I made that cinnamon roll recipe I spotted on this blog via this awesome website. It seemed too good to be true--cinnamon rolls in less than an hour, and no yeast, no punching down, no letting them rise, nothing! I've adapted the recipe a bit--I didn't feel like dragging out a food processor, for example. As always, the italics = me.
INGREDIENTS
For the Dough:
3/4 C part skim ricotta cheese (or cottage cheese)
1/3 C low fat buttermilk
1/4 cup sugar
4 T butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 C flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
For the Filling:
scant 2 T butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
pinch ground cardamom
For the Glaze:
1 C powdered sugar, or to taste
2 T milk, give or take
1 tsp. vanilla
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400°F. Grease the sides and bottom of a 8 or 9″ baking pan with cooking spray.
Combine the ricotta cheese, buttermilk, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla in a bowl and mix until smooth. Fold in the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda until the dough clumps together (don’t overstir). The dough will be soft and moist.
Dump the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it with floured hands 4 or 5 times until smooth (it really only takes 4-5 times). I didn't bother with the floured surface and opted to knead the dough inside the bowl--does anybody else do this? It seemed to work. With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 12×15-inch rectangle. I discovered that 12×15 is exactly the size of my flexible plastic cutting board, so that’s a quick and easy way to size it. This is absolutely true; what a great tip!
Brush the dough with the melted butter, leaving a 1/2-inch border unbuttered around the edges. In a medium bowl, combine brown sugar and spices. Sprinkle the mixture over the buttered area of the dough and press gently into the surface.
Starting at a long edge, repeat, LONG EDGE, roll up the dough jelly-roll style. Pinch the seam to seal, and leave the ends open.
With a sharp knife, cut the roll into equal pieces (I got 8). Set the pieces, cut side up, in the prepared pan; they should fill the pan and touch slightly, but don’t worry if there are small gaps.
Bake until golden brown and firm to the touch, 20 to 28 minutes. Mine took 21, but we like our baked goods a little on the pale side. Set the pan on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Run a spatula around the inside edge of the pan to loosen the rolls, and transfer them to a serving plate.
Since we don't have mascarpone cheese, I decided to go with my standard powdered sugar/milk/vanilla glaze. Add the milk and vanilla to the powdered sugar, stir, and adjust if too thin or too thick. It's always good. If you want a fancier glaze, please visit Don't Forget Delicious.
So, were these true cinnamon rolls? I'd say they're more like a biscuit/roll hybrid, and ain't nothin' wrong with that! They didn't have that yeasty aroma, but I guess that's probably because there's no yeast in them. But the cinnamon filling was outrageously good, right on the border between just the right amount and excessive. I had my doubts about the allspice and cardamom, and you could leave them out if you're a wuss too, but really, why are you so afraid of spices? The scent of the rolls baking woke up Jeff, who staggered into the kitchen from the bedroom.
Jeff's birthday is one week away, and we're all pretty excited about it.
Well, at least I am. And I felt like making the ultimate birthday cake. I've also been wanting to try out Christina Tosi's homemade Funfetti cake for about nine months. The concept behind it--let's spend hours baking something that normally takes about five minutes to throw together--is, if you think about it, so me. I'm the kind of person who will spend a month painting a watercolor while my contemporaries blithely turn out splashy creations at the rate of one per day. What is my problem?
That's a question for another time. But this recipe results in something that accurately duplicates yet is better than your standard Funfetti-with-canned-frosting cake because it has the secret ingredients of love and toil and dude I spent my entire Friday afternoon making this for you. It also has some crunchy things happening that you won't get anywhere else. Christina Tosi is a wonderful maniac for putting this recipe together. Her Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook is by far my favorite cookbook this year and is definitely in my all-time top five. Look: it contains a recipe for something called "liquid cheesecake" and it's everything you imagine it to be. Buy this book. Learn from it. Worship it.
Here's the giant recipe. My notes are in italics, and I apologize for the wonky format. It's a Typepad problem.
Birthday Cake makes 1 quarter sheet pan
4 tablespoons (½ stick, 55g) butter, at room temperatue
⅓ cup (60g) vegetable shortening
1¼ cups (250g) granulated sugar
3 tablespoons (50g) light brown sugar, tightly packed
3 eggs
½ cup (110g) buttermilk
⅓ cup (65g) grapeseed oil <-- vegetable oil also works
2 teaspoons (8g) clear vanilla extract <-- regular vanilla also works
2 cups (245g) cake flour
1½ teaspoons (6g) baking powder
¾ teaspoon (3g) kosher salt
¼ cup (50g) rainbow sprinkles
Pam or other nonstick cooking spray (optional)
2 tablespoons (25g) rainbow sprinkles
Preheat the oven to 350.
Combine the butter, shortening, and
sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment
and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the
sides of the bowl, add the eggs, and mix on medium-high for 2 to 3
minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl once more.
On low speed, stream in the
buttermilk, oil, and vanilla. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high
and paddle for 4 to 6 minutes, until the mixture is practically white,
twice the size of your original fluffy butter-and-sugar mixture, and
completely homogenous. Don’t rush the process. You’re basically forcing
too much liquid into an already fatty mixture that doesn’t want to make
room for the liquid. There should be no streaks of fat of liquid. Stop
the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
On very low speed, add the cake flour,
baking powder, salt, and the 50g (¼ cup) rainbow sprinkles. Mix for 45
to 60 seconds, just until your batter comes together. Scrape down the
sides of the bowl.Please note: the batter is delicious. Jeff popped into the kitchen and ate, I don't know, two tablespoons of it.
Pam-spray a quarter sheet pan and line
it with parchment, or just line the pan with a Silpat. Using a spatula,
spread the cake batter in an even layer in the pan. Sprinkle the
remaining 25g (2 tablespoons) rainbow sprinkles evenly on top of the
batter.
Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes.
The cake will rise and puff, doubling in size, but will remain slightly
buttery and dense. At 30 minutes, gently poke the edge of the cake with
your finger: the cake should bounce back slightly and the center should
no longer be jiggly. Leave the cake in the oven for an extra 3 to 5
minutes if it doesn’t pass these tests.My cake took 30 minutes to bake completely.
