Easter: The Good

Happy Easter, everyone!

Easter is pretty big holiday around here. Most businesses and banks take both Friday and Monday off, making it a four-day weekend. Even CERN closes for the holiday, though by "closes" I mean that the restaurants and post office and UBS branch and bureaucratic stuff is all shut down and no official meetings are held. The experiments still run, and they took a huge amount of data over the weekend.

I worked--that's part of being a grad student, after all. But it was Easter, and so I also indulged in a few treats. For myself, I got the classic Lindt chocolate Easter bunny shown above. For everyone else, I baked.

Some of it even turned out.

The first item that turned out was a batch of coconut macaroons (note that this has two 'o's; macaron with just one 'o' is a different type of cookie) using David Lebovitz's recipe. I have loved these chewy coconut cookies since I first had them as an undergrad, and his recipe is my favorite. The recipe calls for four egg whites, so it is an excellent way to use up the excess stashed in one's freezer.
Especially if you're like me and always buy too many eggs thinking you will do more baking than you actually have time for, and need to freeze the eggs before they go bad and are wasted.

The second thing that actually turned out was a batch of English toffee. Unlike caramel, which I can't get to work to save my life, toffee and I get along better. It's a fun item to make, since as my sister puts it, "you combine butter and sugar and then burn them to the right color."



I got this batch to the right color. And then covered the hot mixture in chocolate pieces that obligingly melted into a gooey top layer. Lovely. Certainly, the friends who I foisted goodies off onto on Sunday seemed to like them. They cleaned me out completely which I was fine with. I had other projects in my kitchen that didn't turn out so well that needed my attention. That's chapters 2 and 3 of this little saga.