Quatorze.

LE BRUNCH BUNCH.

Woot Woot! I am so happy to be back and blogging again after quite a long break! End of the year craziness kind of took hold of me for a while there! I am still in the midst of graduation, parties, and getting a million things done, but I have a new and exciting blog post for everyone!!!

Brunch. Anyone else agree with me on the fact that brunch is the loveliest, happiest meal ever? I am a huge fan. Scones, waffles, steaming mugs of coffee, good company; could anything beat that? I would say no! As summer is approaching and things are winding down, I decided to host a brunch for all my friends from my class at Sfb (san francisco ballet school). I wanted to have our class together before everyone left for their respective homes all over the world. Me being me, I decided to make everything myself. The menu I had planned consisted of the following: chocolate chip brioche pretzels, chocolate macarons with pistachio buttercream, eggs, bacon, toast, fruit/granola cups, and miniature bundt cakes. Let the baking commence!!

1.) Chocolate Macarons with Pistachio Buttercream: 

     Since I already have done a blog post about macaron-making, I am going to keep this short and sweet. For both the macaron shell and the buttercream, I used recipes from "Les Petites Macarons", which I will link below. 

For a more detailed macaron how-to, refer to my previous blog post!

2.) Chocolate Chip Brioche Pretzels

What first caught my eye in terms of this recipe was the pretzel. Brioche was on my list of things I had been wanting to make for quite a while, but I hadn't ever heard of "brioche pretzels" until this one popped out at me in my "Smitten Kitchen Cookbook".

Brioche is a unique bread, slightly sweet, with a truly unique texture and composition. Add in chocolate, and it is hard to beat. I made my brioche dough a day ahead of time just to get one thing out of the way. I kept in refrigerated until I had time to let it rise and bake it for the brunch!

You start with a very basic dough recipe. 

You mix this for a very long time. What set's brioche aside from other types of bread is the long knead-time. It creates the dense, yet soft and airy texture. After this, you add in butter. Sounding good yet?

OH yeah, and chocolate..

Now don't tell me that you aren't secretly wishing this was currently in a bowl at your house right now. It's the same thought that was running through my mind as I looked at the picture in the cookbook. 

After the dough has risen, it is pretzel making time!

Woohoo! 

The brunch was a success. Aside from the pretzels and macarons, we enjoyed fruit, granola, eggs, toast, and bundt cakes! 

Good food, good friends, good times. 

-ali