Take the cake out of the oven and cool
on a wire rack or, in a pinch, in the fridge or freezer (don’t worry,
it’s not cheating). The cooled cake can be stored in the fridge, wrapped
in plastic wrap, for up to 5 days.
Birthday Cake Soak makes about 60g (¼ cup)
¼ cup (55g) milk
1 teaspoon (4g) clear vanilla extract
Whisk together the milk and vanilla in a small bowl.
Birthday Cake Frosting makes about 430g (2 cups)
8 tablespoons (1 stick, 115g) butter, at room temperature
¼ cup (50g) vegetable shortening
2 ounces (55g) cream cheese
1 tablespoon (25g) glucose <-- I got mine on Amazon
1 tablespoon (18g) corn syrup
1 tablespoon (12g) clear vanilla extract <-- regular vanilla works too
1¼ cups (200g) confectioners’ sugar
½ teaspoon (2g) kosher salt
pinch (0.25g) baking powder <-- what an idea!
pinch (0.25g) citric acid <-- I got mine on Amazon
Combine the butter, shortening, and
cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle
attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes, until
the mixture is smooth and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
With the mixer on its lowest speed,
stream in the glucose, corn syrup, and vanilla. Crank the mixer up to
medium-high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is silky
smooth and a glossy white. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the confectioners’ sugar, salt,
baking powder, and citric acid and mix on low speed just to incorporate
them into the batter. Crank the speed back up to medium-high and beat
for 2 to 3 minutes, until you have a brilliant stark white, beautifully
smooth frosting. It should look just like it came out of a plastic tub
at the grocery store! Use the frosting immediately, or store it in an
airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.
Birthday Cake Crumb makes for 275g (2¼ cups)
½ cup (100g) granulated sugar
1½ tablespoons (25g) light brown sugar, tightly packed
¾ cup (90g) cake flour
½ teaspoon (2g) baking powder
½ teaspoon (2g) kosher salt
2 tablespoons (20g) rainbow sprinkles
¼ cup (40g) grapeseed oil <-- vegetable oil also works
1 tablespoon (12g) clear vanilla extract <-- again, regular works
Heat the oven to 300°F.
Combine the sugars, flour, baking
powder, salt, and sprinkles in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the
paddle attachment and mix on low speed until well combined.
Add the oil and vanilla and paddle
again to distribute. The wet ingredients will act as glue to help the
dry ingredients form small clusters; continue paddling until that
happens.
Spread the cluster on a parchment- or
Silpat-lined sheet pan. Bake for 20 minutes, breaking them up
occasionally. The crumbs should still be slightly moist to the touch;
they will dry and harden as they cool.
Let the crumbs cool completely before
using in a recipe or scarfing by the handful. Oh you will want to do that. You can get away with eating maybe 1/4 cup of them. This recipe makes a lot. Stored in an airtight
container, the crumbs will keep fresh for 1 week at room temperature or 1
month in the fridge or freezer.
Assembly
You will need a 6" cake ring and two 20"x3" pieces of acetate. Come on. I know you don't have them. Add them to your Amazon wish list along with the glucose and the citric acid, hopefully get them for Christmas or your birthday, and wait for an excuse to use them.
Put a piece of parchment or a Silpat
on the counter. Invert the cake onto it and peel off the parchment or
Silpat from the bottom of the cake. Use a 6" cake ring to stamp out 2
circles from the cake. These are your top 2 cake layers. The remaining
cake “scrap” will come together to make the bottom layer of the cake.
- layer 1, the bottom -
Clean the cake ring and place it in
the center of a sheet pan lined with clean parchment or a Silpat. Use 1
strip of acetate to line the inside of the cake ring.
Put the cake scraps in the ring and use the back of your hand to tamp the scraps together into a flat even layer.
Dunk a pastry brush in the birthday cake soak and give the layer of cake a good, healthy bath of half of the soak.
Use the back of a spoon to spread one-fifth of the frosting in an even layer over the cake.
Sprinkle one-third of the birthday
crumbs evenly over the top of the frosting. Use the back of your hand to
anchor them in place.
Use the back of a spoon to spread a second fifth of the frosting as evenly as possible over the crumbs. This is quite impossible. Give it your best shot and try not to get too uptight about it. Neatness doesn't really matter.
- layer 2, the middle -
With your index finger, gently tuck
the second strip of acetate between the cake ring and the top ¼ inch of
the first strip of acetate, so that you have a clear ring of acetate 5
to 6 inches tall—high enough to support the height of the finished cake.
Set a cake round on top of the frosting, and repeat the process for
layer 1 (if 1 of your 2 cake rounds is jankier than the other, use it
here in the middle and save the prettier one for the top). This acetate stuff is truly a pain in the ass, but it's worth the hassle, I tell you, if only for the satisfaction you will feel when you peel it off later.
- layer 3, the top -
Nestle the remaining cake round into
the frosting. Cover the top of the cake with the last fifth of the
frosting. Give it volume and swirls, or do as we do and opt for a
perfectly flat top. Garnish the frosting with the remaining birthday
crumbs.
Transfer the sheet pan to the freezer
and freeze for a minimum of 12 hours to set the cake and filling. The
cake will keep in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.
At least 3 hours before you are ready
to serve the cake, pull the sheet pan out of the freezer and, using
your fingers and thumbs, pop the cake out of the cake ring. I've also set the cake on top of smaller, upside-down bowl and pushed down on the ring. It's easier than using your hands. Gently peel
off the acetate and transfer the cake to a platter or cake stand. Let it
defrost in the fridge for a minimum of 3 hours (wrapped well in
plastic, it can be refrigerated for up to 5 days).
Slice the cake into wedges and serve.
Jeff's comment:
"[This]
was glorious food and even made the cream soda that washed it down
taste better. I described it as the Platonic ideal of a Funfetti cake."
The night Jeff and I returned home from Orlando, all stocked up on groceries, cuddling with the cats, and awaiting the snowstorm, I hate to say it, but my husband became a little whiney.
He wanted donuts, you see, and we had neglected to pick up any of those when we were shopping, but he didn't feel like getting back in the car and returning to the store. And anyway, the donuts they'd have to offer wouldn't be the apple-cinnamon donuts upon which we gorge once a year at a local orchard.
