I am and how baking and cooking has become my main hobby.

My name is Melanie, I’m 34 years old, and I live in Essex Junction, Vermont, USA. I went to college here at the University of Vermont (go Catamounts!). I graduated in 2013 with a B.A. in both Art History and Studio Art.

From there, I moved to New York City. The plan was to work in the art world, but I was put off because nobody wanted to pay for help without requiring a master’s degree or 5 - 10 years of gallery experience. Thus, I moved into the corporate world, another lost soul fallen into sales.

I’ll share more on how NYC shaped my love for food, but at the end of 2020, I returned to Vermont. Now I live with my partner and our son, and I work as a pharmaceutical sales rep covering 3 different states.

I started this newsletter back in February with the intent of getting back to myself. I had a baby five months prior, and wanted to get back to something that I love - baking in the kitchen.

Let me pause here, and break out the details below on what made me who I am in the kitchen, how France factors in, how New York furthered my love for food, and why I started this newsletter in the first place.

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Food Heritage Takes Hold

Growing up, my father’s parents, known as Grandpa and Mamette, influenced me at a young age around cooking and baking. They met in France while my grandfather was serving in the US military during World War II and my grandmother was working at her family’s café in Paris. After the war, my grandfather went back to France and sealed the deal with a marriage proposal.

Mamette was French, and Grandpa was a Quebecois immigrant to the US. My Grandfather was gastronomically inclined, and so was Mamette; this may be where the food infatuation begins.

I remember Bûche de Noël for the holidays, langue á chat cookies, lamb dinners, beets, veal, and, as I’ve been told, rabbit for Easter. I remember sitting on the counter, eating berries, looking out the kitchen window, watching while Mamette tried to shoo the neighbor’s cows, who had broken out of the pasture and come into the yard, back from whence they came. I remember her cutting cherries into slices for my brother, something that I’ve now done for my son.

My family’s heritage was where my obsession with France started. In 2002, my father was assigned work in Paris for 6 months. I was in fifth grade at the time and remember him coming home for my brother’s tenth birthday, only to skip my fifth-grade graduation (as an elder child, I’ll never forget this preferential treatment).

His Job was the reason for my first trip overseas; in April 2002, during April vacation, we went to visit Dad. While we were there, we visited my Great Aunt and Uncle. I had my first proper baguette and croissant, a tarte framboise, and was never the same again.

Back at home, I started baking with Bisquick in my late elementary school years: apple tarts, pancakes, and biscuits. Then, in my high school years, I would use baking as a means to procrastinate. If I had projects, tests, or homework on Sunday, I’d be making cookies to put off my tasks. I made a lot of salty cookies, and not in a good way, but eventually I worked through that problem.

The college years were a break from meaningful time in the kitchen, and I really didn’t rediscover my love for it until I moved to New York.

Cooking in New York Made Me Who I Am

As mentioned, in 2013, I graduated from college and moved down to New York. Two years earlier, in 2011, my parents temporarily relocated to France for my father’s job. I had been travelling there every summer, and 2013 was no different. However, once summer was over and my tourist visa was up, my parents booted me out and said good luck.

However, the bread, cheese, and pastries I loved in France stuck with me. In my early days in New York, I walked a lot. My income was minimal, and walking was free. I’d stare at the restaurants and the bakeries (bagels! croissants! Bread! Pastries!) as I walked by and reminisce about Paris. And what better city to get the next best thing to Parisian food, bread, and sweet treats?

At the time, I was living with my Aunt and Uncle in Manhattan, while I interned in galleries and worked café jobs. My first café job, where I got second-degree burns on both my hands from cauliflower parsnip soup, had “the best chocolate chip cookie” in New York, which may have been a self-proclaimed title (hi Paradis To Go, can’t believe you are still kickin’). After that whole ordeal, I moved to a photo studio cafe (hi Milk Studios and The Smile), which had quite a vibe and was a fun place to rub shoulders with celebrities (hi Karlie Kloss, SJP, Kanye).

Finally, nine months after I arrived, I got my first salaried position, and two months later, I got a place with friends in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This was when my exploration of restaurants really grew. The next six years in the city, I wined and dined like crazy. Everything from hole-in-the-wall joints to Michelin-starred dinners, nothing was off limits. So much so that when COVID hit, I had a $5,000 credit card bill, though not just from eating out, and was able to pay it off in a few months, specifically because I was no longer going out to dinner or the bar with friends.

