After the giddiness of hanging out all night, endlessly talking about your costume or stuffing yourself with the kids’ candy, as with anything payment for over indulgence is now due. You’ve eaten so much candy that you’re sick of it and now plan to dump the leftovers off on your coworkers. ‘Yea, I’ll bring it the office they’ll eat anything.’ The candy is free and in these hard economic times there’s no need to just give it away without it benefiting you. Make cookies out of them. Impress your friends, coworkers and neighbors with your newfound Martha Stewart ingenuity and skills. There might be a promotion in your future or save yourself from being downsized. Who would fire someone who brings fresh baked goods to work?

The other day, I watched one of those goofy local how-to-be-a-hip-Angeleno programs and they suggested the way to make cookies from Halloween spoils is to buy cookie dough and throw your candy corn, Hershey’s miniatures and hot tamales in the dough and bake it. That’s too many conflicting chemicals and sounds god-awful. Just as well jump in the cooling waters of San Onofre Nuclear power plant if it’s chemicals you want.

In the time it would take you to drive to Traders, find parking and buy cookie dough you could have googled peanut butter or chocolate chip cookie recipe, mixed it together and baked the cookies. It’s a better use of your time to make the dough yourself. There’s nothing worse than spending the money and time to cut out cookies from prepacked dough for them only to turn out tasting worse than something my dog crapped out. Instead make it yourself it’s cheaper in the long run and tastier.

First, google chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie recipe. Pick one. I’m partial to peanut butter. If you have allergies use the chocolate chip. Without looking at it, I can guess it will be 2 sticks of butter, 1 cup of sugar, another cup of brown sugar, 2 eggs, throw in some vanilla (I never measure vanilla) around 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt. For the peanut butter recipe, remove one stick of butter and add 1 cup of peanut butter. This is only a guesstimate. But I’m pretty damn close. This is a basic formula for most cookie recipes. Chefs replace ingredients with others to make it more specific.

Now from your candy stash, take out the choice miniature bars–milky ways, snickers, mars, krackel any chocolate bar. If it’s the fun size, cut it in half. You want roughly a square measuring 1 x 1 inch. Take the cookie dough that you mixed up and envelop the bar in dough, just enough to cover the entire bar. Roll between both palms into a round ball.

Put the ball on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 10 to 12 minutes. Start checking at 8 minutes and bake until lightly brown. It’s more like the lightest spray on tan color you’d request at the tanning salon. When they reach the desired color, let them cool on the pan for 2 minutes then take them off to cool on a wire rack.

Now bite into the warm cookie and taste the melted chocolate bar mingling with the moist cookie crumb. No chemical aftertaste from store bought cookie dough here. No flavors clashing. You won’t eat just one. Break out the milk and now you have a Halloween after party that’s better than a bag full of leftover candy. Now see if they make to the office.

It seems like the new hot ticket around LA is gay wedding invitations. A friend surprised me a few weeks ago by announcing he and his partner are getting married, because it’s now legal for them to do so. I admit that I’m not directly affected by this ruling and really don’t understand the history behind this sought after right in the gay community. However, I do understand something about relationships and good reasons for marriage such as love, compatibility, as well as a solid and stable partnership. An unstable relationship, wrought with problems—not so good.

So when my friend told me that he’s getting married because it was now legal. My first thought was, “Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.”

I’ve turned this into my mantra of the month, because it has brought me so many lessons. Here’s an example. Because my decided-to-get-married-because-it’s-legal friend has been so kind to me in the past, I offered to do their wedding cake for free. He told me that it was a small wedding of 30 to 50. I said okay and started planning. Then 6 days before the wedding the count mushroomed to 80 to 100! I told him I would have to charge since the amount of people has doubled.

He promptly told me no thanks and that he’ll order from his local Filipino bakery down the street. What the….? Later that week at the rehearsal dinner I overheard someone ask how much did they pay for photography. He proudly said nothing. Everyone donated everything. So it lead me to believe someone donated the Filipino cake. Lesson learned. If you offer baked goods for free, people will not pay for them later, no matter how fair you think it is.

filipino wedding cake

Many women get into professional baking because they hope to make money doing something they love. I’m no different. If a chef at a restaurant gives you a sample of a dish, you don’t go back and ask for the entire entrée for free. In my experience baking, people see no problem asking for your services for free. Even my pilates instructor wanted me to cater one of her cast parties for free.

You may think it’s for a friend or an acquaintance. Why not bake something for free? Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.

Would any of these friends and acquaintances work at their jobs for free? I think not. You’re in business to make money not give away product. Unfortunately, it’s human nature after getting something free, not wanting to pay for it later—just look at Napster.

Going Vegan is one of the fastest food trends in LA. Where Thai restaurants are ubiquitous as Starbucks, every other new Thai restaurant opening is now vegan. Every week, a doorknob flyer announces another new vegan Thai restaurant. I can count four in a three-mile radius. Even our Italian deli closed and morphed into a vegan restaurant, though not a Thai restaurant.