I'd been sitting on a Pioneer Woman recipe that seemed like it would be similar to those local orchard donuts, only shaped like muffins, plus no deep-frying. I'd been sitting on it for over a year! The reason I hadn't made it yet: too much butter. Too effing fattening. I'd glance at the photos of her "French breakfast puffs," study the one where she's rolling muffins around in two sticks of melted butter, and scoff. Obscene. It's like they've never even heard of cholesterol out there in Oklahoma or wherever.
But after a few failed crock pot experiments (thank you so much, Pinterest), I wanted to make something that I was confident wouldn't suck in every way, and I wanted to prove to Jeff that muffins are worthy of his love. I made that sat-upon recipe the next morning and fed them to a mind-destroyed Jeff.
They are evil perfection. They are the bastard children of muffins and donuts. We're calling them mufnuts.
The only way we can justify making them is to eat one mufnut per week. We have frozen the rest (they reheat beautifully in the microwave) and--I say this with pride--we still have a small stash in the freezer.
The next weekend Jeff felt the need to dazzle me with breakfast.
His recipe's original title: the unweildy Crunchy French Toast with Cap'n Crunch Coating, which we shortened to Cap'n Crunch French Toast. This further devolved into Frunch Toast.
Jeff substituted a loaf of white bakery bread for the recipe's challah (it's expensive around here). The recipe produced enough custard to soak a dozen slices, i.e. the entire loaf minus the heels. We elected to bake eight--oh yeah, you bake this!--and freeze four.
It took about 30-45 minutes for Jeff (with light assistance from me) to produce the Frunch toast. It's now our go-to French toast. No question about it. And look: you get 8 pieces all at once! Plus you are left with a mostly-full box of Cap'n Crunch, which you love but never buy!
IT WAS SO FANTASTICALLY CRUNCHY.
You'd think that the Cap'n Crunch flavor would dominate, too, but no. It reminded me of the time I made Nigella's Nutella cake, which required an entire jar of the stuff along with other rich ingredients (shocker, I know). When I tasted the end product, the Nutella flavor had all but disappeared. Unnerving. That is sort of going on here with the Cap'n Crunch. You get a bit of the flavor but a ton of the texture.
We each ate a couple of pieces and froze the rest of the baked Frunch toast along with the aforementioned four pieces of raw Frunch. When microwaved later, the baked Frunch was not crunchy anymore, but it still tasted good. We haven't baked the raw Frunch yet, but I'll let you know how it goes.
I think this recipe would be great if you're serving a crowd at breakfast. Serve it with a side of mufnuts!
Nah. Do one or the other. You don't want your guests to think you're a murderer.
This centerpiece has occupied our dining room table since probably Thanksgiving. Last week Jeff put our omnipresent plastic deer (deers?) on its two highest peaks for no real reason, but they reminded me of that scene in The Lord of the Rings when representatives of every--I don't know, I barely paid attention--every type of creature?--climbed to the top of mountains and lit things to signal each other that--what? A war or maybe something awesome was going to happen? This scene:
Again, LotR is not my bag and I don't care enough to investigate this further. Please don't bother to tell me what's happening, but I'd like to think that maybe those are signals of celebration. And that's what our plastic deer (deers?) are doing up there: they are lighting their party beacons because holy Moses look at that cake!
Yesterday I wanted to plunge myself into a major baking project. Jeff's been feeling just sick enough to not want to do anything, and I've been alllll about painting lately and harboring some low-level feelings of dread regarding an upcoming medical checkup. My parents' crotchety but beloved and ancient cat Robert died on Friday. This winter has been a complete washout as far as snow is concerned, and I'm jealous of the east coast's blizzard. I just really needed to do some next-level baking. This recipe from Christina Tosi's Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook had been haunting me for months. The fact that Valentine's Day is coming up was reason enough to make a cake that tastes like apple pie.
Here are the cake's six components: a "barely brown" butter sheet cake, pie crust crumbs, apple pie filling, an apple cider soak, pie crust frosting, and something called liquid cheesecake. Special equipment is involved. Don't bother making this if you don't have a stand mixer. Christina Tosi is a culinary genius and an entertaining writer, and I felt like she was coaching me through the entire process. She's the kind of coach who is not going to put up with your bullshit shortcuts, though, and I was on my best baking behavior all afternoon. I didn't want to let her down!
The end result (which Jeff and I tried after the prescribed 12+ hours of freezing and 3 hours of thawing) was as good as any non-chocolate, fruit-based dessert gets. We shared one of the cake's six triple-decker megaslices and were stunned by its complexity. The recipe is below, along with my notes in italics, just to give you some idea of what you'd be dealing with should you decide to take on this lunacy. Please buy the book if this kind of thing appeals to you. The entire book is that way, and the photos will make you cry.
Dude. I think I just heard a robin.
Barely Brown Butter Cake Makes 1 quarter sheet (9x13) pan
2 tablespoons or 40g brown butter, see recipe for instructions 4 tablespoons or 55g butter 1.25 cups or 250g sugar 1/4 cup tightly packed or 60g light brown sugar 3 eggs 1/2 cup or 110g buttermilk 1/3 cup or 65g grapeseed oil <-- unavailable here; I used vegetable oil instead 1/2 teaspoon or 2g vanilla extract 1.5 cups or 185g cake flour 1 teaspoon or 4g baking powder 1 teaspoon or 4g salt
Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. To make the brown butter, microwave the 2 Tbs of butter in a microwave safe bowl covered with a microwave safe plate, for 3. The butter will pop while browning, so don’t worry if it sounds like your microwave is going to explode. If not browned enough after three minutes, continue to microwave at 1 minute increments. Be very careful when removing the bowl and plate from the microwave – it will be very very hot. While brown butter is cooling, stir occasionally to melt the caramelized bits of butter. Cool completely in the refrigerator. There is something decidedly weird-ass about brown butter. I've yet to put my finger on it.
Combine the butters and sugars and beat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs and continue to beat for 2-3 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Return the speed to medium-high and beat for at least 5-6 minutes, until the mixture is very light and has doubled in size.
If the mixture hasn’t reached this stage by 6 minutes, continue to beat it.
Reduce the speed to very low and add the cake flour, baking powder and salt. Continue to mix on very low for a minute or two until all the batter is smooth and free of lumps.
