In honor of the month of love, I decided to share with you one of my latest creations: a tasty little jar of hearts.

Right now you may be thinking, “The song by Christina Perri?” or maybe you’re thinking “A jar of artichoke hearts? Hearts of Romaine? Celery hearts?” and the answer to all of those would be a resounding no. It’s a different kind of heart. And nope- it’s not an animal heart either. Okay, so it’s not really a jar of hearts at all. It’s a jar of preserved whole strawberries in a light syrup. The reason I decided to call them a jar of hearts is because when I picked up the jar to label it, I noticed the strawberries looked like little hearts. Perfect for this time of year.

See? That’s totally a little heart!

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It really looks like hearts! That shit right there is so Snow White. I felt like the evil Queen Grimhilde surveying the heart of my enemy in a jar. Creepy, I know. Sorry. Too many fairy tales thanks to Grimm & Once Upon A Time. But it can also have a romantic spin. Hearts, love, etc. Remember back in the day there was a dude on The Real World (this was when it was still cool, so it must have been the first 5 minutes it was on) who’s girlfriend sent him a pig heart for Valentine’s Day? No? Whatever. This is far from a pig’s heart.

I had a few strawberries left over from a little experiment I had to do (more on that in a week or two) so I decided to do this. I couldn’t let them go to waste; they were perfect, huge, beautifully colored fresh strawberries. And I had already used them in the more obvious capacity (like I said, more on that at another time), so this was the only unique thing I could come up with to do. It was really easy too. They make a perfect ice cream, oatmeal or cheesecake topping & they’d be smashing served with some soufflés, not to mention the syrup is great for putting in ginger ale/seltzer/7-Up as a flavoring, or for making cocktails. It’s like an alcohol-free shrub (though it certainly could be made into one with alcohol, if you’re so inclined, there are tons of great ideas here). Or you could just add a little alcohol to it, & it’s an instant party. These are the things I think about. I’m a sicko, right?

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Alright so now you’re probably wanting your own jar of hearts, possibly to give your significant other? Perhaps even just because the thought of telling nosy people who ask you what you got/gave, “Oh, I just gave ‘em a jar of hearts” amuses you? Well, all you have to do is this: take your strawberries (fresh, not frozen) & wash them. Then remove the hulls. Put them in a large saucepan & coat them in granulated sugar, just enough so that each berry has a nice coating & there’s enough sugar so that you don’t see the bottom of the pot. Let it sit, covered, for 3-5 hours. Then turn the heat up to medium high & with a wooden spoon, continuously stir to avoid scorching. The sugar & the liquid that had seeped out of the berries should combine to create a thick syrup. Take care while stirring to not break any of the berries, you want them whole (but if little pieces here & there separate or break off, that’s okay). Cook long enough so that the berries are cooked through or else they’ll float in the jar (this happened to me, even though I was sure they were cooked through). Once it’s ready, using a slotted spoon, scoop out the berries & put them in a hot, sanitized jar. Then pour in enough syrup to cover, leaving about ½”-inch headspace. Seal & process for 10 minutes in a water bath, and allow to cool in the water. If you have any syrup left over & no berries… that’s where the strawberry syrup comes in!

If you’d like to add some liqueur to it, maybe some vodka or maybe some vanilla bean, then do so. If you don’t add any liquid, add a little water if needed to fill whatever size jar you want to use for your syrup. Bring to a boil & then pour into a hot jar & process it, again for 10 minutes. Allow both jars to cool & check the seals. If they didn’t seal, use immediately & refrigerate. I did both of these at once & processed them together, then let them cool in the water bath overnight. I removed them, checked the seals, dried them & labeled them appropriately. Yes, I design & print my labels myself.

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This is not a USDA approved recipe, but the incredibly high sugar content & the fact that I only made a half-pint of berries & 4oz. of syrup -both of which will be used fairly quickly- didn’t make that an issue for me. If you’re concerned, take appropriate measures, but I don’t really see any reason to be concerned. Once the berries themselves are done, the remaining syrup in that jar will be used just as the separate syrup. On ice cream, yogurt, cheesecake, pound cake, as a cocktail mixer or in seltzer or soda water. Waste not, want not. Although I doubt any of this will go to waste. As a matter of fact… it is so incredibly delightful as an ice cream topping, you wouldn’t believe it. Yes, I said delightful. Especially over a homemade French vanilla bean ice cream.

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Mmm. Ice cream with fresh hearts.

The only warning I can give here is to avoid white clothing. I did, but I have white dish towels & somehow, I guess from spatter & the drips from the spoon, it ended up looking like Dexter Morgan was playing around in my kitchen. I wish. Well, not necessarily that he was killing people in my kitchen, but it’d be pretty awesome if Dexter was hanging out in my kitchen. He’s the bee’s knees; I can’t believe it took me so long to watch that show! I’m officially obsessed now. So yeah, anyway, keep an eye out for that, ’cause white can be bleached- yes- and that’s why it’s perfect for lab coats & chef’s coats & dish towels. But if you’re wearing that really nice light colored apron or your favorite white t-shirt while you make this and then bam- you’ve got a strawberry blood splatter problem, you might not feel as flippant about it. Remember, extra strength Hefty bags, gloves & tape. No… wait… I meant dark-colored aprons or clothing. That other stuff is for making a different kind of “hearts in a jar.” Which you could also do, really, depending on your level of childhood trauma or who you’re planning on gifting.

So now you too can have a jar of hearts in your pantry without being a creepy Disney-villain type. Even though I sort of am a creepy Disney-villain type, myself. I kinda like the witch who lives in the house made of candy, don’t you? Although I don’t want to lure any kids there to do terrible things. I just wanna sit on a marshmallow couch with a buttercream pillow & watch TV.

Your kids are safe with me.

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Opium used to be the big drug back in the day. I guess it was the crystal meth of the time, around the turn of the century/1920′s. It contains something like 12% morphine, and codeine & hydrocodone are derivatives of the same family of drug- hence the name opiates. It’s serious stuff. Laudanum was made from opium & alcohol & was used to treat a variety of stomach ailments fairly regularly back then. But in modern times, all we know about it is what we read from an Edgar Allan Poe story or William S. Burrough’s novels, not to mention glib pop culture references. We all remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine’s urine test comes back positive for opium because she ate a poppy seed bagel, right? I always thought such a thing couldn’t happen, unless you eat 1,000,000 poppy seed bagels in one day. But I was wrong: eating poppy seed muffins, cakes or bagels can indeed land you in a heap of trouble. As a matter of fact, back in January of 2005, Anahad O’Connor wrote in the New York Times Science section that “eating just two poppy seed bagels heavily coated with seeds can result in morphine in a person’s system for hours, leading a routine drug test to come back positive… [therefore] because of this possibility, the federal government recently raised the threshold for opiates in workplace testing to 2,000 nanograms a milliliter, up from 300.” And by that reasoning, this cake could possibly get you fired from your job or make you lose custody of your kids. It’s loaded with poppy seeds. Loaded. Both in the cake itself and on top.

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Which is fine with me. I love me some poppy seeds. Poppy seed bagels are my favorite bagels ever. So when I was reading one of the (many, many, many, as you can see here) books I got for Christmas, Cake Ladies by Jodi Rhoden, and I saw this triple layer poppy seed cake with almond icing, I just had to make it. I never make cakes, as you probably know. This was an exception. It’s a huge cake: a pound of butter & a half-dozen eggs. But worth it. However… I ended up halving the recipe & making two dozen cupcakes instead. I know, I know.

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But it just seemed so big. So many eggs, so much butter, etc. And it is big, because if half the recipe makes two dozen cupcakes, the whole recipe must make FOUR DOZEN. That is huge. And crazy. And ¼ cup of poppy seeds is a lot of poppy seeds. It’s a wonder I didn’t get high off it. As far as the taste goes, they were pretty unique, I have to say. Very different, but I loved them. Cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, poppy seeds, almond extract & the tang from the vinegar-milk combination; all very subtle but what flavor! A surprisingly delicious winter cupcake. Moist cake filled with tons of warming spices, albeit subtle like I said, and then some crunch from the seeds. I topped them with the almond buttercream from the book and then some little flowers made of almond slices with poppy seeds for centers. Really cute, I thought. Next time, however, I’d make little red poppies out of fondant. ‘Cause that’d be doubly cute.

