Boatload of cookies

Right now, chilling in my fridge, I have approximately five pounds of cookie dough. Per One Lovely Life, this lump of rawness will soon become the tastiest chocolate chip cookies this side of the Mississippi. Yep, I'm jumping on the bandwagon (thank you, Pinterest!) and making the New York Times chocolate chip cookies.

Here's my beef so far with this recipe: the dough has to sit for 24-72 hours! How is a cookie-loving gal such as myself supposed to wait it out like that?

Obviously, I'm only going to be able to hold out for the minimum 24 hours, but I'll report back as soon as I've done the proper research (aka, eaten a boatlod of cookies).

I'm also going to try rolling half of the dough into balls and freezing it, because as much as I'd love to OD on chocolate chip cookies, I think it's in my best interest to pace myself. Luckily, Pinterest supplied me with a how-to on that as well.

Birthday bupkis

Loyal readers may recall my annual tradition of whipping up something disastrous for Hubs' birthday. Obviously, I don't mean to eff things up so much, but I think the pressure of birthday baking just makes me crack.

This year, I went for a key lime cake. Hubs recently discovered a love of key lime pie, but you know, a birthday pie sounds less than thrilling. I Googled until I found a recipe that sounded about right and set about gathering my mise en place.

(Totally. Like using the phrase mise en place makes me sound like I know what the hell I'm doing, which, in case you lost track - I do not.)

Fancy French words that I learned from Bravo shows notwithstanding, I effed the shizzle (pardon my French) outta that poor cake.

I also did not use key limes because the store didn't have any. So there. The whole truth.

A rare sight, me (in profile no less!) looking seven kinds of domestic! Have I told you how much I love our new camera? It makes me look as good in pictures as I do striking a pose in front of the bathroom mirror.

The glaze was a simple lime juice plus powdered sugar. It had a heck of a tangy punch.

And the finished product. It sure looks purdy, and I was proud enough to force a parade of well-wishers to have a piece and toast to mon mari (more! French!). This proved a mistake. 

The cake was dense and barely cooked, even though the damn toothpick came out cleanly. Our friends were polite and finished their slices, bless their hearts.

At least some palettes are better suited to super tart undercooked cake:

For those of you playing along at home, that's birthday baking: 3, Alexson: 1. Here's to 2013!

Cookies you make when it's autumnal out-of-doors

First off, thank you readers for your thoughtful words on my last post. You are just the sweetest.

Second off, and speaking of sweets, I need to share with you this recipe, which came my way via Pinterest, which is the source of far too many outlandishly amazing fusion dessert ideas for this gal.

For instance: caramel apple cookies. Oh!

I tried unsuccessfully with three cookies to take photos beautiful enough to show you how delectable these gems are. My low success rate is due in part to my heavy reliance on a camera phone as well as the fact that, in actual life, these cookies looked too good to be merely admired and so I showed them the proper respect and ate them post haste.

For a more accurate visual account, please refer to the original recipe post, linked above in Paragraph Two.

For a more accurate digestive account, please make these cookies, microwave them for 8 seconds before consuming and report back.

Your urgency in this matter is appreciated.

St. Louis in dessert form

Saturday was my little sister's birthday (happy birthday, yo!). When I asked my mom how they were celebrating, she said she was starting by making gooey butter cake for breakfast.

My brain seized up. Gooey butter cake! Gooey + butter + cake = excellent baking endeavor for a Saturday afternoon.

Luckily, I had snagged this local cookbook gem from my Nana not too long ago.

You really can't go too far wrong with a recipe book made from Midwestern moms' best dishes.

 The bottom layer was a shameful amount of Crisco (one stick!), melted, and combined with a box of yellow cake mix and three eggs.

Then, I mixed up a pound of powdered sugar,  a box of cream cheese (I used fat free, but I don't think it helped any. There's a stick of Crisco in this shizzle.) and two more eggs.

I spread the topping on the uncooked cake mix and popped it in the oven at 350 for 35 minutes.

