Treats for appetites of every size
I think I figured out how trifle was invented. We’ve all been there. You promise to make a cake for some event. You decide to wait until the day of said event because you obviously don’t want to bring stale cake somewhere. You follow the directions for making the batter to a T. And then you get cocky.
Yesterday, as I am sure you are aware, was the Pi Day of the century. 3.14.15. Naturally, as a teacher, I had plenty of people to invite over who were equally excited about such an event. And, obviously, this week I had to make pie. Now, my dilemma came when I realized that this would also be my last time to post before St. Patrick’s Day, which really is the highlight of the month of March. So my goal became to find a recipe that could double as celebrating both.
Thursday morning, I woke up at 4am. Normally I don’t get up until 5 on a work day, but I was wired. You see, there was vague talk of a serious snow storm coming. But as far as I knew, we still had school. My head was near the window, and I peeked outside, but without my contacts I can’t actually see well enough to confirm or deny said snow storm. So I laid in bed for another half an hour before accepting the fact that I wasn’t going to fall back asleep. However, I was not yet willing to …
After being sick at the end of last week (which is actually the worst thing as a teacher – it makes you realize just how much energy you need on a daily basis), I made it up to Massachusetts for the weekend just in time to experience one of those blizzards I’d been hearing so much about. Down in New Jersey, this winter has been very much a story of “There’s a huge blizzard coming our way, everybody panic! Oh wait, it missed us, but it did hit Boston.” Up here, it’s a very different story.
Baking ingredients all have their own personality. Some of them are over-sensitive, hardening and becoming unusable at slightest hint of oxygen (I’m looking at you, brown sugar). Some of them have a way of hiding in your cabinet and only appearing after you’ve bought a replacement (that would be molasses, as discussed here, and, oddly, Karo syrup). And others fall into the general category of “You Will Only Ever Have To Buy This Once Because It Is A Magical Never Ending Container” (obviously, this is baking powder and baking soda).
In college, my absolute favorite on campus job was managing the Calhoun Buttery. This mostly entailed making various different vehicles for hot sauce (buffalo chicken wraps, quesadillas, nachos…) for anyone that found themselves in the basement of our dorm between 10pm and 1am on weeknights, playing lots of 90s throwback music and TSwift, and getting paid to hang out with my friends.
It’s officially Christmas cookie season. That means, for the next couple of weeks (probably through New Year’s) it will be all Christmas cookies all the time. This year, I’m going the slightly nontraditional route with my tins, including some new recipes and experiments, but if you’re looking for some classics, here’s last year’s selection: Gingerbread Men Dream Cookies Butter Cookies Anyways, this week’s recipe was definitely an experiment. I had seen it on Pinterest and thought they looked amazing. Also, I needed to make something that would keep for a week since I’ll be making the rest of my cookies in …
For the eighth year in a row, Yale lost The Game. That is sad. But want to know what’s not sad? Thanksgiving being in 4 days! I was actually in Massachusetts this weekend for the game, drove back down to New Jersey today, and will be driving back up again for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. That’s a lot of time driving through the worst state ever (95 in Connecticut is its own special form of torture – you can be cruising along, no problem, only to have to slam on your brakes, take 2 hours to drive 10 miles, and then …
This was the first weekend that really felt like the holiday season. It was cold, curl-up-inside-with-a-book weather, and it took a significant amount of self control not to turn on Christmas music while I was baking (I have a rule with myself – no Christmas music until after Thanksgiving). So, when my aunt Anne texted me a picture of what she was baking, I immediately asked for the recipe.
A day late, but I feel I have a good excuse – yesterday I ran the NYC marathon! So, even though I actually baked these last Friday for Halloween, you can understand that when I got back to my apartment yesterday evening, I crashed pretty hard. Like 7:30 and I was in bed hard. Thus the Monday post this week. Now, I know that Halloween is over and my cutely decorated cupcakes are no longer relevant in terms of decoration, but the base of these cupcakes in no way loses its relevance with the changing month. In fact, they are …