Yesterday I got to leave the campaign a little early– luckily busy bosses don’t make their staff wait around all day.  I went by the coop to drop off a few fliers and pick up my week’s worth of groceries, including the fixings for bouchons.  As soon as I got home I started to work making these delicious, chocolatey, dry treats for the campaign’s open house Tuesday.

When we lived in Portland, Oregon the Pearl Bakery was a very bad, bad place for me to discover.  Once I ate my first bouchon I was hooked.  Usually I describe them as if a chocolate muffin was made by the French.  Sort of.

I wont retype the recipe here because it is in David Lebovitz’s book (and also Orangette already put it up for you).  Making these always makes me feel like a chef– mostly because I am convinced that melting chocolate is something that is very, very easy to screw up (though clearly, if I can do it, it can’t possibly be that hard).

I also have a hard time waiting for the butter and eggs to come to room temperature.  I always want to wait for them to get to the right temperature but, sadly, usually I just kind of put them in and use a fork to make the pieces of butter really small.  Honestly, they turn out fine.  Maybe they’d turn out amazing if I waited for the butter to be room temperature but I just don’t have the patience for that.

Baking in a new kitchen was a little weird.  I’ve been missing my home lately– of course, this is kind of a theme in my life, even when I’m in D.C.  Still, I like knowing where the baking soda is, where the chocolate is kept, etc.  Its nice to turn off my brain and just sort of baking instead of feeling like I’m looking for things.  Does this make me crazy?  Searching kind of stresses me out.