Pam-spray and line your quarter sheet pan with parchment. Bake for 30 minutes, until the cake holds its shape when poked and the center is no longer jiggly.
Cool the cakes on a wire rack and store for up to 5 days, well wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge.
Note: this cake baked perfectly flat (no doming) tastes almost exactly like Twinkies. The batter alone is delicious and lets you know that you're making something special.
Liquid Cheesecake Makes one 6” square baking dish
8 ounces or 227 g cream cheese, room temperature 3/4 cup or 150 g sugar 1 tablespoon or 15 g cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon or 2 g kosher salt 2 tablespoon or 25 g milk 1 egg
Preheat the oven to 300F/150C.
Beat the cream cheese on medium for a couple of minutes, scraping the bowl once or twice. Add the sugar and continue to beat for 2 minutes, until completely incorporated.
Mix together the cornstarch and salt, then gradually whisk in milk, then egg, until the well combined.
Whisk the cream cheese on medium-low and slowly add the egg/milk mixture, until the batter is smooth.
The recipe says to use plastic wrap to line your baking pan, so that's what I did, and it was kind of strange and melty around the edges when I took it out of the oven. I've read other takes on this recipe where parchment paper is used instead, and I will do that next time. Also, who has a 6x6 pan? I used a standard loaf pan and it was perfect.
Pour the cheesecake into your lined dish and bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are set but the center is still jiggly. Remember, this is supposed to be a spreadable liquid cheesecake, so you don’t want to over cook it, but if the edges aren’t set, continue to bake for up to 25 minutes, checking every 5 minutes. Do not allow it to brown at all. Mine took 15 minutes.
Cool completely in the pan, then store for up to a week in the fridge.
Pie crumb Makes about 350g (2 ¾ cups)
1.5 cups or 240g flour 2 tablespoons or 18g sugar 2/4 teaspoon or 3g salt 8 tablespoons or 115g butter, melted 1.5 tablespoons or 20g water
Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl and mix well, then add the butter and water and continue to mix until small clusters form. This can be done in a mixer with a paddle attachment on low speed, but it isn’t necessary.
Spread the clusters on lined baking sheet, and bake for 25 minutes, breaking them up occasionally. When ready, the crumbs will be golden and a little moist--they will dry as they cool. Mine seemed too dark after 25 minutes. They still tasted good, but I'd check them at 20 minutes next time.
Cool the crumbs completely, then store in an airtight container for up to a week at room temperature or up to a month in the fridge/freezer.
Pie Crumb Frosting Makes about 220 g (3/4 cup)--this is enough for one very generously frosted 6-inch cake (with plenty of leftovers--Christina Tosi recommends you snack on it with apples). Also, Christina's cakes typically have no frosting on the sides, just the tops, because she likes people to be able to see what's going on inside.
1/2 recipe Pie Crumb 1/2 cup or 110 g milk 1/2 teaspoon or 2 g kosher salt 3 tablespoons or 40 g butter, at room temperature 1/4 cup or 40 g confectioners’ sugar
Blend the pie crumbs, milk, and salt in a blender or food processor on medium-high until smooth, scraping down the bowl a few times. The mixture was shockingly thick and smooth!
Cream together the butter and confectioners’ sugar using a stand mixer on medium-high until pale and fluffy. Reduce the speed to low and add the crumb puree. After a minute, increase the speed to medium-high and blend for another couple of minutes, until very the frosting is a very pale light brown.
The frosting can be stored for up to a week in the fridge.
Note: this frosting is like no other frosting I've ever tasted. Not too sweet, it's basically a spreadable pie crust. Bizarre and amazing.
Apple Pie Filling Makes about 400 g (1 3/4 cups)
1 lemon 2 medium or 300 g Granny Smith apples 1 tablespoon or 14 g butter 2/3 cup tightly packed or 150 g light brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon or 1 g cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon or 1 g kosher salt
Half fill a medium bowl with cold water, then add the lemon juice.
Wash and peel your apples, then quarter and core them. Cut each quarter into three sections, lenthwise. Then cut each of these skinny pieces into four small chunks. Store apple pieces in the lemon water.
Drain the lemon water from the apples, then put them in a medium saucepan and add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, gently, over medium heat and stir the apples occasionally. Once they have begun to release their juices, simmer for 3-5 minutes, until soft but not mushy. Cool completely before cake assembly.
Store this filling for up to a week in an airtight container in the fridge, but do not freeze it.
Note: I had some very juicy apples, I guess, and the sauce never quite thickened for me. I used all of the apples in the cake but not the liquid. I strained that off and drizzled a bit over the apples when assembling the cake. Maybe if this happens next time I will add some corn starch while cooking.
Apple cider soak Makes about 60g (1/4 cup)
1/4 cup or 55g apple cider 1 teaspoon tightly packed or 5g light brown sugar pinch or 0.25g cinnamon
Whisk together all of the ingredients in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved.
Assembly!
Invert the cooled cake onto a piece of parchment and cut out two x 6’’ circles of cake, using a 6’’ ring as a guide. Use the remaining scraps to form another layer of cake.
Lay a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan or cake pan (I used an 8-inch round cake pan). Clean the 6" ring and place on top.
Line the 6” ring with a 20"x3" piece of acetate or another type of strong but flexible plastic sheeting. Place the cake scraps inside the ring and flatten them into an even layer. Brush half of the apple cider soak over this layer, then layer over half of the liquid cheesecake. Sprinkle over 1/3 of the apple pie crumbs, then half of the apple pie filling.
At this stage, you can use reinforce the walls with another layer of acetate, overlapping the bottom one slightly and tucking it between the first piece of acetate and the cake ring. This is delicate, awkward work.
Place another layer of brown butter cake over the apple pie filling (waaay easier said than done) and brush on the remaining apple cider soak. Cover with remaining cheesecake, then half of the remaining pie crumbs, and all of the leftover apple pie filling.
Top (awkwardly; that acetate is not easy to deal with) with the last sheet of cake, then add the pie crumb frosting. Decorate it as you will or smooth it flat. Use the remaining pie crumbs to make a border around the outside of the frosting.
Transfer the cake to the freezer and leave it there for at least 12 hours, or up to 2 weeks. 3-4 hours before you want to serve the cake, remove it from the freezer and slide off the metal cake ring. Peel off the acetate and stick the cake in the fridge, where it can stay for up to 5 days. Wrap it in plastic or cover it with a cake box if you are going to leave it for an extended period of time.