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Of course, I’m giving you the adapted cupcake version of the recipe that I made. For the full cake recipe, you’ll have to buy the book. Bwahahaha.

POPPY SEED CUPCAKES WITH ALMOND BUTTERCREAM ICING (adapted from a recipe by Lisa Goldstein of Celo, NC, from Cake Ladies by Jodi Rhoden)

Ingredients:

Cake:

• 3 large eggs, at room temperature, separated
• ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened, at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup honey
• 1 cup milk at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 ½ teaspoons pure almond extract
• 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• pinch salt
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• a pinch of ground cardamom
• ¼ cup poppy seeds

Icing:

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened, room temperature
• 2 ½ – 3 cups confectioner’s sugar
• ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon pure almond extract
• 2-3 tablespoons half-and-half (plus more if needed)

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350° F. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites together with the cream of tartar on high speed, until soft peaks form. Set aside.
2. In a separate bowl of the stand mixer, this time fitted with the paddle, cream the butter, sugar and honey together until light and fluffy. While beating on low speed, add egg yolks, one at a time. Beat after each addition. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl, and beat again until the mixture is smooth, light and creamy.
3. In a glass measuring cup, combine the milk, vinegar and almond extract. Set aside.
4. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Add that mixture to the creamed butter mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk mixture, and mixing lightly but thoroughly between each addition, until ingredients are just combined.
5. Add the poppy seeds, folding them in by hand until combined. Quickly re-whisk the egg whites by hand if they’ve separated, then fold them into the batter gently, in three batches.
6. Add cupcake liners to muffin tins and fill each with batter, around two-thirds full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in each cupcake comes out clean. Allow to cool 10 minutes in tins, then remove to wire rack. Cool thoroughly before frosting.
7. To make the icing, cream the butter and confectioner’s sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer until it makes a thick paste. add and combine the vanilla & almond extracts. Then add the half-and-half, one tablespoon at a time, blending on low speed until fully incorporated.
8. Add more if needed to achieve a creamy, fluffy consistency. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the paddle, bottom and sides of the bowl. Re-mix until no lumps remain.

Excuse the frosting job on the back left one; I was trying to find the best way of doing it

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They came out really rustic-looking. So much so I almost wish I had one of those cake stands made of an old tree. They’d be so sweet on one of those. Dammit, I wish I had one now! I’m going to have to get my hands on some cut down trees & get Jay to start cuttin’ it up! He’s a big, handy fella. He can do it. Why buy when you can DIY!

If you’re looking for a unique recipe to try, this is it. It’d be fabulous as a triple layer cake, too, of course. And in case you’re wondering, I got a lot of cookbooks for Christmas, so you’ll be seeing a lot of recipes from them in the coming months. And I’m not into New Year’s resolutions so they’ll be loaded with butter & eggs & sugar. I’ve got to maintain my girlish figure somehow.

And if poppy seeds don’t interest you, later on this week there’ll be a post featuring a giveaway I’m doing together with Yoyo from Topstitch, so keep your eyes peeled.

Before I get into how awesome my friends are, I just wanted to show off a little bit, & brag about a pretty piece of design I did. My Facebook fans already saw it, but I figure showing it off on the blog couldn’t hurt. Stroke my ego, will ya? A few nights back I was sitting home one rainy, miserable night, drinking an Irish coffee, listening to Lady Gaga (see above) & playing around on Illustrator when this little beauty above just kinda drew herself. Isn’t it pretty? I love it. I call it “Holy Lola.” It’s already on my new business cards (which are currently being printed & cost me nothing but shipping, thank you Klout & Moo Cards), and I’m even contemplating getting it as a tattoo, but I was undecided at first whether or not to use it in a new blog design. Clearly, I made up my mind, as you can see there’s a whole new thing goin’ on here. If you’re not seeing it, clear your cache & refresh the page. Just a word of warning: it’s copyrighted, it’s my work, and if I find anyone stealing it or passing it off as their own… your face will meet my brass knuckles. Or at the very least, you’ll be at the wrong end of a strongly worded e·mail & public embarrassment, which coming from me is just as bad. Just ask Sharon Luann Swann Stallings or whatever her name was. Whatever happened to her, anyway, is she still stealing people’s cupcake photos, claiming they’re hers & promoting “her business” on Craigslist? Or did I totally scare her off the internet? What a lying little rotten egg she was (the last paragraph of this post explains that incident a bit).

But sometimes, you meet the coolest people on the internet. There are a lot of assholes, yes. You hear about it everyday on the news: people pretending to be other people, people scamming people out of money, people who stalk other people they don’t even know on the ‘net, fake charities that rip you off, sneaky bastards that find out via Facebook when you’re going on vacation then clean out your entire damn house, etc. But all that said- there are tons of really cool people out there too. I have a gazillion awesome friends, some of which I’ve known for 9+ years, that I’ve met on the interwebs. Really genuine & truly special people: Yoyo, Anna, Rain, Becky, Cece, Ari, Percy, Jamie, Heather, Joey, Melissa, Tania, Susan, Carlos, Lyns, Miemo and more who I probably forgot (but who are no less important!). Some of these people I’ve had relationships with for years & years. I may not talk to every single one of them as much as I did at one time, but I still love & adore them. They’re all cooler than your friends, I bet *wink* And then there are people I only know through their comments on my blog, like Pola, who is sending me a super special present via Amazon! People I don’t even “know” are kind enough to send me awesome stuff.

Which brings me to one of the many really cool people I’ve met more recently- Molly. Molly is a very sweet, very cool makeup artist & blogger (with a sweet tattoo) who’s originally from Alaska, but now living in Arizona. She’s got an adorable chihuahua named Ruca & a Meyer lemon tree in her yard. Lucky girl, right? Well, I guess if you live in Arizona it might not be as unusual as I feel it is. Do you know how hard it is to get your hands on Meyer lemons if you live in New York? No? Well it’s really friggin’ hard. Almost impossible. We get mostly Eureka’s, maybe a couple of Lisbon’s, even some Ponderosa’s. We never ever get any Meyer’s, and if we do, they’re snatched up super quick from the gourmet market & are never to be found again.

Meyer lemons are a sort of lemon-orangey hybrid from China that are really popular on the west coast of the U.S. but over here on my side of the world, not so much.

Citrus × meyeri, the Meyer lemon, is a citrus fruit native to China thought to be a cross between a true lemon and either a mandarin or common orange. It was introduced to the United States in 1908 as S.P.I. #23028^[1] by the agricultural explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer, an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture who collected a sample of the plant on a trip to China.^[2]

The Meyer lemon is commonly grown in China in garden pots as an ornamental tree. It became popular as a food item in the United States after being rediscovered by chefs such as Alice Waters at Chez Panisse during the California Cuisine revolution.^[3][4] Popularity further climbed when Martha Stewart began featuring them in her recipes.^[2]

Citrus × meyeri trees are around 6 to 10 ft (2 to 3 m) tall at maturity, though they can be pruned smaller. Their leaves are dark green and shiny. The flowers are white with a purple base and fragrant.

The Meyer lemon fruit is yellow and rounder than a true lemon. The skin is fragrant and thin, coloured a deep yellow with a slight orange tint when ripe. Meyer lemon fruits have a sweeter, less acidic flavor than the more common Lisbon or Eureka grocery store lemon varieties. The pulp is a dark yellow and contains up to 10 seeds per fruit.

So anyway, I saw a box of all the lemons she picked in a picture she posted on Instagram, and then I saw a photo of all the lemons in a bowl & I kiddingly (I swear!) said to send some my way. And like I mentioned in my last marmalade post, she did!

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So I got a big, beautiful box of them. As soon as I opened it, I was hit with the best citrusy, lemony-sweet smell ever. It was amazing. And so basically I went lemon crazy. I made lemon curd, marmalade, candied citrus peels, lemon chewies with glaze from The Cookiepedia, made lemon-infused water, etc. I didn’t want even one of these babies to go to waste. I even reserved some seeds to try & grow my own, despite this crazy feeling that won’t work well at all. But it’s worth a shot! Maybe I can get my very own mini-Meyer lemon tree, I heard that even tiny ones are pretty prolific with the fruit. And of course, I’m  sending Molly some of the treats I made as a thank you for her generosity. I even re-named the lemon curd after her (okay, so it’s just for blogging purposes, but still!).

