Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Use this to top our Vanilla Cupcakes. This is a great, easy to accomplish, recipe for chefs starting out in baking. Make sure it is thin enough to be easy for them to pipe (if you are going that route). If you need to thin it a bit, just dump it all back into the…

Classic Vanilla Cupcakes

These cupcakes are a classic crowd-pleaser. There are so many skills to learn when making cupcakes. You have to cream butter and sugar together, scoop and swipe your flour, make a proper buttercream without over mixing, and then pipe that buttercream onto your gorgeous, fluffy cupcakes. There is not much that excited a room full…

Fluffy Pancakes

I am a pancake fiend. I love pancakes. I love all pancakes. I love flat pancakes that you smear with butter and syrup and roll up like a burrito, I love dense pancakes filled with spelt and dried cherries, but most of all I love a giant stack of fluffy pancakes that tower above your…

Veggie Breakfast Tacos

These breakfast tacos are surprisingly delicious! The smoky seasoning on the black beans combined with the sweetness from the roasted sweet potatoes creates a flavor combination that I want to wake up to every day. Students as young as 5 can begin to scramble their own eggs. Class Tips to remember: Personally, breakfast tacos have…

Whipped Cream

This is your calling to make your own whipped cream. It is beyond easy. It tastes so good, and it makes a ton! It is such an impressive flex to any event or dinner when you bring a nice, cold bowl of freshly whipped cream. There is something so vintage about it. Like making your…

Wonderful Waffles

A hazard of the job of a recipe developer and culinary class instructor is that I am always trying new recipes. I am on the hunt for ways to simplify recipes for students and also ways to broaden their horizons. I want to find food that is yummy and also some recipes that may challenge…

Vanilla Madeleines

This recipe was used during our Cakes Course last year. I had such fun picking out perfect tiny cakes that we could make in the hour and a half classes. Bake time can be quite constricting for cooking classes. I am so glad this led to a deep dive on madeleines and madeleine baking for…

Fresh Tomato Pasta Sauce

If you’re like me, about March you’re ready for some summer produce! Here is the perfect tomato sauce for the height of tomato season (late summer) when tomatoes are cheap, flavorful, and plentiful. Make sure a grown up does the grating of the tomato, unless you have a rotary grater or food mill like we…

Sheet Pan Peach Cobbler

I developed this recipe out of a need for a quicker, out of season peach cobbler for our Outstanding Orange course. We only have an hour and a half from start to finish, which can be tricky when baking with 10 student chefs. Often cobblers will have you bake it for 45 minutes to an…

Sheet Pan Fajitas

Having just come back from spring break in Texas visiting family, I still have Tex-Mex on the brain. I did my best to satiate the craving while there. My mom took us straight from the airport to our favorite Tex-Mex spot, where I ordered a cheese enchilada, crunchy chicken taco, queso, and refried beans. All…

Pasta Primavera

Spring is just hinting at itself here in Colorado. On my walks around the neighborhood I spy crocuses and snow drops. There is something entirely magical about snow drop flowers popping up when there is still snow on the ground. They are the harbingers of spring. This is something I only started to appreciate once…

Mini Quiche Lorraine

Quiche Lorraine is loved by my father. I never understood it until I made my own version. The creamy custard was wholly different from the tasteless, eggy things I had experienced thawed from the freezer at various gatherings over the years. Quiche had always been “fine”, but nothing to rave about. Then I made my…