The photo above is a shot of our side-yard one afternoon last week, back when we had a dusting and a half of snow. The light seems to be changing just a bit now that December is over, and spring is obviously just around the corner.
Not really.
I'm going to spend the next ten weeks enveloped in various fleeces and plan to amuse myself with new recipes, including two you'll see below. But first, I wanted to show you a couple of photos of Poof from Christmas at our parents' house.
She was sitting there looking so blissfully content that I had to ask her to freeze while I took a photo.
I like how her senior photo seems to be peeking at her happy future self. What a beauty. I love her so much.
And now, the recipes!
This is a Pinterest recipe I found and made almost immediately. It's from something called "jujugoodnews" and is a black bean salad with corn, red peppers, and avocado-lime vinaigrette, minus the avocado for now. It's shockingly tasty and healthy to boot! I've tweaked it a bit (see italics).
INGREDIENTS
2 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed and drained
3 ears fresh cooked corn, kernels cut off the cob <-- I used a bag of thawed frozen white and yellow corn, something like 12-16 ounces, so yeah, I went *heavy on the corn.* I've adjusted the lime juice, onion, salt and olive oil amounts below to accommodate the extra corn.
2 red bell peppers, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
generous 2 teaspoons salt
generous 2 tablespoons minced red onion
generous 2 tablespoons sugar
10 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon lime zest (be sure to zest limes before juicing them) <-- I zested 2 small limes
7 or 8 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for garnish <-- I used Italian parsley because I have a problem with cilantro
2 Hass avocados, chopped
DIRECTIONS
Combine the corn, beans, and peppers in a large bowl and mix well.
Mince the garlic and mash it into the salt until it becomes a paste. Put it in a small bowl along with the lime juice, lime zest, olive oil, and onion. Whisk and pour over the corn mixture. Mix well.
Cover and chill for a few hours or overnight. Right before
serving, add avocados and mix gently, being careful not to mash
avocados.
Serve at room temperature.
Jeff and I decided to turn this salad into some tacos. He has a quick guacamole recipe that he likes to throw together (avocado, traces of lime juice--he had a bad experience with too much last month--a grated clove of garlic, a tablespoon of jarred salsa, and salt to taste). So: it's a smear of guac and a little pepper jack cheese on a blistered corn tortilla topped with the above salad.
This made a fun 1:30-ish kinda-lunch! Also there's no meat here, although this made us want to add some carnitas into the mix, but not enough to actually get in the car and drive 10 miles into town to our favorite carnitas provider.
Next up: spicy brittled peanuts from that Smitten Kitchen cookbook I've been talking about lately. Oh man, these are incredible. That amount of cayenne down there is perfect, and it quietly buzzes around in the sweet-salty background. If you're not allergic to peanuts, you will find yourself saying lots of double-negative things like, "Life would not be worth living if I couldn't eat peanuts."
You're going to have to work for these way-better-than-CrackerJack peanuts, but not too much. It's mostly just a lot of stirring over a medium-hot pot, and some of that stirring is very interesting because science.
INGREDIENTS
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup water
2 cups shelled raw or roasted unsalted peanuts, papery skins removed <-- I used blanched peanuts
DIRECTIONS
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon mat. If you don't have either, coat your baking shee with a thinslick of vegetable oil.
In a small bowl, whisk together the baking soda, sea sat, and cayenne, and set aside.
In a large saucepan, the heaviest one you've got, heat the sugar, butter, and water over medium-high heat until it just begins to turn golden, about 7 to 10 minutes. Add the peanuts and start stirring, coating them with the sugar mixture.
After a minute or two, the sugar will sieze up a bit, making the peanuts look grainy and crusty, and it will be harder to stir them--you'll be convinced that it's gone irreversibly south, cursing me under your breath [This cookbook is so conversationally awesome and you need to go buy it--K], but fear not, keep stirring, and in about 3 minutes it will melt back into a golden caramel.
That part actually took more like 5 minutes. I'm sure this was because my idea of medium-high heat is a little low, as I am afraid of heat.
Keep stirring, breaking up any clumps with your spoon, until the nuts are evenly coated, then remove the pot from the heat. Stir in the baking-soda-spice mixture as fast and evenly as you can, then spill the caramelized nuts out onto your prepared sheet, spreading them in a single layer and breaking up any clumps that you can before they set. Cool completely.
Once they're cool, break the nut clusters into smaller pieces and put them in a serving dish. The nuts will keep in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks, but rarely do because they are habit-forming.
She's not kidding. These were gone in two and a half days.
In other food news, yesterday I tried one of David Leibovitz's recipes for a flourless chocolate cake that was great but, disappointingly, not awesome. I already make a coupleof F.C.C.s that beat it handily taste-wise and are a lot prettier to boot. So we're off to a disappointing start on that cookbook, but I'm nowhere near giving up. You should see some of the photos in that thing.
Finally, Jeff and I spent last week watching Mad Men's directors' commentaries for season five, and I was amused to discover this not-at-all-Photoshopped! insert in the packaging. I love how ticked off Betty looks.
PS Jeff thinks that Jon Hamm has an enormous head, especially in the image above, and he asked me to tack on this video.
Oh boy did I get a lot of books for Christmas, especially graphic novels (Harvey Pekar's Cleveland, Drawn Together by Aline and R. Crumb, New York Drawings by Adrian Tomine, and, geek squee!, Building Stories by Chris Ware, which I haven't even opened yet because I fear its power and size--it's about as big as a Monopoly box). I also received a couple of cookbooks: Ready For Dessert by David Lebovitz and Deb Perelman's The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.
Let's hear it for Amazon wish lists, everybody!
I tore into The Smitten Kitchen and was immediately inspired. This 300+ page wonder includes a surprising number of vegetarian recipes. Bacon gets mentioned once or twice during the breakfast chapter, but meat doesn't make a real appearance until after page 200. Which is great! I've been craving more vegetables, and Deb's broccoli slaw and black bean ragout are already big hits with me.