Sometimes with my lemon curd, little pieces of the zest darken, or caramelize (I guess?)… I’m not sure why that happens, but it does. If it happens with yours, you can strain them out before ladling it into the jars. I like the zest in it, so I leave them in anyway. If you do leave ‘em in, you can always eat around the darker ones if they bother you, but they’re only little bits of darkened zest. Nothing harmful.

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Again, I stress that if you aren’t familiar with the process of canning, you read this thoroughly before starting. It isn’t difficult, but you have to take certain precautions to be safe. Sterilizing your jars/lids & knowing what you can preserve using a water bath & what you can’t is important knowledge to have if you’re going to be doing this. The lemon curd doesn’t have to be processed, it can be put in a jar or Tupperware and refrigerated or used right away (cake filling, etc). Most curd recipes you find aren’t suited for canning, they’re simply meant to be eaten right away. This recipe is (very slightly) adapted from the USDA Center for Home Preservation’s curd recipe, so I’m pretty confident it’s up to par.

MISS MOLLY’S MEYER LEMON CURD

Makes about 5 half-pints

Ingredients:

• 2 ½ cups sugar
• ½ cup fresh squeezed Meyer lemon juice
• ½ cup bottled lemon juice (or, alternatively, use 1 whole cup bottled & omit the Meyer juice if you’re super anal & scared about acid levels)
• ¾ cup unsalted cold butter, cut into small pieces
• 1-2 tablespoons Meyer lemon zest
• 4 whole eggs, beaten thoroughly
• 7 egg yolks

Directions:

1. Bring boiling water canner to a boil. Wash jars and lids in hot soapy water. Put lids in a bowl and cover with boiling water from the canner.
2. Combine zest and sugar in a bowl, mix well, and set aside for 20 minutes to let the flavors meld. Juice your lemons while the sugar & zest are coming together.
3. Prep your eggs by thoroughly beating the 4 whole eggs until they are light and airy, with little bubbles. Make absolutely sure there are no white pieces floating around still.
4. Separate seven egg yolks, and whisk them into the beaten egg mixture. Now combine all the ingredients in a medium-large non-reactive pot.
5. Now turn the burner on, very very low, and whisk. Incorporate the ingredients together slowly and consistently, avoiding high heat that could cook/curdle the eggs.
6. Once the butter has melted, turn the heat to medium and keep whisking. Eventually the mixture will thicken, and resemble the consistency of pudding. After another minute or two, the mixture will be thick enough that when you pull the whisk across the bottom of the pan, you will see the metal for a few seconds. That means the curd is starting to hold its shape.
7. Remove the pot from the heat. You can run the curd through a fine sieve at this point to remove the zest. You don’t have to do this, but some people find it gross, and you’re really just imparting the flavor from the zest to intensify the lemon-yness, so it isn’t needed if you don’t want it. Ladle hot curd into hot jars leaving ½″-inch headspace. Wipe jar rims clean and attach lids. Processed the jars for 20 minutes.

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When I was a kid, I always thought the color of curd & lemon meringue pie filling was from the lemons. Not true. The color doesn’t actually have much to do with the lemons, it’s due to the egg yolk, but this curd just so happened to have an amazing color pre-processing. So amazing I had to get a few shots of it. It became slightly paler after the waterbath & sitting overnight. I happened to get four half-pints (8-oz.) and two 4-oz. jars from this recipe, which equals 5 half-pints. And just like everything else I make, 5 out of those 6 jars were practically gone before they were even cooled!

This has a shelf life of 3-4 months, and if the harmless darkening in color doesn’t bother you, that can extend to up to one year. Of course it tastes best when eaten as soon as possible. You can also freeze it instead of processing it, or put it right into the fridge and use it right away. As far as what to do with it, you can swirl it into ice cream or frozen yogurt, use it as an ice cream topping, or put it on scones, muffins or toast. It makes a terrific cake or cupcake filling, an easy pie filling (basically that’s what lemon meringue pie is filled with) and it’s delicious on pound cake or angel food cake. Alternately you can just eat it out of the jar; that’s how my mother likes hers. Although sometimes she likes it on Toast-R-Cakes or English muffins too.

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Back in October, an extremely exciting thing happened to me. I won a set of Le Creuset mini cocottes from Susan at She’s Becoming Doughmesstic. This is doubly, triply, and quadruply exciting because of a few reasons: 1) I never win anything, ever, 2) I have a Le Creuset obsession 3) I was having a kind of shitty week at the time & so I needed the boost and 4) my pink pie plate was also expected to be delivered that week & I had just purchased a second pie plate so I had a lot of baking/cooking planning to do (re: those pie plates & the saga of the pies, see this post). That always makes me happy. I like planning what I’ll be making for the next 6 weeks. Or few days, at the very least.

The picture that drew me in…

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So there was this giveaway. A Le Creuset giveaway. As soon as I saw that picture I knew I had to enter- like I said, I have an obsession. And I never enter giveaways, ever. Mainly because I get so excited and then it’s a huge disappointment when I don’t win it. I sit there & think about what I’d do with it if I had it, what I’d make with it, etc. And it’s very sad when I’m not the winner. So it must have been kismet that I actually took the time to enter this one because I FREAKIN’ WON! Then I received them and they were even cuter than I anticipated.

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How cute are they!? They’re actually gorgeous more than they are cute. But because of their size (about 4″ across) they definitely have an element of the cute. Le Creuset makes the most amazing casseroles, dutch ovens, stock pots & griddles. If you’re unfamiliar with them:

Le Creuset is a French cookware manufacturer best known for its colorful enameled cast iron casseroles, which the company calls “French Ovens”, or “Dutch Ovens“. The company also makes many other types of cookware, from sauce pans to tagines, and sells a line of corkscrews and wine openers under the “Screwpull” brand.

Le Creuset was founded in 1925 in the town of Fresnoy-le-Grand in Northern France by two Belgian industrialists – Armand Desaegher (a casting specialist) and Octave Aubecq (an enameling specialist). The pair introduced the signature Le Creuset round cocotte (French/Dutch Oven) soon after; the cocotte remains the company’s most popular cookware piece to this day.

In 1934 Le Creuset introduced the signature Flame (orange) colored enamel on its cast iron cookware items. The company also invented the doufeu, a Dutch oven with a concave lid that is filled with ice during the cooking process.

After World War II, Le Creuset began to focus on exportation, and by 1952, 50% of all cast iron production was bound for the United States. In 1955 Le Creuset introduced its first grill model – the Tostador – and in 1956 a new color, Elysees Yellow, was introduced to great success.

In 1957, Le Creuset purchased its competitor Les Hauts Fourneaux de Cousances and began producing some signature Cousances cookware vessels, including the doufeu, a cocotte with a water lid, under the Le Creuset brand.

The current Le Creuset logo was introduced in 1970 and was designed to be a symbolic representation of metal casting and molding.

The company was purchased by current owner Paul Van Zuydam in 1987.

Anyway, yes, I won & Susan told me to pick the color (or colors) I wanted, and so I picked that set right there, called ‘Twilight’ which contains one each of a metallic pearl, metallic pewter & metallic black. And no, I did not pick the color scheme because of The Twilight Saga. I picked it because I love black, I have both black & white dishware, & I figured they’d go with anything. And this time I waited… I didn’t start planning what I was going to make as soon as I clicked ‘enter.’ However, as soon as I found out I won, my brain went into overdrive. I started thinking of what I could make in them that would do them justice. But try as I did, I just couldn’t think of any one thing that would be appropriate to make in these to break ‘em in. I thought of everything; sweet & savory. Mini chicken pot pies, individual size dips, baked individual French toast’s & Meyer lemon pudding cakes (all of which are still on my to-do list) were scrapped. After much thought (& some research, mucho thanks to the kitchn) I decided on something new & exciting for me- individual chocolate soufflés.

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Delicious, one-for-you-one-for-me chocolate soufflés with a soft, pudding-like center. No sharing. No slicing or serving. Everybody gets their own! Who the eff wants to share? No one. That’s why cupcakes are so popular. Sharing is for suckers.

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That last photo, directly above, was the first out of the oven- you can see it’s the highest.

