A couple of weeks ago I got the chance to bake with Jackie Ellis. In case you didn’t know, Jackie owns Beaucoup Bakery, and is an amazing pastry Chef!! I first asked Jackie to teach me how to make Pain au Chocolat, but since I don’t have a lot of baking experience yet, we decided that cookies would be a better thing to start off with. Jackie decided that we would make oatmeal- cocoa- nib and chocolate cookies. Mmmmm!

We started by mixing all our ingredients together to get nice dough.

I  got the chance to ask Jackie when her passion to bake first started.  She told me she loved sweets as a kid. but when she was little her mom didn’t let her eat any treats with sugar unless they were home made.

So, when she felt like sweat treats, she would ride her bike to the library to find a cookbook with a recipe and then make them herself.  Learning how to bake also helped Jackie connect with her friends at school and  Canadian food culture.

Once we were done spooning the dough onto baking sheets , we balled them up and put them in the oven to bake.

Now for the fun part. We wanted to make s’mores, and for s’mores you need Jackie Ellis’ home made marshmallows.

First we brought the corn syrup to a boil. We later mixed it in the gelatin mix that we had sitting in the mixer.

We were flavouring our marshmallows with Vanilla, so Jackie taught me how to slice a vanilla bean and get out all the good flavour from the inside!

Then we mixed in the sugar syrup into the gelatin & water until we had the right consistency.

 Once we had the marshmallow to the right texture, we coated them in a cornstarch-icing- sugar blend so they wouldn’t be sticky.

Then we used a cookie cutter to cut them into discs, so they’d fit into our cookies.

The cookies smelled so delicious coming out of the oven!

Cookies + Marshmallows = AWESOME

Add chocolate and you have delicious sublimeness!

Baking with Jackie was an amazing experience. Maybe you’ll see a Day at Beaucoup Bakery post soon! Pain Au Chocolat here I come!!

And if you’re craving some amazing baked goods after reading this! You totally have to go to Beaucop!! Also recommended by me is the Kouign Amann!!