And promptly, failed to blog in Oct with having participated in both challenges. Go team me! So, going with the better late than never theory, I made goodies in Oct, and I want to share them. Because they were tasty.

For the bakers challenge, we were to make French macaroons. I’d only had these a few times before, and never tried to make them, but luckily, I had everything I needed in the house already. Yes, I keep almond flour on hand. I’m weird like that. I debated for a while, what kind did I want to make… chocolate seemed like a good idea, but I was (yes, I’m about to say this) bored with chocolate. I wanted something different. Since it was Oct, and thus fall, I was starting to get more into that mood, and some rifling through my spice rack provided the answer:

Ginger macaroons, with pumpkin buttercream filling. Oh. My. God.

I finally buckled down to attempt these tasty little treats one night around 3am, and on the first try, I had feet! I rejoiced, there were FEET! ON MY COOKIES!! Lots of people said feet were hard to achieve on the first shot, but I managed, I was very happy about it too. I may have danced around the kitchen a little, 4:00 in the morning, in my pajamas. No one ever said I wasn’t a dork.

I did a lot of reading and research on making these cookies, to be honest, because there were some serious variations on how people’s were turning out, and even a bit on recipe itself. My recipe was a simple one, that I borrowed from Tartelette, who seems to really know her macaroons. Plus, I like weighing things in recipes like this:

Shells
90 gr egg whites (about 3)
30 gr granulated sugar
200 gr powdered sugar
110 gr almond flour
1/2 Tbs ground ginger

The egg whites: I did let them sit out on the counter overnight, covered, which I think helped. When I was ready to go with them, into my KitchenAid with the whisk attachment, and beaten until foamy, gradually added the granulated sugar, until I had a lovely meringue.

I ran the powdered sugar and almond flour through a sifter, got the little chunks of almond out of the flour, which probably also helped, as to not weigh down my batter. Combining these with the meringue, I hand-folded them as quickly as I could to incorporate (47 strokes was my magic number). Into a piping bag — ok, a ziplock bag with the tip cut off — and piped onto baking sheets lined with parchment. I left my cookies sitting on the counter for half an hour, then slipped them into the oven (at 280f) for 20 min. I didn’t have much trouble removing them from the parchment, luckily, when they were done, and most importantly, they had feet! Yes, I found this exciting at that hour.

My filling was pretty simple, a lovely pumpkin buttercream:

1 stick butter, room temp
1/3 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg
1/4 tsp vanilla
1+ lb powdered sugar

Cream butter, pumpkin, spices and vanilla, then slowly add sugar until it forms the consistency you want, and no longer separates. I ended up with a bit of this left over (half or more of what I’d made), so keep that in mind. Filled the cookies with it, and then there was happy nommage. Very happy.

Daring Cooks challenge post to follow shortly, I need to actually eat some dinner here, I’m making myself hungry.

Five types of cupcakes. Five frostings. Six hours in the kitchen. Four hour drive. Two days of crazy. One party. That sums up the couple days prior to, and the weekend itself.

It all started a few weeks ago with a phone call from the kitchenMage [mom] that my dad was planning a party. Fast forward to a week before the party, and he finally sends out invites. Yep, slacker! Mom and I get to talking, and she sends me a link to Cupcakes that Take the Cake’s post about cupcake kebobs. We could do that… but she’s swamped. I’m unemployed at the moment, which means too much time on my hands. She would make some (mango-ginger, dipped in chocolate) marshmallows, I would make the cupcakes. Simple enough task. Except we don’t do anything “simple” in this family.

Wednesday, I did my shopping in the morning for everything I needed for the mini-cupcakes. I informed my roommates that they were going to buy burgers for dinner, because I wasn’t letting them in the kitchen all night. And I camped out, for the rest of the afternoon, past evening and well into the night, baking. Knocked the temperature in my kitchen up to about 90f/32c at one point just from having the oven on for hours. As I was finished, around 11:30 that night, I packed up the cupcakes, and counted up 238 of the suckers. At the time the party attendance count was about 15 people. Luckily this turned out to be a little low, because way too many cupcakes for 15 people!

