Day 3 of the #25DaysofCookies Challenge meant breaking out my Dominque Ansel Cookbook. 

I don’t use it often because, quite frankly, I’m intimidated. Dominque Ansel – for those of you who don’t know – is the creator of the Cronut, pastry chef extraordinaire, owner of multiple bakeries in different countries and a culinary genius. And his cookbook is not for amateurs. 

This is the first time I made these and I was worried the whole time that I was doing something wrong with the chocolate. The recipe calls for melting chocolate over a double boiler and then adding melted butter out of the microwave into the chocolate. It sort of thickened and freaked me out, but it hadn’t seized so I wasn’t sure if I had screwed it up or not…turns out everything was fine and I was overreacting.

I’m not usually a huge fan of nuts in my cookies. I’d go so far as to say that a lot of times I feel like they actually *ruin* cookies. Not the case here. At all.

This is in the beginner category of the DA Cookbook. I’ve ventured into the “intermediate” category, but since this is Dominque Ansel we’re talking about, I’ve been too scared to head into the Advanced category. You can visit his bakeries in New York, Paris, LA and Tokyo, or buy his cookbook, here.