I cooked a lot at home in my time in New York. Often, people from out of town asked me if I ever cooked (yes) or if I had the space to (yes/you make the space), but this is where I grew into who I am as a self-proclaimed chefie and baker.

For example, my first apartment was a pit infested with cockroaches and mice, but we threw parties. I made red velvet cake for a friend’s birthday, baked candied bacon chocolate chip cookies for a house party (yes, they all got eaten). As the years passed by, I grew adventurous in what I was cooking and baking. I tried all kinds of new things and honed my skills in the kitchen.

Food quality became important to me over the years. My horizons had broadened through my time in France and the finer dining establishments I would visit in the city. Have you ever tried a conventional berry vs. an organic one? What about a locally grown berry? The difference is very apparent to my palate. I sought out a CSA for my produce, focused on quality and origin, and this still holds strong today.

Plus, I watched a lot of Chef’s Table.

So What Can You Expect?

As I mentioned at the top of this newsletter I started Bake Frenchie with the idea that 2025 would be the year I “master” French Baking (specifically boulangerie and patisserie).

This was not only my personal desire, but also a way to help me get back to who I was before having my baby boy back in September 2024. Postpartum was really tough on me, so having the time to do something creative and challenging was welcome.

I fell off the wagon pretty quickly and did a poor job of documenting what I made. I came back in September and have committed to regularly posting here weekly, barring any travel. I want the content to be syndicated across Substack and Instagram, with Substack as the base for my long-form writing content and clever/fun Notes, and Instagram as the hub for images and videos.

I know what supposedly “works” on Substack is finding your ultra-niche area to succeed in, but recently I’ve been feeling boxed in by the idea that Bake Frenchie is exclusively a documentation of my journey to upskilling my baking skillset.

What is the point of all of this? It is a creative outlet and an obligation I am tasking myself to hold up for fun and to try something new.

With that said, you can expect a bit more variety in what I’ll be posting about. I’ll still be including my trials and tribulations of self-teaching pastry; however, I’d like to include some lifestyle content, recipes, and maybe an occasional post on cooking instead of baking.

After all, my birth story post got the most traction out of anything I’ve posted so far. That is completely unrelated to he heart of Bake Frenchie, which is baking French. I think I will keep following what my heart wants to share.

In Conclusion

Thank you to my readers and subscribers who have joined me and will stick with me as I evolve this into what I hope will be a relatable corner of the internet.

It would help if you all could interact with my newsletters. That means clicking the like button or subscribing to stay up to date on the latest and greatest from my corner of the web.

Thank you for being here!

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Now, over six months later, I made inverse puff pastry again. This time, I made turnovers filled with a lemon pastry cream. If you are a subscriber, you know the last time I made pastry cream, it went unused for eclairs that didn’t rise properly.

The recipe I use for pastry cream comes from a French cookbook that has been translated. The main recipe for the cream vs. the one for lemon differed significantly. I realized this midway through making the cream and was challenged to find a way to make it work, blending both recipes into something that, I hoped, would hold up. Once all was said and done, things seemed to be fine on the pastry cream front, which was a win.

During assembly, I was definitely rolling some of the dough for the turnovers too thin, which was evidenced in the finished product. I had a few with filling that busted out, but overall, the result was beautiful! It felt good to work through this bake and have success.

After my debacle with Choux, I am calling this bake a win. The only things I’d adjust are adding some lemon juice to the pastry cream for stronger lemon flavor and rolling the pastry thicker. Besides that, this was a great success.

This bake reminded that challenge is a good thing. I’ve been feeling defeated with my baking project, but now I feel like my effort to improve is paying off. Often we have no choice but to persevere through challenges, and for better or worse, this often ends positively.

I’ve been feeling challenged with baking until this past weekend, reverting to what is comfortable and safe for me. I’ve been feeling challenged in my personal life, too, which is on the cusp of change. With many directions my life could go, it can feel overwhelming. I had a disappointing birthday, and I find my birthday to be hard for me; for whatever reason, I get overly emotional.

In fact, I was planning to go into detail about my birthday in this newsletter, but why keep a sore spot from healing? I don’t want to relive the disappointment I felt and dwell on it any longer.