But yesterday I felt like trying something more indulgent, and the book's chocolate chip brioche pretzels seemed too good to be true. They are pretzels in shape only. Our favorite local bakery makes a similar item (a long, narrow brioche sandwich with melty chocolate chips inside), and it has been a favorite of Jeff's and mine for nearly as long as we've been together. He even ate two of them on the morning of our wedding. Could we create something like those ourselves?
Answer: yes. Just barely, but yes. The recipe put our KitchenAid stand mixer through its paces, that's for sure, to the point that we thought it might do some damage to the machine. And even though these pretzels are as good as our bakery's if not better, Jeff and I will not be making them as often as we would like to because we love our mixer and would hate to see anything bad happen to it.
The recipe, which is kind of long, is here. Please read it if you want to give these prezels a try. Otherwise, here are some photos of the pretzel-shaping process and comments.
Here's half of the dough after its 2-hour rise. Jeff cut it into eight equal portions. Dibs on that one on the left!
He rolled the dough into 18-inch ropes on a plastic cutting board, stretching the dough by spreading out his fingers as he worked. The dough was really easy to deal with and required no flour to keep it from sticking to the plastic.
Each rope was turned into this sort-of noose shape.
Total pretzelization.
Four per pan.
While Jeff formed the pretzels, I got the egg wash going. I used the coarsest sugar in my cookie decorating arsenal to beautify the tops. I wish I had the clumpier kind that mimics the salt traditionally found on pretzels, but this was a good-enough substitution.
The recipe said to bake them for 12 minutes "or until lightly bronzed." After 12 minutes, ours were still pale and squishy. Ditto after 14. At 16 minutes, we declared them done, although they weren't as brown as the cookbook's photo:
That, to me, is "bronzed." And I want that sugar.
Be that as it may, our pretzels were perfectly baked and bronzed on the bottom. Please note the gross-looking crust in the prezel's holes formed by the egg wash. Don't be as aggressive as I was with the egg wash, or just don't worry about it. You won't notice it when you're eating these. Also please note my stylish bracelet. I'm one of those women who wears a seemingly-permanent hair tie bracelet.
These brioche pretzels are outstandingly delicious. As I ate the first one, still warm from the oven, I informed Jeff three times that "these are SO GOOD," as if he didn't know. They were also fantastic this morning after 20 seconds in the microwave.
PS A whole stick of butter was involved in the making of these babies, along with a hefty amount of chopped dark and milk chocolate, and when you look at them they positively scream I AM MADE OF CARBS PLEASE JUST STICK ME DIRECTLY ONTO YOUR THIGHS RIGHT NOW OKAY?! Sorry everybody.
Here is a 10-minute recipe that will rock your holiday party to its very foundations. It's a take on the popular teacher-gift that my former students called "puppy chow," a term that always made me wince as I ate the chocolatey stuff hand over fist.
Jeff found the recipe last week, and, similarly dissatisfied with its name ("sandy buddies"), he came up with the abomination you see above, Specul-YUMs!, so named because its key ingredient is Speculoos. Also known as Biscoff spread or simply cookie butter, Speculoos changed our lives when we were killing time in Los Angeles a few months ago. You may remember this photo:
We went through a phase where this was all we wanted to eat, but since then we've scaled back on our Speculoos consumption, conceding that when all is said and done, Nutella is our nutritionally-bankrupt spread of choice.
But then along came Specul-YUMs!. We have been enduring a brutal, three-day diet that ends later this afternoon, a diet so strict that our heads have become heavier than the rest of our bodies and this is happening:
Not really. We lost a few pounds but were hating life.
So when we made this recipe today and sampled a few weeee bites in the name of quality control, we lost our dang minds. This stuff not just some gimmicky snack. It is a savior that has delivered us from eating a cup of cottage cheese studded with five saltines and a hard-boiled egg and calling that some kind of lunch.
The recipe is from here. This is our doubled and slightly altered version (it's for a party).
INGREDIENTS
4 1/2 cups rice Chex cereal
4 tablespoons white chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup Biscoff Spread/Speculoos
4 tablespoons butter
powdered sugar for coating, something like 1 cup
DIRECTIONS
Place cereal into a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, microwave chips, Biscoff spread, cinnamon and butter for 1 minute. Stir. Heat for
30 second intervals, stirring between each, until mixture is smooth.
Spoon mixture into cereal and gently mix to combine all ingredients.
Place powdered sugar into a gallon
resealable bag. Spoon in half of the cereal mixture and shake to coat. Then spread this on wax paper to cool. Repeat with the rest of the cereal mixture. Place in a festive bowl to serve!
Here are a couple of easy ideas for those of you who think that Christmas just doesn't feel right without some homemade gifts. Both are recipes by Nigella "Queen of Christmas" Lawson, and their sunny color and zingy flavors will brighten up the dark, horrible days of January. Each takes around a half hour (or less!) to throw together. Let's do it!
But Kelly, why chow-chow? you might ask. Quite simply, it's because of this picture:
It's on page 243 of Nigella Christmas, and I've wondered about it for three years as I've made other recipes in this marvelous cookbook. Look at it, all pretty and bright and so cutely packaged. It looks like fun things are happening inside those jars, right?
I've seen chow-chow occasionally in grocery stores but have never tried it. Nigella says that it is a sugary, vinegary Pennsylvania Dutch/Southern U.S. condiment, but she has put her own British spin on it by cutting the sweetness with hot mustard. I'm not much of a mustard or pickle fan, but I love this. It's like eating sunshine. You can use it as you would any other relish--I'm thinking it would be fantastic on a hot dog--or just eat it as is.
Some of these measurements were in metric in the book, and I'm keeping them there with some notes.
900g frozen sweetcorn, thawed <--a big bag; just check the weight on the package
8 teaspoons hot English mustard, from a jar <--I used half English mustard and half Dijon
300g honey
500ml apple cider vinegar
3 teaspoons celery salt
50g sugar
8 scallions, sliced into 5mm rounds
3 red bell peppers, deseeded and cut into 1cm dice
DIRECTIONS
Sterilize your jars. Here's how. Nigella recommends simply washing the jars, lids, and rings in the dishwasher and filling the jars while they are still warm, taking care not to touch the rims or interiors. Treat the rings and lids with similar care. I've done this before and am happy to report that no one has died from eating my canned goods.