I never made soufflés before, and I was admittedly a bit afraid. I heard that they were tempermental, etc. I heard Julia Child & Jacques Pépin talk about them & it always seemed intimidating. And I guess they can be, perhaps on a larger scale. I’ve heard stories of collapsing middles, soufflés that just never rise, etc. But these little ones were surprisingly easy to make, came out textbook perfect & were very delicious. Of course, keep in mind: you wait for soufflés- they do not wait for you. You eat them immediately, or they deflate as they cool. Of course they’re still edible… but they aren’t nearly as impressive. And by deflate, I mean actually deflate; the pretty tops that rise so high & majestic just sink back down, and it happens within a matter of minutes. It’s a “serve hot” type of dish. If you’re a few seconds late to the table, you’ll miss the awesomeness.

INDIVIDUAL CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉS (adapted from Martha Stewart by moi)

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• ⅓ cup granulated sugar, plus more for ramekins
• 3 large eggs, room temperature, separated (whites & yolks)
• ⅛ teaspoon cream of tartar
• 5 ½ ounces bittersweet chocolate (70% cacao), chopped
• ⅔ cup whole milk
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 ½ teaspoons cornstarch
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons creme fraiche or sour cream
• Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400° degrees F. Brush four 7-ounce ramekins generously with the butter; coat with granulated sugar. Whisk whites with a stand mixer until frothy, about 2 minutes. Add cream of tartar; whisk until soft peaks form. Add the ⅓ cup granulated sugar; whisk until medium peaks form, about 5 minutes.
2. Set chocolate in a bowl. Whisk milk into cornstarch and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring, until thick, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in chocolate until combined, then whisk in yolks and creme fraiche. Transfer to a large bowl. Gently fold in egg whites.
3. Fill ramekins evenly with batter. Bake on a baking sheet, rotating halfway through, until soufflés rise but centers are still liquid, about 14 minutes.
4. Remove pan holding ramekins from the oven gently. Dust soufflés with confectioners’ sugar, and serve immediately with fresh berries & whipped cream, if desired.

Can I just say one thing? AMAZEBALLS. That’s all. That’s the one thing. Just amazeballs. They rose just right, I was extremely impressed with myself! This recipe for me made the three Le Creuset mini’s plus three 4″ ramekins.

Once they start to cool, the centers firm up a bit.

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This was the best introduction I could’ve given my little Le Creuset’s; a decadent French-inspired dessert that showed them off. And let me just say, they were nowhere near as scary or tempermental as people say. But whatever you do, don’t let their reputation scare you. All you have to remember is that they’re to be eaten immediately, you can’t wait on these. You make them, serve them right the hell away, and that’s it. Don’t mess around.

Also, if you can be patient & plan your meal & plans around them, they’d make a Valentine’s Day dessert that’s sure to impress & take anyone’s breath away. Nobody has to know how crazy easy they are to make. And really, why the hell would you tell them? Screw ‘em. Let ‘em think it took you tons of prep & hours of sweat.

I admit, I had no freakin’ idea what the hell an ‘alfajor’ was before this. But I’m not one to turn down making a delicious looking cookie. I don’t know how anyone could deny a cookie, let alone a shortbread-like cookie, let alone a shortbread-like cookie made into a sandwich with dulce de leche filling.

While they have origins in Moorish Spain, alfajores are especially popular in South America. They are simple shortbread sandwich cookies with a sweet filling of dulce de leche. Different doughs are used for the cookies depending on the country. Some use normal flour dough, while others add cornstarch or even cassava flour for a more delicate crumb.

- courtesy of whats4eats.com

Literally translated, dulce de leche means “sweet from milk”. It is prepared by slowly heating sweetened milk to create a product that derives its taste from caramelised sugar. It is a popular sweet in Latin America, where it is known under a variety of names. In Chile, Ecuador and Panama it is known as manjar. In Peru, Colombia and Venezuela it is referred to as manjar blanco or arequipe, depending on regional variations. In Mexico and Nicaragua is is commonly called cajeta. It is also found in Brazil, known by its Portuguese name doce de leite.

A French version, known as confiture de lait, is very similar to the spreadable forms of dulce de leche. A Norwegian version, Hamar-pålegg (“Hamar spread”), better known as HaPå, is a relatively thick and not so sweet commercial variant.

- Wikipedia

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Shortbread & caramel sandwiches. That’s basically what I said: “What the what?!” Insane. Insane goodness. They really are. And very easy to put together, especially since you can use store-bought dulce de leche with absolutely no problem. I however, used a clever little method that’s a personal favorite of mine to make a caramel-like filling using a boiled can of condensed milk. Mmm. This particular cookie recipe uses flour & cornstarch to create the perfect soft crumbly-ness that goes excellently with the thick caramel heavenly-ness in between it.

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ALFAJORES WITH DULCE DE LECHE (from The Cookiepedia)

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• powdered sugar, for dusting
• Dulce de leche, for filling

Directions:

1. Cream the butter & sugar together for a minute or two, until they look light & fluffy.
2. In the meantime, sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder & salt in a bowl & set aside.
3. Add the egg & egg yolk one at a time to the butter mixture, mixing after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix briefly. Add the flour mixture & mix until the dough just starts to come together.
4. Working quickly, turn out the dough and use a little heat from your hands to make it a solid ball. Pull out a large piece of plastic wrap, then flatten the dough on top of it to make a disk. Double wrap it and refrigerate for 1 hour until firm.
5. Preheat oven to 325° F. Line several cookie sheets with parchment paper or Silpats®. Roll out the dough to ¼”-inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Rotate the dough between rolls to make sure it’s not sticking. Using a 2-inch fluted or round cutter, cut out cookies & carefully place them on the cookie sheets, placing them about 1 inch apart.
6. Chill the sheets again for 15 to 20 minutes, until the dough is once again very firm. Then bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the tops of the cookies have just firmed & the bottoms are just starting to color slightly. Cool on wire racks before assembling the sandwiches.
7. Drop, pipe, or spread a teaspoon of dulce de leche into the center of each cookie, then top with another. Sift powdered sugar over the assembled sandwiches.

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These are perfect winter cookies. Filling, and sweet but not too sweet. Comforting. And like I said… easy. I know this time of year everyone is sort of taking a deep breath after the craziness of the holidays have ended. But these are definitely worth the little effort they require. Plus, who doesn’t like an excuse to have the oven on this time of year?

Okay so, on to the dulce de leche. The author recommends using an artisanal or high-end brand, herself. Like I said, I used a caramel-like substance made from boiling a can of condensed milk & it was amazing. Not everyone is as ballsy as I am, and that can be a dangerous method. So naturally use whatever your comfortable with, and whatever brand you like. Of course, you can also make your own dulce de leche (she gives a recipe- but you’ll have to buy the book for that one!). Let me also state that they’d work amazingly well with a jam or chocolate filling, as well as a chocolate coating.

And of course, the packaging has to match the spectacular nature of what it holds, right?

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My new favorite way of packaging cookies to give away is in jars. I started doing it with the first cookie recipe I made from this book, and it got such rave reviews I kept doing it. For Christmas, I gave tons of cookies, brownies & pieces of homemade fudge as gifts & most were in either tins or jars like the one above. This time, I dressed up the jar with an authentic vintage Air Mail envelope & some soft twine. I thought the name of the cookies was exotic enough that the envelope would be an appropriate label. These jars can be found in a lot of places, especially in plastic… the glass version like mine is a bit more costly usually, however occasionally you can get them for a good price. But you don’t have to just use flip-top jars. Even using quart or pint Ball® jars is an excellent idea- fill it up with cookies, put the lid on, cover the lid in a square of pretty fabric (or cupcake liner!), screw the band on, then tie on a label with some string or some ribbon & you’re good to go. They’re also great for giving chocolate dipped pretzel sticks or candied citrus peel because those items can be delicate.

So there you have it. Alfajores. Who’da thunk it?
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I made that image right there, just to brag. Can you tell I’m proud? And yes, you read that right, these jars are a Pimp That Preserve 2011 winner! Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Or in this case, champagne dinner? Whatever. So what does this mean? It means I pretty much rock the monkey. To quote the father from A Christmas Story, “It’s a major award!”

Anyway, enough bragging- let’s get to the jelly. Last year I did champagne cupcakes. They were awesome-sauce, but I hate repeats. Being that I was looking for a special New Years’ Eve snack or treat, I once again reached for that book that provided me with that deliciously amazing tea jelly; Canning For a New Generation by Liana Krissoff. In the book (which I love) she has a fantastic recipe for champagne jelly, and after the rousing success of the tea version, how could I not try it? Plus… it is New Years’ after all. What else would one have today but champagne.