I am feeling optimistic that things are improving, and with fall upon us here in Vermont, I am leaning into those fall flavors with pumpkin, squash, and apples galore.

Until next week, friends!

I had a couple of ideas around what I was looking for, but for the first time in a while, I was mostly browsing for fun. This place is a baker’s dream - they have a sizable cafe that serves excellent food. You can also buy loaves of bread as well as pies, all before you even enter the retail area.

This time I chose to skip grabbing something to eat - it is foliage season here in Vermont, and the line was a bit much for me. I grabbed a basket and headed straight to the store, ignoring the bread and pie display as I walked by.

What I Bought

Currently, I have too much King Arthur flour to justify a restock (whole wheat, bread flour, AP, pastry, and rye), so obviously, I head straight to the boxed mixes instead. Let this be a testament that I should work through the bread and rye flour I have on top of my fridge so I can make more room, but I would be remiss to skip King Arthur’s boxed mixes. They have everything from biscuits to scones, cakes to quick breads, and focaccia. Speaking from experience, especially when you have guests, having these on hand is a great time saver.

I grabbed some pumpkin donut and buttermilk pancake mixes since this was something I had come in for specifically. I was surprised to see a Pate á Choux mix, which I took home. If you’ve been following, I’ve been trying my hand at making this from scratch with some bumps along the way. This premade mix has me skeptical of its abilities to perform and hold up, but I couldn’t resist the urge to pick this up and try it out.

Next, I shopped for some flavor. I needed to restock my vanilla extract, and I wanted to grab some seasonal spice mixes (gingerbread, pumpkin spice). I fight the urge to stray from the list; there are so many different powders, extracts, and mix-ins that I want to put in my cart, but I managed to stick to my guns this time.

Lastly, I grabbed some Sidehill Farm lemon curd for Rob and a loaf pan with a bundt-ish design. I also have a rolling pin with tapered ends, which can make rolling out dough evenly a challenge, so I grabbed a rolling pin. This wasn’t on my list, but it felt justified to me. I made my way to the register, and the Christmas ornaments caught my eye. There was a stick of butter ornament, and I couldn’t leave without it, so I added it to my cart.

Why I Love the Store

I love looking through the King Arthur catalog just as much as the next baker, but I browse it as a means to prepare for my buy in-store. It is like looking at the grocery catalog that would come with the local newspaper before doing your weekly shopping.

However, shopping in the store gets my mind going in a way that leafing through the catalog’s pages does not. The pan I bought is an example of that.

I bought the loaf pan because I love making quick breads, but I wanted something a little more visually appealing. Yes, you can top them with nuts, seeds, or crumble, but I loved the sculptural character of the pan.

This weekend I made a chocolate bread in my new loaf pan. I used a simple recipe I found on Pinterest. I’ve shared it here. It came out quite well; instead of using the chocolate glaze, I made a vanilla one. But look at that gorgeous bread! I love this pan.

Lastly, King Arthur puts on some classes. I think I’m going to take one, either pastry-focused or bread-focused. I am looking forward to tackling this in 2026, and I’ve shared the link here in case anyone is interested in seeing what they offer. In-person is offered in VT and WA, but they also offer online courses.

Before I begin, if you are here for the smash cake content and details, please feel free to skip to the end of this week’s newsletter, as I am sharing my birth story in the paragraphs below. I am posting this primarily so I can look back on it, but also for friends, family, and anyone looking for a success story in an epidural-less birth.

Important Pregnancy Notes

I am a Type 1 Diabetic, therefore I was seeing Maternal Fetal Medicine from the jump of this pregnancy, which required a lot of monitoring - a bit too much if you ask me.

My pregnancy was not easy - my SPD was dismissed as round ligament pain, and it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I realized you shouldn’t have constant pain between your legs while walking around, so much so that walking the dog was a struggle in the end. Seeing other pregnant people hiking, and walking, and not gaining 50+ pounds has made me realize that experience was not normal, and my providers were dismissing me. This was disappointing, but not surprising, and I’ll get into more examples of issues I had with my providers during my hospital stay below.

Throughout my pregnancy, when the doctor said I should be induced because of stillbirth risk due to diabetes, I felt a mix of emotions. I wanted to tell them to shove it, while simultaneously understanding this was something I would like to avoid. I spent a considerable amount of time researching my options, but I didn’t like any of them. Due to my blood glucose numbers, my care team decided the week of 9/22/24 would be my week for induction. I would be 38 weeks.