Make that five in a three-mile radius. I just stepped out my door and there was new brochure announcing Bulan, Thai vegetarian kitchen—no lie. It’s not vegan, the only difference is scrambled eggs in their pad Thai, but everything on the menu is “vegan optional.”

First I must confess. I am a vegetarian. So I’m overjoyed to eat food that caters to non-meat lovers. However, once you’ve tried one Thai vegan you’ve tasted them all. They’re like McDonalds. The cashew faux chicken tastes the same at Truly in Hollywood as it does at Green Leaves in Los Feliz. The only difference is Green Leaves gives you smaller portions and costs more.

This is where I come in. The dessert menu is practically the same in each one of these establishments. Coconut ice cream, mango with coconut rice or fried banana rolls with coconut rice. Or they buy desserts, like chocolate tofu cheesecake sweetened with agave syrup from an outside vendor—ghastly.

I wondered how I could contribute to this trend? Using Tanya Petrovna’s Boogie Bar recipe, from the Native Foods fame, as a base, I made my own vegan dessert bars. Instead of eggs I used silken tofu, replaced butter with sunflower oil and sugar with brown rice syrup, bananas and unsweetened coconut. This recipe contains no refined sugar or flour. Even the chocolate chips are grain sweetened with malt barley.

vegan bars

The bars came out with a moist cake-like texture and just enough sweetness. I added slivered for crunchiness.

As a plated dessert, you can drizzle a mango infused almond milk sweetened with maple syrup sauce. Or take it to go and replace your regular energy bars with it.

Here’s another vegan dessert idea. How about a mash-up of their typical coconut and mango desserts: champagne mango and Ecuadorian banana rolls with coconut-chocolate ganache. Replace the cream in your chocolate ganache with coconut milk—yummy!

Recently I read a quote from a magazine article saying, “Violence was American as apple pie.” Later I read another article that said, “Pornography was as American as apple pie.” Oh my! The poor apple pie–associated with such nefarious characters and miscreants. Nefarious associations aside, customers and friends have made apple pie my most requested recipe. It’s not just for the mountain of succulent apples–their sweet-tart taste reminiscent of cool, crisp fall evenings–or the subtle flavors of spicy cinnamon and nutmeg that my apple pie is recommendation #1. It’s for the crust. A crust with a flaky, buttery texture that melts in your mouth.

When people discover that I’m a professionally trained pastry chef, they eventually ask, “How do you make pie crust? It’s so scary.” Unrolling pre-made pie crust sheets from Trader Joes seems to be all they can muster.

Pie crust is the most forgiving and one of the easiest pastries to prepare. All it takes is a little patience, effort and faith. With those three things you will come away with a crust where each flaky layer complements the rich meaty apples sauteed in cinnamon and nutmeg. There’s no comparison to having a house redolent with apple pie spices eminating from a warm kitchen to a pie from the local grocery reheated in a microwave oven.

Here’s a recipe to one of the most delectable pie crusts. Its flakiness will surprise you. You can use it for savory or sweet pies. I just used it for a leek and mustard tart last weekend–best tart ever!

Flaky Pie Dough
1lb 4oz all purpose flour or 4 3/4 cup
7 oz shortening or 1 cup
7 oz unsalted butter or 1 cup
1 tbsp lemon or vinegar
6 oz cold water or 3/4 cup
2 tsp salt
1 oz sugar (optional) or 2 tbsp

1. Sift the flour and sugar (if using).

2. Cut the butter into 1/2 inch cubes, then cut into the flour with a bowl scraper using the rounded end until most of the flour is the size of grapes. Begin cutting in the shortening. Continue cutting in the shortening until flour is the size of peas. See photo.

3. Add one tbsp of lemon juice or vinegar. This makes the dough more tender.

4. Make a well in the middle of the flour and fat, then put 1/2 of the water in the flour. If the mixture is still crumbly add a little more water.

5. Gather the dough into a ball and flatten to a disk. Wrap the dough well and let it rest in the refrigerator.

6. After the dough feels cold to the back of your hand, cut it into 3 portions. 1 portion for the bottom of the pie and another for the top. The last portion you can use for decoration or save well-wrapped in the freezer.

7. Put the cold disk on a well-floured surface. Press down gently with a rolling pin. Then roll out the dough into a circle. Use the pie tin to make sure the dough diameter is wide enough.

8. Roll the dough around the rolling pin and then roll out into the pie tin. Gently make sure the dough fills the pan–don’t stretch the dough or it will shrink when you bake it.

9. Put your cooled pie filling in the pie tin.

10. For the top dough layer repeat step 7. Then roll the dough onto the apple filling. Either cut a small circle into the top dough layer with a cookie cutter or cut slits on top of the dough.

11. Put the pie in the freezer until dough hardens and cools.

12. Egg wash and bake at 325 for 45 minutes.