As I admired my cooling GBC, I realized there was no butter in my Gooey Butter Cake. Shocking, right? I know. I was scandalized, but I was able to console myself with an iced tea and hefty hunk of Gooey Butter Cake.

Even Hubs, who hid his skepticism well, fell in love with the caramel-y crunch and rich ooze. It's a powerful force, this GBC.

What's your favorite hometown dessert?

My own Throwdown: Alton vs. P-Dubs

First, a very happy birthday to the man who actually ate (and claims to have enjoyed) the Hollandaise sauce I made this morning, only after I woke him up with a smoke alarm. Happy birthday, Hubs and thank you for stopping the smoke alarm. You are the wind beneath my wings. And I mean that.

I believe you can see where this story, a recap of my grandiose plans to make a simple egg dish, is heading.

It all started yesterday, when I made a quick lunch time run to a small grocery store to grab what I needed: eggs, butter, English muffins and spinach. Much to my dismay, there were no English muffins to be had. So, I got my geek on and pulled up Alton Brown's English muffin recipe on my phone. The recipe didn't seem that difficult, but it did call for powdered milk, which said tiny grocery store also did not have.

Off I dashed to a bigger store, where I purchased the last remaining box of powdered milk. It weighed four pounds and seemed to have been packaged in the mid to late 80s.

Regardless, I was determined to make amazing English muffins.

Which I did.

Point: Alton

There is a learning curve, though. Less batter in the ring leads to fluffier, airy muffins, FYI.

So, with the muffins made, I went to bed for a brief rest before my early morning wake up call to prepare an amazing birthday breakfast for Hubs.

I used the Pioneer Woman eggs Benedict recipe. Now, I must saw that PW has never, ever steered me wrong before. Between her and Alton, I assumed my plan was foolproof. Not. So. Fast.

Her recipe asked me to poach and egg. "Just swirl the water and crack in an egg!" she wrote. Like it was nothing.

Four eggs, two pots of boiling water and one slightly scalded appendage later, I did indeed have poached eggs. But I'm not sure it was really worth it.

Meanwhile, I was supposed to be melting butter and preparing the Hollandaise (which! In case you aren't aware is just egg yolks and butter). An unfortunate series of events led to black, burning butter, a smoke alarm fiasco and a last-minute realization that I'd forgotten lemons - apparently a key ingredient.

And so, my Hollandaise was a watery mess of yolks, properly melted butter and bottled lime juice. It was way too rich for me and not at all the magical sauce I'd imagined when I learned that I'd be combining butter and egg yolks.

Negative point: Pioneer Woman

(Note: There exist no photos of the breakfast-making portion of this event due to the fact that I was frazzled, barely awake and burning everything that could be burned)

Hubs, however, rated the dish a 5 (on a scale of 1-10 of all foods, not just foods I've made) and is either a better liar than I thought, has a cold, rendering his taste buds useless or is way more enthusiastic about butter than I realized.

Winner: Alton, who has never given me directions that caused my smoke alarm to go off before 7:00 a.m.

Oh well. Tonight we're celebrating at Baru 66, a proper French restaurant, where I'm sure everything will be delightful and I can finally get this yolk-y taste out of my mouth.

Also!

Where are your favorite restaurant eggs Benedict? I'm sure they are lovely when made by wide-awake pros.

Birthday blunders

Although my heart is in the right place, some of my kitchen creations are total bombs. Sadly, my annual birthday creations for Hubs' (whose birthday is tomorrow!) bear the brunt of my bombery.

Take, for instance, the panna cotta I made Hubs for his birthday in 2006. It was flavorless and thick and slimy. (Lesson: Don't trust Rachel Ray.)

In 2007, I tried tiramisu. The little cakey ladyfingers (store-bought because this was before my "everything from scratch" epiphany) were so soaked in liquor that we couldn't even eat them. They basically evaporated.

I took 2008 and 2009 off to lick my wounds and recover my dignity.

