Andre du Broc�s Recipe for Fundraising: Make a Batch of Cookies � 175 Times
For this cover of Camp, we feature the cookies of Andre du Broc. We wrote about his cookie project in last year�s April issue. His goal is to bake all 175 cookie recipes from the book Martha Stewart�s Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share. It was a way to raise money for AIDS, based in part on the movie Julie & Julia, in which the central character sets out to cook every recipe in Julia Child�s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Du Broc is a writer at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, where he has worked for six years. He moved to Kansas City from New York to join his partner, Dan Briardy.
�I work in a group called �The Collaboratory,� and it�s an idea exchange at Hallmark. It�s a conglomeration of about 13 writers. We write cards, but we also write books. We conceptualize things a lot. Someone might have a doohickey and think, �Isn�t that cool, and China can make like 40,000 of them and how do we make this into a product?� and we�ll help conceptualize what that product might look like or sound like,� he said.
Since our article last year, du Broc has made a lot of progress toward his goal � he has about 56 or 57 more recipes to go. He hopes to have all of them completed by September 2011.
The first worst recipe, he said, was Key Lime Bars. �Either I got bad limes or the recipe was just bad. These were just so bitter and so tart they were unservable. And the last thing that was made is called a Financier, which is like a little French tea cake, and it had so many steps, because it�s Martha. Martha�s version of S&M is to write a cookie book. And you go through all of these steps and they look beautiful and they just don�t taste like anything and it�s like �why did I go through all of that?�� he said, laughing.
Du Broc said that most of the recipes have been very good. He brings the cookies to share with Hallmark employees or Briardy takes some to his job at Nord-strom, or he shares cookies with people who have donated to his AIDS Walk fund.
Knowing what he knows now, would he have done anything differently? He said, with a laugh, �I would have looked at the book a little more carefully.�
He has posted the results of each recipe on his blog, http://www.toomanycookies.wordpress.com.
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