Packing up my car early on Thursday, I changed into semi-dressy clothes, because I was going to see RENT, before trekking down to evenTinierTown where my parents live. Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp reprising their roles for the farewell tour sort of made seeing it a necessity. As I headed out of Seattle at 11pm, I couldn’t find an on-ramp to the freeway that wasn’t shut down due to construction. An extra fifteen minutes of driving around and I managed to finally be on my way, with the need to make one last stop before I got to my parents. For strawberries for the cupcakebobs. Except I wanted to get out of Seattle first. Which turned into a production, because nothing was open at that hour. There are no 24-hour grocery stores south of Seattle (perhaps there are some in Tacoma, but not off the freeway and close), all the way down the rest of the state apparently. Except for Walmart. Somewhere I never shop, but we needed strawberries.

Walmart is remodeling. It’s 1am. It’s pouring down rain. I’m in dressy clothes, ballet flats, and a purple leather jacket. My cell phone in one hand, talking to mom. Pawing through a ton of 1 pound clamshells of giant strawberries, trying to find some that weren’t twice the size of the cupcakes. I must’ve been a bit of a spectacle, everyone kept stopping to give me funny looks. Yeah, well, I felt the same about the girl in the white shortshorts, hot pink tank top that barely covered her breasts and didn’t cover anything else, and flip-flops who was also shopping there at that hour!

And as if I didn’t have an eventful-enough time, I have a lovely bite mark on my right wrist from the barn cat who lives across the street from my parents, who decided that being spooked meant trying to bite my hand off. I’ve been claiming I got bitten by a vampire, because at least it’s more amusing of a story.

All in all, it was a crazy weekend, but worth the trip down, for a party full of good food, good company, and good music. Even if celebrating the solstice around here means watching it rain while we’re all crowded inside. Cupcake recipes are below the cut…

Let’s start with the key lime cupcakes, since those have gotten the most comments/requests. They were my favourite of the batches as well, light and refreshing. I looked over a recipe from Bon Appetit for some idea of where I was going with these, but made some changes, namely in how much lime juice I used. Theirs was just a hint, and I like a good punch of flavour.

Key Lime Cupcakes with Lime/Coconut frosting

1 & 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup key lime juice (more or less to taste)
3/4 cup buttermilk
zest of one small lime

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, then add eggs, combine well. Add juice, and zest (and a couple drops of green food colouring if you want). The batter looks a little curdled at this point, but it’s fine, trust me! Add about 1/3 of the flour to the mixture, blend to combine, then add half the buttermilk. Continue this, half the flour, the rest of the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour, making sure each ingredient is combined before adding the next. Pour into sprayed or lined cupcake pans, bake until toothpick comes out clean (aprox 10 min for mini-cupcakes, probably 15-20 for larger ones). Cool before frosting.

Frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter
1-3 cups powdered sugar (I used aprox. 2 1/2)
2 Tbsp lime juice
zest of one lime
1/3 cup shredded coconut

Beat butter until smooth. Add 1 cup sugar, mix to combined, add lime juice, zest, and coconut. Add more sugar as needed until desired taste/consistency.

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Next up, simple vanilla cupcakes. Only with killer vanilla flavour. The key is a lot of vanilla. A lot, a lot.

Vanilla Bean cupcakes with Vanilla Bean frosting

2 & 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbsp vanilla
3/4 of a vanilla bean, cut in half and scraped
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside. Mix milk and vanilla in a bowl, set aside. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, then add eggs, one at a time and combine well. Add vanilla bean and mix for a few seconds before adding about 1/3 of the flour mixture. The half the milk. Continue this, half the flour, the rest of the milk, then the rest of the flour, making sure each ingredient is combined before adding the next. Pour into sprayed or lined cupcake pans, bake until toothpick comes out clean (aprox 10 min for mini-cupcakes, probably 15-20 for larger ones). Cool before frosting.

Frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter
1-3 cups powdered sugar (I used aprox. 2 1/2)
1 tsp vanilla
the remaining 1/4 of the vanilla bean, scraped

Beat butter until smooth. Add 1 cup sugar, mix to combined, add vanilla and vanilla bean. Add more sugar as needed until desired taste/consistency.

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What better to follow vanilla than killer chocolate? I took this particular recipe from Chocklity, doubled it for the two following recipes, and tweaked the ingredients a little to add a little kick to both recipes.

Chocolate cupcakes Chocolate frosting

3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup Dutch processed dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside. Mix milk and vanilla in a bowl, set aside. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, then add eggs, one at a time and combine well. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture. Then half the milk. Continue this, half the flour, the rest of the milk, then the rest of the flour, making sure each ingredient is combined before adding the next. Pour into sprayed or lined cupcake pans, bake until toothpick comes out clean (aprox 10 min for mini-cupcakes, probably 15-20 for larger ones). Cool before frosting.

Frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter
1/3 cup Dutch processed dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1-3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
up to 1/2 cup cream

Beat butter until smooth. Add cocoa and 1 cup sugar, mix to combined, add vanilla, and slowly add a small amount of cream. Add more sugar and cream as needed until desired taste/consistency.

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Chai Chocolate cupcakes Chai frosting

Then I felt the need for some spice, so I took the other half of the chocolate cupcakes above (minus the chocolate chips), and added some chai. So it’s the exact above cupcake recipe, but instead of chips, add in 3 Tbsp of chai mix powder (I used some from Trader Joe’s).

Frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter
2 Tbsp chai powder
1-3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup cream

Beat butter until smooth. Add chai and 1 cup sugar, mix to combined, add half the cream. Add more sugar and cream as needed until desired taste/consistency.

***********************

Finally, for something a little lighter, I turned to green tea. Well, I tried to anyway. This turned out way more complicated than it should, as I discovered that the town I live in is a cultural void, and you can’t buy matcha powder anywhere. I had to explain what it was to some of the people at Trader Joe’s, but they didn’t have any. Neither did anyone else. But I found someone to save me, in the form of a barista in Starbucks. I asked if they sold their matcha, they don’t. She tried to ring up a packet of it for me. It didn’t ring up. Alas… Then as she was finishing up my drink, she grabbed an empty cup, tossed a huge scoop of matcha into it, added the cost of just getting a scoop in a drink to my drink, handed me both cups, and off I went, with caffeine to keep me going to bake, and matcha so I didn’t have to keep searching. I love Starbucks.

Matcha cupcakes with Matcha frosting

1 &amp 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 &amp 1/2 Tbps matcha
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside. Mix the milk and matcha in a bowl, set aside. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, then add eggs, one at a time and combine well. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture. Then half the milk. Continue this, half the flour, the rest of the milk, then the rest of the flour, making sure each ingredient is combined before adding the next. Pour into sprayed or lined cupcake pans, bake until toothpick comes out clean (aprox 10 min for mini-cupcakes, probably 15-20 for larger ones). Cool before frosting.

Frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter
1 &amp 1/2 Tbps matcha
1-3 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp cream

Mix milk and matcha into a paste. Beat butter until smooth. Add 1 cup sugar and matcha paste, mix to combined. Add more sugar as needed until desired taste/consistency.

An animal rights group has tried – and failed – to run a newspaper ad comparing the beheading of a passenger on a Greyhound bus last week to the treatment of animals by the meat industry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said on its website it would run the ad in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic.

However, city editor Tara Seel said the newspaper had no intention of running the ad, which uses imagery of “an innocent victim’s throat” being cut, in reference to the slaughter of cows, chickens and pigs on factory farms.

“His struggles and cries are ignored … the man with the knife shows no emotion … the victim is slaughtered and his head cut off … his flesh is eaten,” reads the ad, which is posted on the website.

“If this ad leaves a bad taste in your mouth, please give a thought to what sensitive animals think and feel when they come to the end of their frightening journey and see, hear and smell the slaughterhouse.”

Are you kidding me??