By 2010, I was a totally rad homeowner, free from the clutches of a puny apartment kitchen and newly granted ownership of a 40 year old KitchenAid. I had recently discovered the joys of Pioneer Woman and went hole hog, making enough cinnamon rolls to last us for months.

Tomorrow, I will continue my streak (of one...) with eggs florentine. It seems pretty easy, but I've never poached an egg. Or eaten a stick of butter in one meal. Or been fully mentally functioning before 6:30 a.m. in January.

Onward and upward!

What's cookin', good lookin'?

A few years ago, I was invited to a cookie exchange. All the other attendees were Wives With KitchenAids (so, cookie ganstas) and at the time, I was an apartment-dwelling non-cook, non-domestically inclined, non-Wife who mistakenly thought my cookie quality wouldn't matter and we'd all just have some wine.

I showed up with flat, pathetically gray and mealy raspberry cookies and only my sparkling social awkwardness to protect me.

I was not invited to another cookie exchange.

I vowed to someday make cookies that did not incite coos of, "Oh, they're finnnnnne. You triiiiiiied. Must have been a bad recipeeeeeee."

And so:

Sunday was all about baking for Hubs and I. We locked the cats in the bathroom (because "cat-hair" isn't really a cookie flavor I've come to love just yet), cracked open some Honker's Ale and went to town on some Christmas cookies.

Our plan was simple: recreate two family favorites and try one new thing.

The family favorite I bring to our new little familia is iced sugar cookies. They sound so simple - just get some slice-and-bakes (because from scratch was found to be an utter disaster in the Great Cookie Mess of '96) and whip up some powered sugar frosting and voila! Christmas is here for certain.

Not. So.

Of course, using cookie cutters waaaay more fun than slicing and baking. And no, one roll is not enough. And no, I'm not going to just slap some white icing on here and call it a day, where is your Christmas spirit?! These cookies should be lovingly slaved over for hours - your eyes should be numb from the intricate designs. And really, it doesn't matter because by the time the icing sets, the design will be all runny and your sweet "Hubs and Alexson 4-eva" cookie will start to look like a rather unsavory cartoon of some moose.

That's totally part of the tradition, though. I'm nothing without these little buggers at Christmas.

Hubs' family cookies are a little less dramatic, but no less tasty. For him, we made apricot and pecan kolaches. Last year, we bought the wrong brand of apricot filling and it almost ruined Christmas. Luckily, we found a can of the good stuff that looked like it might have been pulled from a Cold War-era bomb shelter and all is right with our little cookie universe.

And finally, we decided to make gingerbread men (only one lady among them and she isn't exactly dressed ladylike. See photo below). These we did from scratch with some good, spicy ginger from Penzey's. They turned out excellent and we dipped half in melted chocolate and the other half got the cream cheese frosting treatment.

When the day was done, we had been baking for nine hours and had about seven dozen cookies. Seven dozen cookies to be proud of. Seven dozen cookies we can bring to work and give to neighbors without shame. I'm the Eliza Doolittle of baking.


Move your bloomin' ass, indeed, 'Enry 'Iggins. I've come a long way!

Pause button

I've spent the past few nights staying up late to catch up on the blogs that amassed in my Google reader while I was off dozing in Mexico and playing in the dirt. These late night reading sessions confirmed two things:

1. I have an odd compulsion to read every single post (yes, all 798) that I missed. What if something interesting happened? Clearly, blogs are the Days of our Lives to my modern housewife.
2. I must bake soon. Or can fruits. Or fry something - anything. Or pickle veggies. All this outdoorsy work has left even pioneering souls like Hubs and I, who make our own cheese and breads, to be reduced to night after night of Jack's frozen pizza (which ain't too bad if you are armed with a bottle or three of habenero hot sauce, but not really up to snuff for daily chow). And if we have no time to eat decently, you know we have no time to socialize. If our friends weren't eagerly helping us raise our property value create an outdoor party spot for all to enjoy, we'd never see them.

Combined, these two compulsions have led me to start a mental (now typed) list of things I want to do when regular life can start again in our humble abode.

