While traversing baking Reddits, I stumbled across Christina Tosi's Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. I'd never heard of Milk Bar, but I had heard of Momofuku and David Chang. A name-brand cookbook, I thought. Maybe this will help me learn to bake well. Thus began this endeavour.

The headers on this page are taken from the titles of each section of the cookbook. I do not have a stand mixer, hand mixer, ice cream machine, or blender. I use corn syrup instead of glucose and canola oil instead of grapeseed oil. I measure all ingredients in grams, except for when a measurement is given by tablespoon/teaspoon.

cereal milk^TM

the crunch

this section next!

the crumb

milk crumb: Like the author, I'm not a fan of milk, and I believe that 'milk crumb' is everything that I want milk to taste like. The white chocolate is what makes this recipe work. Now, how else to use it...? Ideas---with strawberry, with a chocolate cookie. Using hot chocolate mix instead of milk powder or alongside it. Milk tea powders?
chocolate crumb: Tastes like crushed Oreo cookies. It's slightly salty, which I'm loving.
birthday cake crumb: I used AP flour instead of cake flour; used regular imitation vanilla extract and not clear vanilla extract; it came out fine. Little salty, little sweet.
blueberry & cream cookies: Awesome. A+. The milk crumb brings in a subtle pop of sweetness; incorporates white chocolate chips without them beind a dominant flavor. Dried blueberries are tiny and pack quite the punch. I'd like to try this with other dried fruits---I think strawberries would be good. So'd peaches, which she talks about. I forgot to take a picture...guess I'll just need to make it again...; For this and all other cookies in this section, I weigh out about 50g of dough and turn it into a ball. I'll refrigerate all of these on one parchment-lined sheet pan. I keep forgetting to buy plastic wrap, so they're left uncovered. While baking, I put six cookies on each sheet pan. They spread out significantly; I ain't trying to put all of them on one pan. Bake near the middle of the oven for 18min (check frequently after 14min); if baked near the bottom, they will burn. I've been scaling the cookie recipes down by 1/2.
chocolate-chocolate cookies: The full recipe calls for one egg. I cut the recipe in half. The dough wasn't coming together, and adding the rest of the egg in did the trick. I baked them for 16min and they came out slightly burnt. Despite that, they were still pretty okay. They're a nice mix of chocolate-y and salt-y without being too sweet. I want to try a batch using milk crumb instead of chocolate crumb; think milky chocolate cookie instead of salty chocolate cookie.; Batch two---I used milk crumb instead of chocolate crumb. This dialed down the saltiness, but didn't add an additional flavor. I baked them for 13min; they burnt at 12min, but weren't fully baked yet either (center was too doughy). I think the temperature doesn't work for my oven. This cookie is supposed to bake at 375degF, while the other cookies bake at 350degF. If I do them again---I just might---I'll bake at 350degF and see what happens.
banana cream pie: Next time at grocery store, remember to buy bananas and freeze them. Please. Also food coloring.
confetti cookies: So...I put these near the bottom rack of the oven. 18min burned them. Still pretty tasty. I also thought that the sprinkle:cookie ratio was off. If I were to make these again, I'd triple the amount of sprinkles. Better yet, weigh out the dough and calculate sprinkle:dough ratios.; Batch 2 - doubled the amount of sprinkles in the crumb and cookie. This was a great sprinkle:cookie ratio. Unfortunately, some of the cookies began to burn after 10min (despite being in the middle of the oven). I turned the temperature down to 300degF and baked for another 5 or 6 minutes. When I pulled them out, the cookies were inconsistently baked. Once they'd cooled down and hardened, a quarter of them were noticably underbaked. They weren't as burnt as the first batch---all of them were edible---but the result still wasn't good.; I'm getting the impression that these cookie recipes are finicky. The cookies sit in my fridge overnight before baking, so that's not the problem. I'm chalking all of it up to the oven? But then why did the blueberry and cream cookies come out perfectly?

graham crust

fudge sauce

liquid cheesecake

I taste-tested it when there was a bit of lime juice on my finger; amazing. You could eat the liquid cheesecake in one sitting. I didn't have milk on hand, so I mixed a bit of powdered milk with water and called it a day.

cinnamon bun pie

This was salty, but in a way that made myself and other taste-testers want to eat more. Microwave brown butter didn't work out for me (made a big-ass mess; at least the microwave is now clean), so I went ahead and used regular butter. The liquid cheesecake sat in my fridge overnight, so I had a hard time spreading it over the different layers. Maybe I'd baked the cheesecake for too long, or maybe it would be easier to use if it were relatively fresh out of the oven. Overall, this was an A+ dessert that I'd make again.

Round 2---I added 1tbsp of cocoa powder to the powder layer, reduced the salt in the powder layer by half. For the streusel, I omitted the oats and added 1tbsp of cocoa powder. Result was okay. I think I should've omitted the streusel entirely. Maybe do a powder layer on top?

nut brittle

nut crunch

the ganache

mother dough

I followed the croissant recipe, but made plain croissants (just a thing of butter; no added flavors/seasonings/anything). I was surprised that the dough gave me an amazing croissant---after all, I'd just used half of the dough for a cinnamon bun pie. This was the exact taste/texture/etc. that I'd expect from buying a croissant at a bakery. That being said, I definitely struggled to shape them correctly.

I used this dough for pizza and cooked for .5hr at 350degF. Great result, no notes.

citrus, illustrated

Cookbook by George Geary.

mojito tea cake with rum glaze: Modifications: replaced 180g of cake flour with 160g of all-purpose flour and 20g of cornstarch (thanks, King Arthur). Replaced sour cream with full-fat Greek yogurt (1:1 ratio). Batter contains zest and juice of 1 large lime, variety unknown. Omitted icing due to lack of confectioners' sugar. For the glaze, I used the juice & zest of 1 small lime (about 30ml), 1tsp of sugar, and 1tsp of rum. Result was a really fluffy cake. Lime flavor was very strong with a slight aftertaste of rum.
orange-blossom glazed cake: I didn't want a whole-ass cake, so I cut the cake recipe in half. This made eleven cupcakes. I baked it at 325degF for 25min, and they came out perfectly. I lowered the temperature from 350degF based on this article's description of how they'd end up with crisp edges. My edges were not crisp...oh well. I was struggling to measure the orange zest, so I used the zest of one orange---perfect. The orange zest is where the majority of the flavor comes from. The cupcakes were great on their own. The glaze was really sticky--great for a cake, not so great for something handheld. I should've thought that through before making the glaze. Either way, great recipe. I should use orange zest more often.
(chocolate-dipped) triple citrus cookies: Clearly, I did not dip them in chocolate. I cut the recipe in half. Used zest of one orange, one lemon, and half of one lime. I was really skeptical---no eggs? just butter, sugar, flour, and zests?---but they came out fine. Texture is soft and slightly crumbly, not unlike shortbread. Melt-in-your-mouth buttery.

momofuku milk bar cook-along

cereal milkTM