I suppose, in a way, this shouldn’t surprise me. After all, this is the same organization that has brought us the “Holocaust on your plate” ads, the woman getting clubbed to death in the subway for her fur coat ads, the woman in the fur coat drinking from the toilet ad, the woman in the fur coat using a litterbox ad, the “are animals the new slaves?” ads, the “got beer?” ads (hell, that one’s tame!), encourages kids to fear their dad if he fishes, — google the ads if you want, I won’t link them, but you can find them on PETA’s site, most of them are under “banned,” — the hypocrisy of their own killing of animals and the fact that their fearless leader is a friggin’ nutjob… no, really.

So it shouldn’t surprise me that they’ve taken the next step in idiocy and decided to compare the poor kid just riding the Greyhound home and getting beheaded to the plight of animals. Because after all, according to Ingrid Newkirk, their wack-job founder, the world would be an infinitely better place without humans in it at all, so why not exploit the death of one, or of millions (Holocaust ad, slavery ad) to bring the point home? Who cares if you’re coming across as the most insensitive people on the planet, right? Besides, 80% of PETA’s approach is to cause controversy, with “10% celebrity, and 10% truth.” Nice.

Of course we should treat animals humanely. There isn’t a reason for the way we raise food animals, in tight, cramped quarters, forcing antibiotics and hormones into their bodies so they grow faster and stay alive longer. I did the vegetarian thing for all the “right” reasons, and it was spawned by driving by one of the cattle ranches and seeing the cows, all clustered together without enough space between them to even turn around, the babies getting lost in the crowd, it just turned my stomach, and I gave up meat for five years.

Did a number on my health from it, and I have come to the conclusion that meat isn’t bad for you, but there are ways to get it that are more humane. And frankly, that are better for us as well. Free-range. Organic. Hormone/antibiotic-free. Grass-fed beef. Buy local. Buy from a butcher that can not only tell you the farm your meat came from, but if the animal had a name could have told you that (I once had some lamb that, when it was passed on to me, the woman said, and I quote, “Willy was such a bastard, I didn’t think he’d be so tender.” I couldn’t help but laugh — and it was damned tasty meat too!). Buy from the local farms at your farmer’s markets. There are all sorts of ways to work to make the lives of our food animals better, without resorting to extremes.

In the end, this is just one more in a long list of things PETA has done that make my stomach turn. Usually, they just make me want to go eat a cheeseburger, but right now, I feel kind of sick from it all.

Today was gloomy, kind of cold, your typical day in western Washington, and I was having a serious craving for warm comfort food. I wanted mac & cheese — pasta’s off my diet list right now. I wanted mashed potatoes — I can’t have potatoes right now. So I had to improvise, and I stopped at the local co-op on my way home, because lucky for me, it’s a block from my office. Looking around, there was some scallops, and they looked pretty good. I snagged them, and some fresh cod, along with a few other things that didn’t end up in dinner tonight. There was shrimp at home in the freezer, and I plotted on the drive home what to do with these things.

Since it’s cold — 49 degrees when I drove past the temperature gauge that had read 93 on Saturday — and rainy, soup sounded heavenly. What I wouldn’t have given for a nice, fresh loaf of crusty bread to dip into the broth, but I’m not dwelling on what I can’t have these days.

Instead, I can have things like this wonderful, filling seafood soup.

This was simplistic, because it’s been a long day, and the art of cooking soup is often, for me, in the simple task, not the overly energetic efforts.

Soup, for me, reminds me of my dad, who is always talking about wanting to feed the world, and he’ll do it with soup. So whenever I make soup, it makes me smile, thinking he’d like that I was making it. Maybe I’ll freeze some of this the next time I make it, to take down to him.

Seafood, in all its various forms, is one of my all-time favourite food groups. I’m quite content to live off various types of seafood. In fact, I’ve had more fish this week than anything else, but how could I pass up fresh Copper River salmon, and exquisite, local-caught black cod? It’s something that comes with growing up in the Pacific Northwest, where seafood is abundant and fresh; we eat a lot of it. You can often tell someone is local by how they like their seafood, and their coffee. And when it’s cold, what better than to combine one of these loves with one of the simple pleasures of food, a lovely, hearty broth?