• First and foremost, we have to have a party. To break the deck in, to see if the alleged 35-burger count our new grill advertised is correct, to show off our hard work, to make nice with neighbors who so kindly didn't complain or throw trash at our house when we were jackhammering at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, and to reacquaint ourselves with the friends we very nearly forgot we had.
• Hubs got me an ice cream maker for my 25th birthday and I think I've only managed to make three batches of ice cream in the two years since. As always, I can count on Pioneer Woman to get my cooking/freezing sensibilities rip-roaring to go.
• I must grill some squash. With six or seven plants, I know we are about to be over-run with the stuff.
• Brianne wrote about two awesome summer-in-Des-Moines things I can't wait to try. One, I was already hip to - the movies at the Art Center. I picture Hubs and I on a blanket with some of his amazing crusty, homemade bread, a jug of homebrew and some snappy little veggies and cheese, enjoying Pretty in Pink. Yes, please.
• The other, I was so not hip to but love. Moon floats at Gray's Lake? Is a jug of homebrew allowed on the open seas? Even if not, it sounds lovely.
• I never make the pancakes. Hubs does that. But, couldn't a gal slip this recipe under her husband's pillow and hope for the best? When I'm not behind the mixer, I like to be a cooking muse, even if it's not very subtle.
• Eggplant tacos a la Sam on our fancy pantsy new grill? Hells yes.
• Again with this Pioneer Woman inspiration. Well, I'm sorry, but she never disappoints and chocolate malt cookies sound heavenly.
• I'd also like to do some laundry and wash my floors. It's sick that I'm actually listing that as something I'm looking forward to, but I'm telling you - crazy DIY projects will do that do you. Be careful.
• Even worse, I'd like to start the hunt for a new dining room light, which sounds small but can easily become a time-suck of wandering stores, both in-person and online. Sigh. This is an ugly cycle.

Hawt

Ooo, girls (and dudes?).

Milestone day: first milkshake of the season!

It’s a ceremonial event in my world. Milkshakes were born to be enjoyed on breezy days with big sunglasses and thumping tunes.

Granted, I enjoyed my first milkshake of 2010 rushing back to work after lunch (but! with the windows down) and listening to classical music – after all, I’m a mature woman in her late twenties now. I did nail the big sunglasses, though, thanks to a small weekend indulgence at Old Navy.

In other news, make these. I whipped some up this weekend and hubs and I scarfed down half of the poor little crackers in 45 minutes.

Rousing success on the cinnamon front

OK. Baking is usually messy. BUT, this time - these cinnamon rolls - were a tornado. Wrapped in a hurricane. Babysitting twin two year olds.

Behold - the chaos of my kitchen during the baking (and heck ya, that's a wine glass. Mrs. A, real-life baking idol and over at Our Poverty With a View, has taught me nothing if not, "Always drink when baking.")Disturbing, right? Well, much like the mamas I know, I have to say that all that labor was worth it. Check out the little darlings rising a bit before they hit the oven.
And, the finished product! Crispy, yet gooey. Pioneer Woman again saves the day. The hubs will wake up to a fabulous birthday tomorrow, no doubt.

PS This recipe made cinnamon rolls for life. They spilled forth from the Kitchen Aide like freshmen to a kegger. Make room in the freezer, is all I'm saying.

Adventures in Cinnamonary

My brand spankin’ new husband is turning a whole year older tomorrow. To celebrate, we’ll have a hearty and lovingly prepared breakfast of gooey, mapely, cinnamon tantalization. I’m excited to make this recipe, but let’s be honest. I’m nervous. I mean, usually, I test the baking waters on safe occasions. Tuesday, Arbor Day, the cat’s birthday – you get the idea. So, making a Very Special Breakfast is a tad daunting. Especially because if I screw up, I’ll have to head out in the unnaturally cold Iowa morn to get some piping fresh donuts and hope they result in an equally awesome birthday.

Shudder.

I do not want to do that. Oh, I really do not want to do that.

Wish me luck!