Take the sweetcorn out of the freezer and let it begin to thaw in a sieve over a bowl. If you need to speed the process, pour hot water over it.
Put the mustard, honey, vinegar, salt and sugar into a saucepan and place it on a low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to help everything dissolve.
Stop stirring, and turn up the heat so that the mixture comes to a boil, the let it boil for 5 minutes. For me this was just a gentle, merrily bubbly boil.
Check that the corn is thawed and drained, tip it into a large bowl, and add the scallions and diced peppers.
Once your liquid has boiled for 5 minutes, take it off the heat and pour through a sieve (so you get a smooth syrup) onto the corn, scallion, and pepper mixture. Stir.
Ladle equal amounts of corn mixture and liquid into your warm, prepared jars. The syrup should cover the chow-chow; or rather, no corn should sit above the syrup but it doesn't matter if the syrup comes up over the corn a bit.
Seal the jars or screw on the lids, and store in the fridge. Once opened, use within one month.
Note: this produced 8 cups of chow-chow with enough liquid to cover it as specified above. I also had 2 cups of corn mixture left over with nowhere near enough liquid to cover it. So I am keeping that around for us to snack on. It's just as tasty as the rest of the batch, but I'm not sure if it will keep as long in the refrigerator with less liquid.
GOLDEN HONEY MUSTARD DRESSING
Jeff and I have been eating a lot of salads lately, and this is my favorite dressing to make. It's so delicious and easy that I refuse to buy salad dressing from the store again. This recipe makes around 1.75 cups, and I recommend that you try the recipe first and see if you like it before making vast quantities for your friends. For my gifts, I multipied all of these measurements by six and produced enough dressing to fill the four pint-and-a-half jars you see in the top photo (with a little left over).
INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/2 teaspoon table salt)
DIRECTIONS
Put all the ingredients into a jam jar, make sure the lid's on firmly, and shake like mad.
Or, if you're making a lot of this, put everything into a large bowl and whisk like mad.
Taste to check for salt and/or honey. I always use way more honey than is necessary, but I've got one hell of a sweet tooth. You might want to add a note to your dressing recipient telling them to shake it before using.
Nigella says, "I don't keep [the dressing] in the fridge, but no doubt the health and safety police would tell me I have to." But when you refrigerate this, the olive oil rises and solidifies into a disturbing cap atop the rest of the dressing, and if you want to use it you'll have to thaw it first, and this is annoying. Once again, I've had zero casualties by doing things Nigella's way.
Jeff and I finally broke down and put up our Christmas tree. I've been busy with some U2 lunacy and a difficult portrait commission over the past couple of weeks. Those tasks completed, I engaged in a bit of therapeutic ornament-making, this time with salt dough. In the past I've made gingerbread ornaments, but this year I thought the tree needed something more colorful, and salt dough is so much easier and less expensive. I used to make salt dough ornaments with Mom to give to my teachers as Christmas presents, so the smell and texture of this dough transported me back to my pre-teen years.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup water
DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl mix salt and flour. Gradually stir in water. Mix well until it forms a doughy consistency.
With your hands form a ball with your dough and kneed
it for at least 5 minutes.
Store your salt dough in a air tight container and you will be able to use it for days.
You can paint our creations with acrylic paints and seal with varnish or polyurethane spray.
You can let your salt dough creations air dry; however, salt dough can also be dried in the oven. Bake at 200 degrees F until your creation is dry. The amount of time needed to bake
your creations depends on size and thickness; thin flat ornaments may
only take 45-60 minutes, thicker creations can take 2-3 hours or more.
You can increase your oven temperature to 350 F, your dough will dry
faster but it may also brown, which won't matter if you are painting
your entire creation.
-----
My ornaments, which were between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, took around an hour and a half to bake at 200 degrees. I used the entire cup of water in making the dough, so it may have been a little on the damp side. I let them continue to air-dry overnight before I painted them the next day. I used cookie cutters shaped like Christmas ornaments--an early present from Jeff--and, when I dipped them in a little flour, they cut through the dough beautifully, and those complicated, delicate shapes were no problem.
This recipe produced over 40 ornaments, each about 3 inches tall. I took them up to my work table and busted out some sequins and extra-cheap acrylic paint. I had no real plan, but I found myself painting each ornament with tints of a single color accented with coordinating sequins. Then I varnished them with a clear acrylic glitter paint. A couple of hours later, I had these:
I found a half-box of ornament hooks (or whatever you call them) leftover from last year, and I was ready to hang them!
Earlier this year, Jeff and I rearranged our living room furniture. We love the new setup, but it messed up our usual tree-area, so we moved the tree to our library, which you might remember from this painting:
The tree is small, so to give it some height, we set it on the table between the two wicker chairs. We also had to move the middle bookshelf away from the wall to access the outlet behind it. But soon enough we were decorating the tree, and Jeff used some gargoyle bookends to hang stockings behind it.
And here are some of the ornaments, which we paired with our usual birds.
They're prettier at night.
Two weeks ago, I transformed my studio into a GLOW CHAMBER.
As I sat on the floor, trying to arrange the lights in a way that made a tiny bit sense, I'm pretty sure a spider bit my foot through my sock. I felt an instant, mild itch and watched a small light yellow spider crawl beneath my bookshelves on the left. The bite swelled up immediately and turned pink. Fearing a week of pain, I popped an antihistamine, applied some antibiotic cream and anti-itch gel, elevated my foot, and put the sucker on ice. Over the following week I watched the formerly-swollen-but-now-just-bruisey area, which was about the size of a Chips Ahoy! cookie, turn a rainbow of colors: dusty plum, cadet blue, zombie green. But it never really hurt or itched, and then it went away. I suppose I'm writing about this so that if one day my skin splits and billions of small light yellow spiders come streaming out, well, here's how that happened.
And what holiday season would be complete without Christmas Marvin Gaye? I've always thought his What's Going On album seemed Christmasy, and for years I have made a point of displaying it next to something festive. First known example:
So that was great, but this year I really topped myself by placing him in the GLOW CHAMBER. I urge you to make Christmas Marvin Gaye a tradition in your house.
One last time: I have to plug my online merchandise store. Thanks to all who have ordered items with my paintings on them--I just put together some new compacts featuring details from Ruby Liberty Dragonfly. I appreciate each and every sale I make. Please go there and get a little something for yourself!