I did end up using a store-bought veggie broth rather than making my own, again for simplicity. Normally I make my stock, but tonight I bought some low-sodium, fat-free organic veggie broth to use as my soup base.

Chopping up a quarter cup of onion — stored in the fridge, so it was cold, and didn’t make me cry — and a clove of garlic, they were tossed into a heavy stockpot with a tablespoon of olive oil, to cook for a few minutes, until the onion was nice and tender. I added 1/4 cup of white wine, and let it cook down, as the smell started to permeate the house, making it feel homey, and the smell making me hungrier by the second.

Once the wine cooked down, four cups of broth were added, along with four tomatoes, chopped. Letting this simmer for a little while, I could go sit, check my email, relax a bit from the long day at work, and let the smell invade every corner of the house.

After about half an hour, I tossed a pound of scallops into the broth, and let them cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally, already envisioning eating by the time I added the pound of cod, cut into one inch cubes. Another couple of minutes, and in went the shrimp to finish off cooking.

As I ladled a bowlful of this warm, sweet soup into one of my new bowls, I almost couldn’t wait to take a picture before I started eating.

It’s not mac and cheese or mashed potatoes, but while I’m in low-carb mode, this will find its way into rotation for those nights I need comfort food, I want something filling and hearty without a lot of filler…

It was perfect for a dark, stormy northwest night, curled up with a bowl of hot soup in my hand as I sat by the window and watched the rain fall down outside. These are the nights I love, and the reason I continue to live here, the place that more than anywhere else in the world, will always be home.

But recently, I’ve been rediscovering my relationship with food in terms of the differences between things I love and things I can’t live without. Why the reevaluation? Due to being insulin resistant thanks to PCOS, and developing fairly strong hypoglycemia levels (and the random really high spikes — this is apparently common in the combination of things, and all I have to say is it sucks!), my doctor decided to try an experiment:

• No sugar. Okay, I can live with that, really, I’m still working on losing weight, that’s cool.
• No wheat. Um………………………………. yeah, no.
• Nothing that lists on the Glycemic Index at above 50. Ugh.
• No red meat. But I love steak! And really good burgers!
• Extremely low carb, in general

That’s nice, thanks doc! I started this a week ago Wednesday, and I’m still about wanting to kill something for a slice of bread (especially when kitchenMage [mom] is taunting me with posts about her bread and making bread for Mother’s Day and I can’t have any! *pout*)

So stay tuned, I actually have a lot of posts stored up in my head, I may be playing catch-up this weekend. I have some recipes from before this last week of insanity to post, and some ramblings about the whole “low carb experiment” as well. But since kM’s been poking at me, I wanted to at least post and say I’m not dead. Yet. But if anyone waves a fresh baked… anything in front of me at the Farmer’s Market today, I can’t make any promises about the outcome!

The Good Cook offered four cooking-related books for what ended up being $13 once shipping was added, and a decent discount on future purchases. Oh, hell yes, where do I sign up?? So I’m a sucker. But I love cookbooks. I love pouring over them and getting ideas from other people, seeing how recipes evolved. I rarely follow a recipe exactly, sometimes I don’t follow them at all, but it’s nice to have. And I picked up a few that had good stories to go with the recipes. What’d I get? Three for me, and one for my roommate who is wanting to get a better handle on “what you can do in the kitchen.”

So what did I get? I started with Crust and Secrets of a Jewish Baker, which were my “I’m a baking geek!” pick-ups for the week, and The Best of Gourmet because I love things that lend themselves to both simple (well, in my world, but I am my mother’s daughter, and believe it’s simpler to bake bread than to go to the store and buy some…) dinners at home and those nights I want to impress someone with a little something extra special.

I also picked up The Elements of Cooking, mostly for J to look at and learn some things, but I’ve been giving it a glance and it’s kind of amusing. Like a basic cooking school in a book.