Arrival At The Hospital

On Sunday, 9/22, at 7 AM, we were called to come in. Since September is one of the busiest months for births, I was surprised to get the call, and I started to cry when I got off the phone. I didn’t feel ready, and even though I knew this was coming, I didn’t think that it would happen this early in the week. Rob and I were walking the dog; I called my mother and told her I was feeling scared. She gave me some vague reassurance and wished me luck. We texted our doula team to let them know we had been called in, then we packed our things and headed over to the hospital 15 minutes away.

The Labor and Delivery floor overlooks the green that my freshman year dorm room had looked out over. It was a familiar view, and I took comfort in that. It was quiet when we checked in, and our doula Emma, a petite woman with a big smile and a buzzed haircut, was already waiting in the room. She asked how we were doing and helped us set up “the vibes,” some string lights Rob’s mother had gifted during Christmas the previous year.

Waiting, Waiting, and More Waiting

The waiting began - apparently, after we had arrived, things got busy on the floor, so nothing happened for me until about 3- 4 PM. After waiting more than six hours for anything to happen, I decided I didn’t want to dabble in induction; I was ready to go all in on getting this kid out. The waiting had helped decide what route to go for induction, and that was every avenue possible.

During the wait period, the anesthesiologist came in, and I gave consent for the epidural, despite knowing it wasn’t for me. I wanted to move and be in control of my body, but you never know what will happen or how long you’ll be laboring, hence the consent. I did not want any doors closed; options are your friend.

During the conversation with the anesthesiologist, my feelings about the epidural made me think of myself when I was in middle school: scared of needles, I didn’t want anyone coming near me with them, so I pierced my second and third holes in my ears, and did my cartilage as well. Bonus: I didn’t have to get permission from my parents that way. Just like back then, I wanted matters to be in my own hands, and wanted to control my pain and my choices.

Before we got things kicked off, I was already dilated to two centimeters. Around 3 or 4 PM, the nurses gave me the misoprostol, and a bit later, the Foley Balloon, which was the worst part of being induced. It was uncomfortable, and I held Emma’s hand when they placed it. At 7 PM, a shift change occurred, and we were joined by a new nurse, a petite woman named Anna, who was very sweet.

Managing Type 1 is the Wild West for Health Care Providers

Not too much was happening, and Emma left to get some sleep since it was getting late. With type 1 diabetes, the staff attempts to take blood sugar readings 1 - 2 times per hour, despite wearing a pump, CGM, and my 17 years of experience managing just fine on my own.

I was continually low overnight, which led to pricks every 20 minutes. Per the request of my care team, I suspended insulin delivery entirely and remained with low blood sugar despite my best efforts to treat my lows and discontinue insulin delivery. My body was doing crazy things it had never done before, and that was the response it had; I felt stuck with low blood sugar.

At one point, around 4 AM, Anna came in and told me the resident doctor had asked her to make sure that I wasn’t going back to taking insulin when the staff left the room. I was blown away, extremely offended, and wanted to give this provider a piece of my mind.

As someone working in pharma, during discussions with providers, we speak to the importance of trusting your patients. The fact that the provider on staff didn’t trust that I was managing my sugar appropriately was very disappointing, and a failure of the medical system, and that provider specifically.

My experience illustrates what I have felt for a long time: a majority of doctors and other healthcare professionals don’t know how to deal with Type 1. They didn’t when I was diagnosed, and they don’t today.

The treatment of my T1D on the L&D floor was the most frustrating and disappointing part of my birth experience. The providers requested I let them take control of my insulin, and I agreed, thinking (foolishly) maybe they could manage it better. I got a second IV pole(!) and was set up with a simultaneous insulin and sugar drip, which was about as pointless and illogical as it sounds.

I’ll save you the ins and outs of them attempting and failing to get my BG in a good place, and the failures of them handling meal time with a T1D patient leading up to when they broke my water. The point is, around 1 PM, we got there, and it was time to break the water.

Show Time

At 1:30 PM, something that resembled a long crochet hook was used to break my water. It was painless, just a warm, low-key gush of fluid. What they don’t tell you is that once your water breaks, you leak for quite some time; it doesn’t all gush at once.