And it's not too late to pick up a print of mine from Imagekind. Prints are 25% off this weekend, and how about that free shipping? Framed and canvas prints tend to take about a week to ten days for them to produce, but unframed prints usually get shipped out a couple of days after you order. Thanks again, everyone!
Last weekend Jeff and I hosted our family's Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. My parents, my brother Ryan, my sister Emily/Poof and her husband Tyler, Jeff's parents, and his daughter Melissa were all there, and everyone on my side of the family stayed overnight.
We had a great time with lots of laughs, and Poof put together a video for her second YouTube channel, Beauty Vlogcast. Since I was too busy cooking to take lots of photos, some of what you'll see here are screen-grabs from that video. Jeff also took some photos of the food moments before we destroyed it. So thank you, Jeff and Poof!
Mom, Dad, Poof, Tyler, and Ryan arrived in the morning, and I made sure they had plenty to snack on. We planned to eat the big meal at around 5:00, so the above spread, along with a massive pot of chili, kept everyone happy until then.
I've already blogged about everything you see above. It's great to have some recipes that I know people will like, and they included pumpkin cookies, seasonally spiced nuts, li'l smokies, a roasted red pepper cheesecake, the heavyset cheeseball, various crackers, cheese, and vegetables, and tiny peach and raspberry star-topped pies (I changed that recipe, using the same crust but filling the pies with peach preserves and raspberry jam). Mom kindly made one of her spectacular apple pies.
I loved seeing my family, and we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon laughing, snacking, and telling stories.
Ryan, Tyler, Poof, and Dad entertained our cats in the living room. Tyler's holding one of the festive mimosas that he and Poof made for everyone.
Mom helped Jeff and me while we puttered around the kitchen. Jeff wanted try something different with the turkey this year, and he did a great job preparing Tom Colicchio's butter-and-herb recipe here. He started working on it at around noon, taking it out of the oven to baste it every half-hour or so.
A couple of hours before the turkey was supposed to be finished, Jeff took its temperature just for the heck of it, and to our great alarm we discovered that our turkey was done! Upon further examination of the recipe, we learned that Tom had called for a 14 to 16 pound turkey, and ours was only 12 pounds. So that made a big difference, and suddenly I was scrambling to get the sides together for our meal, which had just been moved up two hours.
I made Parmesan smashed potatoes, which usually take about 45 minutes from start to finish, and put the stuffing and sweet potatoes into the oven. Luckily I had prepared those ahead of time, along with cranberry sauce, and the rolls were a heat-and-eat situation. Meanwhile, Jeff carved the turkey breast and Mom got as much meat as she could from the rest of the bird. Jeff's folks arrived with their extra table, and soon all we were waiting for was Melissa and her ratatouille. And Melissa was running pretty late, so we stuffed almost the entire feast into our oven's warming drawer and hoped for the best. When she arrived, I hope I didn't appear too exasperated.
Me: [I can't remember if I even said hi to her, sorry Mel!] What temperature?
Mel: I don't know.
Me: How long?
Mel: Until it's done?
I popped it in the already-hot oven, set it for 20 minutes, and figured that would work (it did). The warming drawer did its job too, and I relaxed and got the buffet organized.
That turkey was so good, by the way! We were lucky to have caught it at just the right time.
That's Melissa's ratatouille in the foreground. It was nice and light, and it contrasted nicely with the carb- and butter-tastic dishes that made up the rest of the meal.
Everyone was stuffed to the gills, as we say in Illinois, but certain people who were in New York City last month demanded dessert immediately after the meal, so Jeff and I broke out a couple of our lethal candy bar pies (pictured above with our creepy sumo gnome) along with Mom's apple pie. Readers of this blog may recall our trip to the Momofuku Milk Bar in New York and the little dessert we began referring to as the meth pie. Melissa bought the Milk Bar's cookbook for me a few weeks ago--and it is just the greatest thing--so Jeff and I could make the meth pie for Thanksgiving.
Which we did! This pie was INSANE. Even the pie's creator Christina Tosi describes her pie version of a Take 5 candy bar as "a little bit of a bitch to make," and indeed it was. It's four recipes in one, and one of those recipes contains a sub-recipe. The instructions go on for eight pages. It took two people two days to make these pies, and the recipes involved four dangerous experiences with boiling sugar water. You guys, we made nougat. Nougat is apparently something people can make!
Just to break it down for you: it's a chocolate cookie crust topped with a thick layer of not-runny-but-not-solid caramel that is a little bit of a bitch to make, peanut butter nougat made with crushed peanut brittle that you of course have to create yourself, and a toasted pretzel trapped between a mixture of white and dark chocolate (melted together to form a super-chocolate).
I'm not going to copy eight pages of recipe for you. As far as I can tell, only a few people on the Internet have attempted to make this pie. If you want to give it a try, you're just going to have to buy the book, and I wish you good luck in your baking endeavors.
And make no mistake: we're totally making this pie again sometime. I'm thinking this would be a fine activity for when we're snowed in and bored out of our minds. The next time a blizzard hits, I'll be the one in the store stocking up on butter, chocolate, and peanuts while everyone else is buying flashlights and snow shovels and salt and stuff.
BACK TO THANKSGIVING.
The next morning I had apple dumplings for everyone. My family had made it through the night with our cats afoot. Poof had a migraine headache before she went to bed, and she said she had trouble sleeping, but luckily she felt better by morning.
Poof loves these apple dumplings, and I received the best reaction of my cooking life when she tried them for the first time last year, so I had to make them again. You can find the recipe here. They're a teeny tiny bit of a bitch to make, but they're worth the hassle because things like this happen:
SHE IS SO CUTE. And the following is my favorite frame from Poof's video:
I love when Poof gets that glimmer of ramping-up-craziness in her eyes. You want Poof at every meal you serve, trust me.
And here is Poof's video of Thanksgiving! Look at my family moving around doing things and talking to you!
I seriously do not know why I do that thing with my mouth when I talk or how I can ever stop. It disturbs me as much as it disturbs you, it's all I can see, and I apologize for any emotional distress it may have caused you and your family.
Thanks to you, my dear readers, for getting all the way down here to the bottom of this post, and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.
