Treats for appetites of every size
Christmas is a week away and I still haven’t made my cookie tins! Looks like I know what I’ll be doing in my five days post-finals (other than all of the shopping I’ve been neglecting). You can count on the fact that I’ll be making these again for my tins. They were surprisingly easy, and seem to hold up really well when rattling around in a tupperware all day, which means they are perfect cookie tin cookies. Bonus: they look super impressive.
Sometimes, when you’ve got an 8 hour final coming up, you just need to spend the day before doing fun things. Like baking. And climbing. And Christmas shopping. And just trust that you really weren’t going to learn any more copyright law today anyways.
Last week, I told you I’d be doing two weeks of pie posts from Thanksgiving. But then, on Tuesday, I made a recipe that changed everything: Chocolate Mousse out of my Science of Good Cooking Cookbook. You can wait on pumpkin pie – this recipe is an immediate need-to-know. In fact, I think The Science of Good Cooking may be making its way into my regular rotation of cookbooks.
This is Part 1 of 2 Thanksgiving pie posts coming at you in the next couple of weeks. Good news: they can just as easily be Christmas pies (if you don’t make the one true Christmas dessert: Chocolate Trifle), so keep these on hand as the holiday parties start piling up. Also, I’ve done a little bit of test kitchen work on these, trying out different pie crust recipes and combining some filling recipes to figure our what works well together. The results were pretty good, and have made for some tasty breakfasts in the Thanksgiving aftermath.
Putting aside final exams and cramming, I love the period from Thanksgiving through New Years. So many fun holidays. So much time with family and friends. A general feeling of magic happiness with good food, buying presents for people, and snow. Also, unending opportunities to bake.
I’m getting really into this big Sunday morning breakfasts thing. I made waffles a couple weeks ago, and I think this needs to be a new part of my weekly routine. There really is no better way to spend a cold weekend morning than making pancakes and eating enough of them to not have to think about another meal until 8pm.
Good thing it’s Daylight Savings Time, or I wouldn’t have gotten this blog post up in time! I was really torn about whether to bake this week, because I made some chocolate cupcakes with butterscotch filling last week, and had been kind of planning on using those. But then I decided that since the base chocolate cupcakes were the same as ones I have made in the past, I couldn’t use a slight variation on them. Instead, at around 6pm today, I asked my roommate for some ideas on desserts I could make quickly, and she recommended Rice Krispie Treats. …
I made some really really really good cookies this week. Like, I’m staring at the last one in a Tupperware next to me at the table right now seriously struggling with whether to eat it. I’ve already had 2 today. And maybe 3 yesterday. And every day before that since Monday. It didn’t help that the batch made about 60 cookies. So even though my students did some good work on the huge container I brought to their conferences this week, I still had too many left over.
Two breakfast posts in a row! Obviously, I’ve been a little selfish lately, making things that I actually end up eating instead of pawning off on my friends. Don’t worry – next week’s Halloween treat is 100% for other people. But until then: Spiced Waffles.
Today was one of those days when it really pays off to be a baker. I saw this recipe on the New York Times Food Instagram account earlier this week and thought it sounded like a good Fall breakfast. When I opened it and looked through the ingredients, I was pleased to find out I wouldn’t even have to go to the store to bake it – everything was in my pantry! When some friends asked what I was baking this weekend and I told them how excited I was that it was a recipe where you’d have everything already …