Emma, our doula, had let me know that once my water was broken, the cushion keeping things comfortable would be gone. I’d feel much more pressure from his head resting on my cervix. I’ll tell you, I certainly felt the difference!

I did a couple of laps around the floor with both of my IV poles. I had one with insulin and sugar, and another with fluids and Pitocin. I was so swollen from the fluids that I put my hands in ice water, and could feel my feet jiggle when I took a step.

After those laps and roughly an hour after having my water broken, I was uncomfortable. My back hurt from the battering ram baby trying to get out from inside me. I knew going into the birth that I wanted to be in the tub because warm water sounded like it would make everything easier and keep everything down there softer, to be frank. It was time to get into the bath.

Rob and Emma filled the tub around 2:30, and I was laboring away, very uncomfy, but still not in the thick of it. Once my many IVs and I got in, Rob put on some nature sounds, and I tried some different positions and started having contractions closer together. From here, time became non-existent, or at least deviated from my standard perception of what time was. Practically the entire time I was in the tub, I was clutching a comb through my contractions and making lowing sounds like a cow. They say making deep sounds helps to relax the pelvic floor muscles and helps the baby out. I am certain they could hear me in the hall, but I did not care.

Give Me The Epidural

I know I said I didn’t want the epidural, but after an hour in the tub, I decided I was wrong.

After all, this is why I had consented to it. At this point, Rob was having a tough time staying neutral and remaining confident that all would be OK. I remember Emma taking him aside and talking him through how to support me best (thank god for Emma).

Less than an hour later, in between my 60 - 90 minute contractions, I remember telling Emma in tears, I didn’t know if I could do it. She encouraged me that I could, and I believe Rob felt I was feeling too much pain to go on without the epidural. I do think he felt Emma was not placing enough emphasis on my options, so he was giving me the option despite my ego still standing in the way.

Another contraction hit, and I clutched the everliving crap out of the comb in my hand. Roughly 10 minutes later, after which I had been in the tub for 45 minutes, Emma told me they likely wouldn’t check my progress for another 2 hours. This killed me because I was contracting constantly, and it felt like I was not going to make it that far.

They say when you think you cannot continue, you are at the tipping point, and I wish I had remembered that in this moment. I told Emma I couldn’t do it anymore - having contractions constantly, there was no time to recoup, and I needed the pain to stop. She told me she would go get the nurse and have the doctor check how dilated I was before administering the epidural.

Ten minutes later, on my way out of the tub and to the bed, I had to take a seat on the toilet to have a contraction. Making my way to the bed, I got there just in time to have another one. The doctor was waiting and checked me, only to find that I was fully dilated and we were beyond the opportunity for the epidural.

WHAT? Already? All I had heard were stories of people taking 12, 24, and 36 hours to deliver their babies. It had only been two hours! All things said, I was relieved that the pain train was almost to its destination; It was time to push.

Delivery

In classic Type 1 Diabetic fashion, I was low in the middle of the most important athletic performance of my life. For those of you who don’t know, being low is like being drunk. You are emotional, physically weak, and not thinking clearly at all. According to Rob, at this time, the healthcare team was hemming and hawing about what to do. Thank God for him making the call to get me grape juice (my labor beverage of choice for all of my low blood sugars) so I could complete the mission.

I kept being told to relax between contractions, but I did not know what relaxing was. My back was feeling so tight from the pressure, and it felt like I had only a 15-second window of relief. I don’t think my eyes were open. I have no idea how many people were in the room.

A nurse was setting up the table for the baby, and the provider told the nurse she didn’t have to set it up then, as they wouldn’t need it for a while. Despite being in my own otherworldly bubble, I did hear that snippet of discussion, and it lit a fire in me. I said to myself that I would be getting this baby out of me ASAP.

I changed positions and moved to my side. This was where I felt the magic happen. I felt progress in my pushing, and I felt a burning Ring of Fire. Outside of birth, when you hear about this “Ring of Fire”, it sounds horrible, as if it is the worst part of labor.

To me, in that moment, it was the final door to get through and a welcome change of pain. According to Rob, minutes after the provider had made that comment about not needing the table yet, the nurses were told to grab the doctor again, as I was about to launch this baby into reality.

A few more pushes and out he came. I felt such immediate relief in my back and crotch. I felt so light, and there was no more pain. I can’t recall exactly, but I believe they put our baby on my chest and took him away. Turns out, the baby had the cord wrapped around his neck twice. Then the baby came back, and I was holding him.