The golden color was just so pretty. Actually, more like stunning. But let me make a confession- I used a dry white wine, not champagne.

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*gasp* I know, I know. I kinda lied & misled you. But since all my jars went so quickly, I plan on making it again very soon with real champagne (perhaps Cold Duck, just to get that pretty magenta color) but it doesn’t really matter either way, the flavor would be so similar at any rate. When added to the sugar, the difference probably wouldn’t even be noticeable. The wine I used was a dry, medium-sweet fruity wine called ‘Sweet Romance’ from the Mount Hope Winery in PA. The ‘Vidal Blanc’ they sell would’ve been amazing to use as well; it’s far drier & has a slight herbal taste. I used this wine that had been sitting in between the Jameson & the Stoli for over 3 years, waiting for its time to shine for a few reasons; one, back in 2008 when I bought it on a trip to PA I was more of a white wine fan- however I’ve grown to love reds & so haven’t had the urge for white in ages, two, I knew it was good wine so it wouldn’t fuck up my jelly, and finally three… this poor bottle was sitting, waiting for a special moment, for literally 27 months. Every other bottle we bought that day is long gone. It was time for this one to shine.

And shine it does. But any champagne would do smashingly, too, of course. I wouldn’t use the Cristal or even the Veuve Clicquot in this, personally, I’d save that for drinking. A cheap yet decent quality champagne is fine. The dryness is what makes the jelly so interesting, so if it’s extra dry, then great.

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By the way, I write this with the assumption that you know basic canning principles & practices. If not, please read this in its entirety before attempting it. It’s not difficult but you do need some “equipment” & knowledge before you begin.

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CHAMPAGNE JELLY

Ingredients:

• 1 (750 mℓ) bottle champagne, sparkling white or rosé or any dry-ish white wine
• 3 ¼ cups sugar
• 3 cups green apple pectin stock (see recipe here) or 1 package Certo liquid pectin
• ¼ cup strained fresh lemon juice

Directions:

1. Prepare for water bath canning: Sterilize the jars and keep them hot (in water) in the canning pot, put a small plate in the freezer, and put the flat lids in a heatproof bowl.
2. Boil the champagne/wine over high heat until reduced to about two cups, about 20 minutes.
3. Stir the pectin/pectin stock, lemon juice and sugar into the champagne. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture registers about 220° F on a candy thermometer or a small dab of it passes the freezer test (place some on the frozen plate and put back in the freezer for one minute, then remove; if the mixture wrinkles when you nudge it, it’s ready), about 25-30 minutes.
4. Ladle boiling water from the canning pot into the bowl with the lids. Using a jar lifter, remove the jars from the canning pot, carefully pouring the water from each one back into the pot, and place them upright on a clean, folded dish towel. Drain the water off the jar lids.
5. Ladle the hot jelly into the jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace at the top. Use a damp paper towel to wipe the rims of the jars, then put a flat lid & band on each jar, adjusting the band so it’s fingertip tight.
6. Return the jars to the canning pot in a canning rack, making sure the water covers the jars by at least 1 inch. Bring to a boil, and boil for 5 minutes to process. Remove the jars to the folded towel and do not disturb for 12 hours, except to check the seal after one hour by pressing down on the center of each lid; if it can be pushed down it hasn’t sealed, and must be refrigerated immediately. After 12 hours, label sealed jars & store.

After Pimp That Preserves, I find myself dressing my jars up in appropriate garb more often now. I think it’s very cute, plus you never know when someone will need to receive a jar.. & it’s nice to get something that looks as special as it tastes. I entered this lovely photoset in that contest back in early December. And uh, like I may have mentioned, I WON.

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I bought a gold wire-edged ribbon with sparkles that I thought embodied not only champagne but New Year’s. I just cut a length of it for each jar, gathered & stitched it together with a few tiny stitches, then I pinned or sewed on a specific little charm or trinket. The snowflake is a brooch, the recipient can remove it & wear it. The other sparkly one is a charm that can be removed & worn on a necklace (& it’s not as pink as it looks in the bottom picture, it’s bright & clear, like in the first). The little champagne bottle is a cupcake topper. I sent my mother’s friend Mara the snowflake jar with instructions that once the jar is opened, she can wear the brooch. I think that sorta thing is nice. Ultra-personal. Of course I had to label them in style too.

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It did in fact make 5 half-pint jars, but I kept two plain for my own use & decorated the rest for giving (& photographing). I don’t need to dress up my own jars. Sitting in my pantry they don’t get many flashbulbs going off. I’d rather make ‘em fancy when they’re going to a good home. I did end up sending one of the plain jars to Heather, so now I have just one extra jar left. And I think my friend Miss Melanie will end up with that one, since she seemed so enthused about it on Facebook. So my last, lonely little bottle of white wine from Pennsylvania ended up in New York, not to mention Florida & Texas reincarnated (& loved) as a delicious jelly. Talk about a “new start.”

I’ll be honest: 2011 sucked in a lot of ways, & I’m happy to bid her a not-so-fond farewell. But Cupcake Rehab has grown a lot this year, as have I, & that’s never a bad thing. I lost important people to me, but gained some. I expanded my knowledge in many areas, formed some new skills. It was a bittersweet year in too many ways to count. So many people have passed away, so many babies born. But new opportunities & new reasons for happiness are bound to come with the new year & therefore new reasons to be optimistic. That’s the best part- the mistakes & sorrows of last year are just that, & while they never really disappear, there’s hope for this new clean slate we’ve been given. I’m going to try & be more forgiving this year, however I’ll certainly not be a doormat. Life is short, why hold grudges or waste time or negative emotions or negative people? It’s a lot for me to strive for, I know that. Especially since I hate everyone (almost). But like I said… clean slate. One thing I will not be doing is cleaning up my potty mouth. I like my truck driver vocabulary. But I am going to make a conscious effort to weed out the unnecessary items & people in my life in 2012 and focus on only the necessary. Good riddance, ’11, here’s hoping 2012 is a far better- and healthier- year for all!

Happy New Year to all my readers, the old & loyal and the new & hopefully just as loyal alike. I really value every reader & commenter & “fan”; & I’ll continue to work very hard to make sure that you’re all still interested & not bored in the new year. Now let’s ring in this new year & enjoy some hooch like these two lovebirds… I’ll see you next year.

Photo: Mission Pie, San Francisco; credit: Dave Cook, Flickr

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So back before Thanksgiving, when I found out what the plans were/whose house it would be at & I was figuring out what to make & bring, I had a plan. My plan was that I was going to make two pies, hence the title of the post. Why was I going to make two pies, you ask? Well, a few reasons. One- I had recently acquired two new pie plates; one gorgeous Lola-pink 9″ pie plate from my wonderful friend Brianne (who sells Longaberger, the makers of the aforementioned pie plate which is no longer available in pink) and another beautiful eggplant-colored pie plate from Michael’s that I got for an obscenely low price. So low I won’t even tell you because you’ll hate me. But you see, the pink pie plate was important. It was especially important that I show it off properly. I ordered this cute little basketweave pink pie plate back in like, May or June, and I waited for it until October 30th… patiently. It was limited edition, immediately retired, the shipment was delayed & it was back-ordered & whatever else. And then it finally came & Brianne ever-so-kindly delivered it to me during a time when she was a bit otherwise preoccupied (her new house in Connecticut that her, her husband, her 3-year-old & her almost 2 month old newborn baby had literally just moved into was slammed by the freak October snowstorm & lost power for days). So this plate was a major thing for me. The other pie plate is lovely, and is a gorgeous color with a fluted ruffly edge, but it doesn’t match Lola or my website, so it doesn’t have as much significance. Anything that matches Lola is a must with me. My kitchen is not a masculine place, hah. Plus, being it was part of their breast cancer initiative, Horizon of Hope, & my mom is a survivor, the pink color has double significance.