But what I’m loving the most right now is Crust, and I’ve been pouring over it, knowing I need to bake something, just trying to decide what. I was sort of amused the other day, I stumbled across someone who is just learning to bake complaining that they don’t have a KitchenAid stand mixer, so how can they learn how to make bread?? I didn’t say anything, but I got a chuckle out of it. I can see the reasoning for the stand mixer if you’re making a giant batch of bread, or if you have bad hands, or just because some days, but I have bad hands, and I still get in there and do it all by hand. It’s how I learned, and I can’t comprehend learning any other way. Once you master it, then hand it over to the toys if you’re in a hurry.

Secrets of a Jewish Baker has instructions for using a mixer, and a food processor, while Crust is all hands-on. And his breads are beautiful. Only a little more involved than I’m going to be able to tackle tonight, I’m afraid. I think I’m going to borrow from my Jewish roots, and maybe go simple, with some biscuits to go with some stew since it’s still bitingly cold ouside these days.

But I have to find some Cabernet grape flour, because Crust’s recipe for Cabernet grape bread looks amazing. I’ll see what I can come up with this weekend, and if I can’t find it here, then hey, I need an excuse to take an overnight trip to Canada. I need to go get my hands dirty in some dough, though, tonight, because they’re itching to make something. Having new books to inspire is only making it stronger

To follow up on my previous cheesecake adventures post, here are the final results (please excuse the lighting; I was photographing in a hotel room. )

This ended up as a triple-layer cheesecake. It is, as follows:

Crust: graham cracker and pecans, with melted butter and a couple tablespoons of sugar.

Bottom layer: white chocolate flavoured cheesecake.

Middle layer: pumpkin cheesecake, with a spike of Drambuie (since it was what I had on hand).

Top layer: thin layer of plain cheesecake, with half a vanilla bean scraped into it.

Topped with homemade caramel sauce.

Preheat oven to 325…

Crust:

6-8 graham crackers

3oz pecan chips

4 Tbsp melted butter

3 Tbsp sugar

Crush crackers and pecans via your preferred method. Add butter and sugar, press into a springform pan. Wrap the pan’s outside in foil, because you’ll bake this in a water bath.

To make basic cheesecake:

Three 8oz packages of cream cheese, softened

4 eggs, room temperature

3/4 c sugar

pinch of salt

1/4 c heavy cream

1 tsp pure vanilla

Mix cream cheese and eggs, adding one egg at a time, until well blended. Add sugar and salt, and mix until incorporated, then add cream and vanilla. Once everything is mixed, seperate into three bowls — a small amount in one, and equal parts of the rest into two. In the small bowl, add 1/2 vanilla bean, scraped, and set aside.

For pumpkin cheesecake:

1 can pumpkin (because it’s easier — and pure pumpkin, not pie filling) — anywhere from 8-16oz, depending on how much pumpkin flavour you want. I used aprox. 10oz.

1/4 tsp each: Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger

1-3 Tbsp (to taste, and option) burbon — or Drambuie, it works really well here!

First, you want to “dry” the pumpkin, so you don’t end up with too much excess liquid. Dump the pumpkin onto a few layers of paper towels, spread out evenly, and press some more paper towels on top. Press down to remove liquid, then add pumpkin and spices into the cheesecake; mix until incorporated.

For white chocolate cheesecake:

Melt 3-4oz of white chocolate in the microwave (1 min, stir, then 30 second intervals, stirring each time, until it’s melted). Pour into cheesecake mixture, and wisk.

Assemble the cheesecake:

Pour the white chocolate mixture onto the crust first. Top that layer with the pumpkin, then the vanilla infused cheesecakes. Fit the springform pan into a roasting pan, and fill the roasting pan halfway up the side of the springform with water. Bake for between 1 hour and 1 hour & 15 min, depending on your oven. Let cool completely before putting into the refrigerator to chill.

The caramel sauce I made was basically what I did for Christmas dinner, but with an extra 1/4 of heavy cream, added after everything was mixed, to make it more sauce-like.

It was delicious and most importantly, the birthday girl loved it. Yay.