After less than an hour of pushing, Casper was born at 4:41 PM on 9/23/24. All in all, he came quickly and was out of me three hours after my water had been broken. I remember crying and saying “my baby”. Rob and I didn’t know the gender, and I got a handful of balls. I asked if it was a boy, and I wanted Rob to tell me. He came over and confirmed that we had a little boy. This was not a surprise to me; I had known since the beginning that this was the card I had been dealt.

The Aftermath

While all of this was going on, I was bleeding a decent amount. The resident and provider were stitching me up - I had a second-degree tear. It was taking quite a lot of time, and the lidocaine was wearing off. I heard them estimating that I had lost over a liter of blood. After I was stitched up, the nurses wanted me to try to use the bathroom. I was not able to stand without feeling like I was going to pass out, so they transferred me to the mother-baby unit.

Over the next 24 hours, Rob was so helpful. I needed him to help bathe me after the whole ordeal because I was so out of breath from the blood loss that I could not complete the task without feeling like I’d hit the deck. The following day, I received a blood transfusion, and they requested that I stay another night. The next day I got another transfusion, and we were released.

About a month ago, I took a look at my discharge summary for the first time and read all of the notes from my stay. I found some new information, and it was interesting to read the timeline of what had occurred.

No one mentioned to me that I had hemorrhaged, although I should have known. It wasn’t a severe enough hemorrhage to pack gauze or utilize a postpartum hemorrhage device, thankfully, but I was yet again disappointed with the healthcare providers’ neglecting to inform me about what was going on with my own body.

Overall, I rate my experience as positive. Two key takeaways I want to leave anyone expecting their first with are:

1. Have a soft plan and remain open-minded.

2. Do not forget to advocate for yourself - I could have done a better job when it came to my diabetes management, for example.

3. Have a lactation consultant lined up because those first two days at home are tough.

The first week, and specifically the first 36 hours at home, are stressful. The focus for me was establishing milk supply and dealing with boobs that felt like rocks. Plus, Casper was jaundiced and required some visits to the blood lab.

We met with our Doula a week later, and she advised that we live in proximity to a hospital if we were planning any more children, as once my water broke, the labor process happened very quickly, and I’d likely experience another quick labor.

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Celebrating 1 Year

As promised, I wanted to provide some details on the cake I served my son at his 1st birthday celebration this past weekend.

Let me be so clear - I am kind of a health nut for my son. I feed him organic veggies, fruits, and pasture-raised everything as often as I can. As you can imagine, there was no sugar in this cake.

I will admit, I did not create the recipe myself; instead, I found one specific to my son’s taste on Pinterest. Casper loves blueberries, so I made a blueberry cake with whole wheat flour and oat flour (I just blended some rolled oats to create this flour). Banana was used as the sweetener, and whole blueberries were added as well.

I baked the cake the day prior to his birthday party, and made the frosting the day of. The frosting was made with butter, cream cheese, and some freeze-dried blueberries that I blended. Casper had samples of both the cake and the frosting before the big moment, so I knew he would be into it.

This might be the best-looking cake I have ever personally made - Most of mine come out looking quite haggard, but I am proud of how this one came out!

This cake was not tender by any means; it was dense. Breaking it would be a challenge, and that proved to be the case at the party. We helped him out a little bit, but he mostly enjoyed handfuls of frosting.

You can find the recipe HERE if this sounds like something your little one would like.

As mentioned in my previous post about my struggles with choux, I attempted to make a successful dough again this past week. To address the issues I previously had with the dough and baking, I made simple chouquettes, a pastry topped with pearl sugar, to achieve a good rise and minimal deflation when removed from the oven.

I am happy to report I had more success with the rise this time; however, in the first batch I baked, I neglected to run a fork dipped in cold water across the tops of the dough after brushing them with egg wash. Check out the difference between batch 1 and batch 2 in terms of the rise in the photos below.

This round of choux was not without its own issues. My dough was a bit too wet, but I was in denial. When I took the spatula through the dough, it closed fairly quickly, and it did not drip off the spatula as slowly as I would have liked.

When I flipped over the 2nd batch, many of them were missing their bottom. What I mean is, the whole pastry rose off the pan. My partner Rob, suggested it may have been a temperature thing, as did my close friend’s husband, Pierre (a French pastry chef), when I texted him a photo of the domed chouquette.