Reason two for the pie dramatics: I like pie- not really fruit pies, but chocolate, Shoo-fly or creamy ones; like coconut cream, chocolate cream, etc. Those are the kinda pies I can get diggity down with. Just me, a pie, a fork & some whipped cream. And reason three? Because I have a ton of pie recipes that I’ve never made. For example, Nigella Lawson’s Girdlebuster Pie. Tell me you aren’t intrigued by the title alone! And there are tons more, some of which are very traditional, some not so much, and others slightly too complicated for an everyday pie. But nonetheless, I had these two pretty little pie plates & I so desperately wanted to use them. That said, I had all intentions of making two pies for Thanksgiving. But alas I did not. And why not? Because this one pie that I tested out in the few days before turkey day was so simple yet so amazing I couldn’t bear to make another. What was it? Maple syrup pie. MAPLE. SYRUP. PIE. Read it again: maple syrup pie. Thanks to that book by Patty Pinner that it came from, my pie-making life was changed. Seriously. This pie made me rethink my non-pie-making self. It took no time at all and yet there it was, smelling all fantastic &… maple-y. Like a Shoo-fly pie but maple. I’ve made some things from the book before (namely a lemon ice cream that was so creamy & delicious it was like frozen lemony perfection) but this is just… so crazily simple & yet so delicious. I just don’t even know. But… *sigh* …unfortunately, the pie didn’t photograph well, and didn’t last very long either, admittedly. It did taste like sticky, sweet, gooey heaven on a plate.

However… it just didn’t look very good in pictures. Actually it looked downright awful; kinda poo-ish. And I used the eggplant colored pie plate, so it was all kind of dark. If you’re a blogger who takes pictures of food you know things like shoo-fly pie, pecan pie, chocolate frosting & chocolate cookies are the hardest things to photograph well. Especially in bad lighting, and my kitchen sadly has horrid lighting. And on top of that, like I said, it definitely didn’t last long enough for me to attempt another photo shoot in better light. So I was on to my next (& newer) plan: another pie. I didn’t know what kind, yet, but I just knew I’d have to use these pie plates for something photogenic & post-able!

And so Halloween came & went. Then I made the maple syrup pie, then Thanksgiving passed, & no more pie. Two batches of cupcakes instead. Then it started to inch closer to Christmas, and still no pie. Cupcakes, gingerbread cookies, brownies, etc… but I still hadn’t found the perfect pie. I kinda stopped looking for one in all the holiday hubbub. The pie plates looked more & more lonely every day. And then… crustless cranberry pie came into my life.

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They say you find it when you’re not looking. Whatever “it” is.

See back before Christmas, Rosella, a friend of mine who I’ve known since freshman year of high school (which is far longer ago than I’d like to admit) had me & my mother over for coffee with her & her mom (& Rosella’s one year old baby, Giovanna). I know Rosella so long I remember when her niece was Giovanna’s age. I know her from back when we wore spike bracelets to school, when she dyed her hair green in her mom’s white bathroom sink & we “borrowed” her parents’ Infiniti to go joyriding a few too many times. I could mortify us both by posting a picture of us way back then but I won’t. And anyway, we’re talking about pie. So we all got together & Rosella served this crustless cranberry pie. Wow. SOLD. And I don’t even like cranberry. Forreals. Cranberry, almond, streusel… it was like a berry crumble-type thing. Like a coffee cake. Made in a pie plate. And it was so good. So that night I asked her for the recipe & she told me it was from AllRecipes.com! So I downloaded the app immediately. My faith in recipe websites has been restored.

CRUSTLESS CRANBERRY PIE (courtesy of Jean at All Recipes, with alterations)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons set aside for topping
• 1 cup white sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup whole fresh cranberries (or whole frozen)
• ½ cup sliced almonds, divided, half set aside for topping
• ⅓ cup brown sugar
• ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ cup butter, melted, plus 2 tablespoons butter just softened, set aside for topping
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon almond extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° degrees F. Grease one 9″-inch pie pan (or 8″ x 8″ glass baking dish).
2. Combine the 1 cup flour, white sugar, cinnamon and salt. Stir in the cranberries and half the almonds, and toss to coat. Stir in the ½ cup melted butter, beaten eggs, vanilla and almond extracts. If you are using frozen cranberries, the mixture will be very thick. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.
3. In a small bowl, mix the 2 tablespoons flour, 2 tablespoons softened butter, brown sugar & ¼ cup almonds together to make a streusel-like topping. Sprinkle mixture on top of pie.
4. Bake at 350° degrees F for 40 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted near the center comes out clean.

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This would be great with fresh blueberries in the summer, too. Or raspberries, or blackberries, or even chopped strawberries… with a bit of lemon zest. Totally adaptable. The original recipe calls for walnuts, but I took the advice of the commenters & went with almonds since that’s what Rosella did with her version, so if you prefer walnuts then that’s okay too. It’d probably be great in any capacity. I can even see it with a spoonful of fresh berry jam on it, or vanilla ice cream. Served warm or room temperature, with coffee, tea or cranberry ginger ale, it’s fantastic any way you like it. I scaled back the amount of cranberries from two cups to one, because I felt like one cup was just fine. Feel free to add the full two cups. But even if you don’t, and you end up with a practically full bag of cranberries, you can make tons of other neat cranberry stuff- amaretto cranberry sauce, pomegranate cranberry sauce, cranberry muffins (this recipe would work excellently in muffin form), cranberry bliss bars, etc. Or even make a second pie. I mean, this is a pie you can have for breakfast.

Photo: Lauretta Jean’s + Café Vélo, Portland; credit: Leela Cyd Ross

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It’s true- I had it for breakfast, around 10 a.m., that day at Rosella’s mom’s house. It’s a dessert, it’s a breakfast, it’s a pie, it’s a cake. It’s everything. So really, where have you been all my life, crustless cranberry pie? The dish that made me like cranberries. Sorta. I’m still not big on them, but this pie definitely made me rethink my almost 30-year long cranberry strike. I made it for my “second Christmas” yesterday & it was a massive hit. And in my beautiful pink pie plate! Squee. Best of all? This one was extremely photogenic. And I’m no master pie-maker, I’m totally more a cake-girl than anything else, but because this is more like a coffee cake you don’t have to be a master pie-maker! No pesky crust, no bothersome filling. Easy as 1-2-3. You don’t even have to make it in a pie plate. But when you have such a pretty one like I do, why not?

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Clearly the mathematical reference in the title is purely for satirical reasons. I failed math one semester in high school, it shames me to say. I got a whopping 35 on one of my math regents. I’m not bragging, and I am certainly not proud of it. I can’t help it though, I use the other side of my brain. I got a 90 on my History Regents, an 88 on Chemistry and a 92 on English. But you give me a math equation involving numbers & my mind shuts off. This doesn’t make baking difficult at all, though, because of a bevy of apps that provide me with the exact measurements & equivalents that I need, if I should need them (most of them I have memorized by now). I never thought I’d say it but my iPhone has made my life considerably easier, thank you Jay. So yes, I know the term 2πr, and that it means that the radius squared multiplied by pi (π) or 3.14 or ²²⁄₇, equals the circumference of a circle. However that’s where my knowledge ends. Don’t even ask about my problems with the Pythagorean Theorem. I was pretty decent at truth tables but linear pairs? Forget it. Yes, I pity my future children too; they will be seeking math homework help from the internet. Or iPad apps. But that’s okay, because they will be so insanely excellent in History & English they’ll really frighten you. As well as correct your grammar.

So really, I did make two pies. Just not at the same time, and nowhere near the same type. Pie(s) are squared.

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Sometimes I just need to make a logo, even if it’s for nothing. Sorry. Involuntary graphic-designer twitch.

Anyway I’ve been getting a lot of love from Pinterest, so I want to say hi & thanks! Tons of you have been clicking through from there- so I hope you’re liking what you see, and keep coming back. I’ve also been getting a lot of Christmas goodies via snail mail lately. I guess that means I’ve been a good girl this year? I think I have been, but I guess every naughty person says that, right? Anyway this particular gift (& inspiration) is in the form of a Christmas table runner my amazingly-talented-with-a-needle-&-thread Californian friend Yoyo made for me. A custom made table runner. How friggin’ lucky am I?

Crazy lucky. And look! It has cupcakes on it!

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A Christmas table runner with pink candy stripes & cupcakes… I can’t even deal with the cuteness. It’s just the best, and the color scheme & patterns match almost perfectly with all my grandma’s vintage Christmas stuff. The pinks & greens & lighter than usual Christmas colors just went so amazing with the white plastic trees & retro Christmas ball candle holders. And as usual, it all inspired me to make cupcakes that went with it!