So I did finally decide on dessert. I made a caramel-filled chocolate tart, only sadly I’m currently without a tart pan, so it ended in up a nice pie cake pan.

More pictures and recipe after the cut…

First off, my kitchen lighting is absolutely horrific, so my pictures completely suck. We’ve got old, tube florescent that are yellowed and pale and flicker and aside from giving me headaches, make picture-taking a chore in itself.

Anyway. The crust is pretty simple:

2.5 oz (1/2 c) whole wheat flour

2.5 oz (1/2 c) white flour

2 T sugar

1 stick cold butter, cut into small pieces

2 egg yolks

Mix flour and sugar together, add butter and mix (if you have a food processor, obviously this is easier to toss in and pulse) until resembling coarse meal. Add egg yolks until blended, press into a buttered tart pan (or cake pan if you’re like me and without at the moment). Bake in a 375 degree oven aprox. 20 min, until golden brown. Let cool, and make caramel.

To make the caramel:

1 c sugar

1/4 c water

1/4 c heavy cream

1/2 stick butter

1 vanilla bean

Combine sugar and water in a heavy pan over med heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil and let sit, no stirring, occasionally swishing in the pan, until a deep amber colour (watch this carefully or you can end up with molasses in about 15 seconds if your burners heat strangely like mine do!). Remove from heat and pour in heavy cream. It’ll bubble and look really cool, stir it to combine, and then add butter. Stir until dissolved and smooth. Split vanilla bean and scrape seeds, add to caramel. Let cool aprox. 10 min, then pour over crust. Set aside for 45 min to cool; wait at least 30 min to start making the ganache.

I love the glassy look of sugar when it just starts to boil and is still clear.

This is one of my favourite looks. It’s like an abstract art piece, the way the cream spreads and bubbles over the sugar. It’s so pretty!

This picture sucks, but it looks so good, I could eat it right now, screw the chocolate.

Wait.

Did I just say that?? Something must be wrong! *laughs*

Okay, so it’s been about half an hour, time to make the ganache so it has time to cool.

1 c heavy cream

5 oz good chocolate, chopped (I used dark Ghirardelli’s)

In a heavy saucepan, bring cream to a simmer. Remove from heat, add chocolate, wisk until melted. Let cool aprox. 10 min, pour over caramel layer, chill to finish setting.

You ever want to just… dive into a vat of melted chocolate just for the hell of it?

Obviously, I didn’t cut it or anything yet, but I’ll grab pictures of that tomorrow night. It smells incredible and I am having to exercise insane amounts of willpower to not just go cut into it right this second.

But, I have bread to make, so that’ll distract me, hopefully!

I hope everyone who celebrates has an amazing and magical Christmas. And if you don’t celebrate, have a great day anyway!

I have a friend coming to visit from Boston in a couple of weeks. It’s a trip out, for her birthday, she and another friend are flying west, we’re going up to Canada to meet a couple of other friends, and hang out for a few days. Since it’s her birthday, I offered to make a cake or something, and asked what she wanted.

Her initial question was “can you make cheesecake?” I laughed. My mother is a cheesecake goddess, and I learned well.

My friend wasn’t much help in figuring out what KIND of cheesecake to make though, so I prodded her best friend, the one who is coming out to visit as well, and was told “her favourite thing is pumpkin cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.”

Mm, okay, I’ve never actually had Cheesecake Factory cheesecake. It’s against my religion to eat non-homemade cheesecake. So I went, and I looked, and… it looks uninspiring.

But I love pumpkin, so I’m just debating what to do with it. K doesn’t like ginger, so that kills my gingersnap crust idea, but I’m thinking half graham crackers, half pecans will work. Pumpkin cheesecake with a hint of bourbon, and swirled caramel on top. Or layered, plain cheesecake and pumpkin, with a thin layer of plain on top… I don’t know! There are a number of combinations floating around in my head and I haven’t settled on one yet.

I need to soon though, they’ll be here Jan 7, and her birthday is the 8th, but we’re heading straight up north after we pick them up from the airport on the 7th, so I have to do this by the 6th.

And I still haven’t decided on Christmas desset yet.