Pierre supplied me with many helpful tips to make better chouquettes and shared a helpful video. I am sharing it HERE in case anyone else is looking for help. He did share some helpful notes about the video, saying to add the eggs little by little, not all at once, and not to add milk at the end.

Overall, I consider this an improvement. Now I am making tweaks and feel I am getting close to success with choux. Stay tuned for an update in the next couple of months on how this is going.

That Melanie has died, she is no more. Choux pastry has brought me to my knees. More specifically, baking the choux has absolutely crushed my kitchen ego. Until this point, I had only a hint that I may not be as great as I thought I was (see my last post on sourdough), but this proves that no matter how simple the recipe may be, there is some serious room for error, and it is often not straightforward.

Choux is a simple dough in comparison to some of the others out there (I’m looking at you, inverse & traditional puff pastry), meaning it can be made quickly. They all have simple ingredients, with the key differentiator for Choux being the inclusion of lots of egg and also cooking the dough on the stovetop before piping. With puff pastry, two different doughs are layered and require turns and chilling two or three times. This dough is used for croissants, palmiers, and other treats with a cravable, flaky texture. Choux, on the other hand, operates as a vessel. An eggy dough that is meant to puff up hollow in most cases to be filled. Think eclairs, Paris Brest, cream puffs, and profiteroles.

I have made choux dough three times now, with increasing success each time. However, when I pull the choux from the oven, without fail, a majority of my chouquettes or eclairs collapse.

Feeling discouraged, it has been months since I tried my hand at baking with choux. After my last attempt, where I had aimed high to make coffee eclairs (the pastry cream I made was excellent if I do say so myself), I had only two of eighteen shells bake correctly. While I may have put the cart ahead of the horse and should have stuck with making chouquettes instead of a filled pastry, a pause was required.

My goal for this week is to make chouquettes again (and again) until I get the bake time/texture right. That way, I can move on to what I really want to make once I master this: Coffee Eclairs.

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Trials and Tribulations

This topic covers the trials and tribulations I have had with sourdough bread and what to do with your starter discard.

After waffling back and forth about whether my starter (or master levain) was ready, I finally baked my first loaf. Spoiler alert: it did not go well. This, in part, is why I’ve decided to write about sourdough discard.

First, sourdough shouldn’t be so hard. Some of it has to do with me - it felt like every time I approached ready status to bake with my starter, travel was in the cards. On Super Bowl 2025 night, I finally baked a loaf. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw what went down all of those months ago: a small, dense loaf. The best thing about it was the crust. I didn’t bother eating it. The saga for a successful loaf continues.

So, What Went Wrong?

I have always struggled with sourdough, while others make it seem so easy. I made a list of the various potential errors I made below. Please let me know in the comments if you have any tips, tricks, or if you think one of my mistakes listed is the smoking gun.

• Absentmindedly, I forgot to weigh my flour and water and instead used a measuring cup. This was a pretty major error.

• I may have waited too long for my liquid levain to rise (if you’re like liquid levain, master levain? Check out some info on here).

• I used bread flour. Was that right or wrong? Who knows.

• Mixing: Did I do this correctly? Could the bread have gotten too hot while kneading using my dough hook?

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I could go on, but all I can say is the next loaf will be better.

Discard Recipes To Try

In the meantime, I’ve committed to using the discard to bake various items, with the most successful (tasty) being a loaf of Cinnamon Sugar bread. When using your starter, you can use either an active or inactive discard starter. This video does an excellent job of explaining the difference as well as what a starter can contribute to a recipe.

• Cinnamon Sugar Bread: I omitted the raisins; Rob is not a fan.

• Discard Crackers: I took my first crack at discard crackers during my first bout with sourdough while living in NYC (obviously during the pandemic era of my 8-year tenure there). I love adding fennel seed, salt, everything bagel seasoning, sesame, or a firm cheese. You can add anything you like!

I could go on, but I don’t want to overwhelm. You can add sourdough discard to muffins, pancakes, waffles, quick breads, et cetera. I have a bias for King Arthur, so I’ll leave a helpful link here for additional recipes.

In the meantime, with fall on the horizon and the leaves starting to turn here in VT, I am going to try to keep up with my starter and hopefully find success in baking a sourdough loaf at last.

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