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And yes, they’re little cuppy cake trees. I seem to be all about the trees this year, eh? Now that I look at them, though, they’d be great for a little girl’s birthday too. The pastel colors are so sweet. They almost melt my cold heart.

Whoops, that tree to the right is leaning a bit!

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I took purposely washed-out vintagey kind of photos of them, & used my grandma’s vintage jadeite plates for a more 1950′s-ish presentation. I think it worked, don’t you? Those salt & pepper shakers are from Santa’s Village in Jefferson, NH. If you’ve never been, you should go!

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The cupcakes are just a plain vanilla cake, with vanilla flavored pastel green-tinted buttercream. As far as the frosting on the cakes, I used a large star tip to create that look. If you make 12 cupcakes, make enough frosting for 24 cupcakes; the trees need to be frosted twice as high as normal. The color is Wilton icing color in Leaf Green (only a drop!). Candy pearls are by Wilton, pink liners, larger pink candy ‘baubles’ (candy-coated chocolate) & pink candy pearls from Sweet Cuppin Cakes Bakery & Cupcakery Supplies. Green sanding sugar was bought at Target ages ago, but you can get it anywhere. And of course- runner by Topstitch! If you’re in the market for awesomesauce handmade items, check out Yoyo’s blog & her store. She’s always updating it with new material. And I’m sure for the right price she’ll do custom items for you, too, so just ask.

Christmas is getting closer & closer. Are you all ready?

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When I was little, my Aunt Winnie bought me a book called the A Perfectly Irregular Christmas Tree. It told the story of a little tree that grew to become the tall, beautifully lit Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, and at the back of the book, it told the story of the origins of the tradition. Ever since then, I’ve been totally in love with the concept. Not that I wasn’t before that… but it wasn’t until that book that I really even thought about it. It was sort of like I just assumed the tree was always there or something. I know, silly, but come on, I was like, what, 7 years old?

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Basically there’s a very important history behind the origins of that big ol’ tree, and not many people know it.

Although the official Christmas tree tradition at Rockefeller Center began in 1933 (the year the 30 Rockefeller Plaza opened), the unofficial tradition began during the Depression-era construction of Rockefeller Center, when workers decorated a smaller 20 feet (6.1 m) balsam fir tree with “strings of cranberries, garlands of paper, and even a few tin cans” on Christmas Eve (December 24, 1931), as recounted by Daniel Okrent in his history of Rockefeller Center.^[10] Some accounts have the tree decorated with the tin foil ends of blasting caps. There was no Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 1932.

The decorated Christmas tree remains lit at Rockefeller Center until the week after New Year’s Day, when it is removed and recycled for a variety of uses. In 2007, the tree went “green,” employing LED lights.^[11] After being taken down, the tree was used to furnish lumber for Habitat for Humanity house construction.^[12]

Anyway, in addition to all that New Yorker-ish stuff about me, I also love to bake, as is evidenced by this blog. And occasionally I get an urge to do so randomly, or I get inspired by something. So it happened one night that I wanted to make some frosted (or iced?) cookies, and I got the idea that they just had to be gingerbread. I had a few recipes already, stashed in cookbooks or ripped from magazines, most of which were supposedly awesome, but I thought I’d check Twitter & see if anyone had any they really liked. Gabrielle from The Punk Housewife responded super quick with a vegan version from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero.

Now, I’m not vegan. I’ve made awesome vegan cupcakes before, and even made a dip entirely with vegan-friendly cheese & other non-dairy products (which I can’t say I’d do again, really). I have no problems with vegans or anything, but I myself can’t do it. I have a hot, dirty love affair with butter & cheese… & I like it. So I don’t usually have things like soy milk on hand, & if I’m going to bake something I’m usually going to go “whole hog” so to speak. However, by sending me that recipe she gave me a sort of kick in the pants to use that recipe as inspiration & then build on it with a few non-vegan tweaks. Sure, I could’ve just made it by substituting the soy milk with regular, but where’s the fun in that?! Basically, it forced my hand to do my own little gingerbread cookie thang. And that’s just what I did. So thank you, Gabrielle! I totally de-veganized that puppy. I made up my own little gingerbread cookie recipe as I went along, and then what did I do with that dough? I cut out little trees, as my homage to the big 74-foot guy in Rockefeller Center who just so happened to be having a little party & “lighting” in his honor last week. Of course mine weren’t lit- but they were all iced up with some royal icing & sprinkles.

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Yeah, at this time of year EVERYONE makes cookies, especially gingerbread, & everyone seems to be in on the “fancy royal icing decorating” craze now as well. But I’m not aiming to be like everyone else, so hopefully mine are not only perfectly imperfect (more on that in a bit), but unique.

GINGERBREAD COOKIES CUPCAKE REHAB-STYLE

Ingredients:

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon Kosher salt
• 2 ½ teaspoons ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 egg
• ½ cup molasses (I personally like Brer Rabbit full flavor, even though that & Grandma’s are now owned by the same company)

Directions:

1. Unroll a fairly large piece of plastic wrap & sprinkle lightly with flour. Set aside.
2. Cream the butter & sugar until light & fluffy. Mix flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice & ginger together in a medium bowl; set aside.
3. Add egg & molasses one at a time to butter/sugar mixture, beating after each until combined.
4. Add flour mixture gradually, until a sticky dough forms. Form dough into a ball the best you can & place on plastic wrap, rolling it up tightly. Chill for anywhere from 1 hour to overnight (but no longer than that).
5. Remove dough from fridge & if too firm, let sit for 20-25 minutes before rolling out. The dough will be quite sticky, so have flour on hand. Preheat oven to 350° degrees F, meanwhile roll out onto lightly floured surface to about ¼ – ½” thick. Using cookie cutters, cut out shapes & using a thin spatula, carefully place onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (they will be very soft!!! BE CAREFUL HERE). Re-roll the scraps left over until you haven’t got enough left to use, then just lay the pieces on the sheet (they make for nice nibbles later while you’re decorating your cookies).
6. Bake for 7-8 minutes. Remove from oven & allow to cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, then move to a wire rack to cool completely.

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ROYAL ICING

Ingredients:

• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 4 tablespoons milk or water
• 4 tablespoons meringue powder

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a medium bowl. If too thick, add more liquid, if too thin, add more sugar. Add food coloring as desired. Ta-da!

There are tons of different recipes for royal icing- some include pasteurized egg whites, some using regular old egg whites, some meringue powder, some just cream of tartar. Any of them work just fine as long as they’re the right consistency for what you’re using it for; i.e. outlines, flooding, etc. This particular recipe can be halved, quartered, doubled, tripled, etc. to suit your needs.

So once these babies are 100% cool, you can decorate them all fancy-like using that royal icing there. I obviously made little trees, so I decorated them like trees (duh). You can make anything from snowflakes to bells to holly to whatever. And then just decorate them using the icing & top it with quins, jimmies, sanding sugar, dragees- anything! The icing part can be a bit tricky if you’re not used to it. I’ve been icing cookies with royal icing since my mom made gingerbread & sugar cookies when I was a kid & let me decorate them. Now, I’m far from an expert on this, my main decorating niche lies within the cupcake sphere, so I’ll leave the explanation of how to decorate/frost cookies like a pro to Marian at Sweetopia who really is the expert. She not only does it way better than I do, but her explanation of how to decorate the cookies is probably way better than I could write. Not that mine came out terrible… I mean they’re cute, fairly neat & most importantly they taste great. So they’re not perfect, they’re ‘perfectly irregular’; like the tree in the book. But thats totally cool with me. I’m not perfect either. What in the world is perfect, exactly?

Well, cookies & tea are pretty damn close.

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Amazing. There is nothing, NOTHING like a good cookie. I have to say I really, really loved these. I had like 8 of these the first night, with a cup of Licorice Spice tea. So after that one batch of trees were such a success, the next night I made some little Christmas wreaths. I used green royal icing this time, along with red tie-dyed looking marzipan for the bows, and some round pink sprinkles in different sizes that Lyns sent me back in October. I wasn’t 100% pleased with how these came out though. I think I like the trees better. Oh well. It was a cute concept, poor execution.

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It was almost disgusting how good they were. The dough is very soft. VERY. Which admittedly can make it very hard to work with. It will definitely be a tricky dough, but the flavor is so amazing & perfect, and the texture is also so amazing & perfect, it’s well worth it. Just right for a cold December night while looking at how pretty your tree looks under a blanket on the couch. The best chewy gingerbread cookie I’ve had in a while; not hard as a rock & teeth-breaking, not flavorless nor overpowering. They’re just the right amount of soft, sweet & spicy.

But at this time of year, you can’t keep ‘em all to yourself. Or rather you can… at the risk of being compared to Ebenezer Scrooge. I prefer to share the wealth (to an extent). I put them in a little box (originally a cupcake box, I just removed the insert) courtesy of Bake-A-Box that was perfect for showing them off. And how cute is that gingerbread ornament?

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As if you haven’t noticed, I’ve been including vintage postcards at the bottom of all my holiday posts. This one is just so pretty I had to share it, plus it’s eerily perfectly appropriate for this post; it’s a big, beautiful tree & the baubles on it look just like the ones on my cookie wreaths.

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So one day back in August I went to meet my friend Brianne for coffee at Starbucks, and while I was gone, my mother was busy sorting through some of my grandmother’s things. She opened a drawer and underneath a stack of miscellaneous papers, found a Family Circle magazine from December 1963. In almost perfect condition, mind you.

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As a matter of fact, some magazines I subscribe to currently arrive at my house in worse shape than this magazine is in. Of course, my mother texted me, knowing I’d love it & appreciate it more than most. I have no idea why my Nana saved it- there aren’t any pages folded over, or recipes circled. There aren’t any notations made and just flipping through it I didn’t see anything that I’d say was definitely something she’d have saved it for. But I’m certainly glad she did.

One of the first things I thought of when my mother gave it to me was “HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME!” I love vintage everything & anything, from pretty much any time period (except the 1970′s- that was just a dreadful time, for clothes, music, everything). The color of the magazine was still so bright, it was almost as if it was printed this month. And the ads! I felt like I was getting a firsthand lesson in Don Draper‘s Mad Men school of advertising. Amazing.

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The second thing that came to mind (other than, “They spell cookie with a ‘y’?”) was that nothing in this world is in fact ever “new.” The funny thing is that so much of the crafts or recipes in this magazine are just slightly different versions of things that I’ve seen very recently in not just Family Circle, but Better Homes & Gardens and also in Martha Stewart‘s Living. Like those wreaths! Hello, Martha, I see you taking those ideas from 1963!

And finally the third thing I thought was, “I wonder if there are any interesting recipes?” I knew that I wouldn’t be making anything from it for a few months, so after looking through it I put it aside in a safe place and waited until Christmas was closer before taking it out again. And whaddaya know… that’s NOW! I unearthed it once again & like I said a few days ago, I was immensely inspired by the awesome retro-ness of it. I decided I’d make one of the cookie recipes, and because they’ve always given me shit… I settled on their version of thumbprint cookies, using my homemade strawberry jam, among others, as the fillings.

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So may I present to you the 1963 Family Circle version of ‘thumbprint cookies’… Ring-A-Lings!

RING-A-LINGS (from December 1963 Family Circle, adapted slightly by yours truly)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sifted flour
• dash of salt
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans*
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• assorted jams & jellies of your liking

Directions:

1. Sift flour and salt onto waxed paper or foil.
2. Cream butter and sugar until well-blended in a medium sized bowl; stir in dry ingredients, half at a time, blending well to make a soft dough; stir in pecans and vanilla. Chill several hours, overnight, or until firm enough to handle.
3. Roll dough, a teaspoonful at a time, into marble-size balls between palms of hands; place 2″ inches apart on greased cookie sheets or cookie sheets covered in parchment.
4. Make a hollow in the center of each with thumb or end of a wooden spoon; fill with about ½ teaspoon jelly/jam. Bake in a slow oven (300°) for 20 minutes, or until they’re starting to turn very slightly golden but not totally. Remove from cookie sheets and cool completely on wire racks.

*I omitted this ingredient completely

To quote Family Circle:

Here’s another buttery-good cooky that can be made as much as two weeks ahead. To store, layer with waxed paper or transparent wrap between; cover.

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Side note: if you’re going to be making cookies, get cooling racks. Do not let your cookies cool on the pan! They will get mushy on the bottom & the texture will change. You need that air circulation to properly cool them. Of course, it’s recommended for cupcakes & cakes too, but I find it’s especially important with cookies.

Anyway re: the recipe, I changed a few things, one being the ingredient list included not unsalted butter but “butter or margarine.” So I changed it to what I thought was better baking-wise & flavor-wise. Also, they only mentioned a greased cookie sheet, but I prefer to use parchment myself, so I added that. I like my baking sheets to stay clean & my cookies to not stick, so parchment paper is my BFF. I’d also chill my dough for a bit next time before using, just so they kept a nicer shape. Last but not least… I’d make my indents or “thumbprints” bigger & deeper next time; the wooden spoon trick I included above was what I did, and while it was one I’d read in quite a few cookbooks, aesthetically, the cookie to filling ratio isn’t what I’d like. *big, long, dramatic sigh*

On that note, I will state here for the record that thumbprint cookies are not my jam (pun intended). I can’t quite get them to look as perfect as I’d like, ever. That’s what I meant by they give me shit. I can make the most complicated cake or cookie with no problem, but give me something simple & I can’t get it right. However in the interest of 1960′s baking research, I plodded on ahead & finished the batch instead of getting irritated & stopping. I also experimented with a variety of my homemade jams & jellies as filling; the best was the strawberry jam by far. Fig jam just melted into nothing, the cherry preserves pretty much absorbed itself into the cookie like a dark red stain leaving just a sad lump of cherry and the tea jelly stayed really nicely in shape, but the color was kinda meh. I didn’t even photograph them because they weren’t worth it. I didn’t want to open more jars unnecessarily but I was indeed curious about using my mint jelly & also perhaps making some lemon curd & using that. Next time! The strawberry jam & mint jelly would’ve looked so cute. And next time, I WILL make them look perfect. If it kills me. Not to get all Black Swan about it but seriously. It’s frustrating.

Although despite that- they were amazing! Everyone loved them. Of course I had to wrap ‘em up in my little jars to give away!

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I used an old Christmas stocking pin & some pretty sheer green ribbon & it’s amazing how just doing that can dress up any old jar & make it look so cute. Plus, using old pins or brooches is a great idea because long after the cookies are gone, the recipient can wear it. Or at least see it & think of you & your delicious cookies! Another awesome idea is hanging an ornament off of the jar, so they can use it on their tree after the jar is empty.

And on that note… let the holiday baking begin!

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So am I going bananas? Not really. Well, kinda. I guess I’m sorta going bananas. Between the holidays, blogging & getting myself together “in real life” I’m kinda pulled in a million directions lately. And truth be told, it’d be nice if this horrendous cold/flu/whatever it is I have went away for good, & took the lingering cough/malaise with it. Not only all that- but where has the time gone?! I feel like Sleeping Beauty; as if I fell asleep in July, after canning fresh fruit & veggies & sweating my ass off… & woke up to Thanksgiving being over & the temperature dipping down to the 30′s at night. Strange. But my saving grace in life is staying busy, enjoying the little things & the sad truth that food rules my life; put those together & no matter what happens you’ve got a broad who’s cookin’ something up. So this blog will never see a lull in posts, hah.

And of course, I like to try unique things. And banana jam sounded pretty unique. Not only that, but bananas are good for ya (thanks, Wikipedia!):

Bananas are an excellent source of vitamin B6 and contain moderate amounts of vitamin C, manganese and potassium.

Along with other fruits and vegetables, consumption of bananas may be associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer and in women, breast cancer and renal cell carcinoma.

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This particular recipe was something I stumbled on coincidentally after realizing my bananas had once again turned dark brown & spotty. My mind started to click through recipe ideas. See, I hate throwing good food or fruit away, especially when it still has delicious potential. Yet I didn’t feel like banana bread, I couldn’t even fathom banana ice cream & I was too tired for making muffins, so luckily this recipe found its way onto my laptop screen one dark, chilly, quite frozen evening at about 11 p.m. However, I didn’t actually open it to use it until the next day. In case you’re wondering, that’s Pepperidge Farm cinnamon swirl bread, toasted, accompanying it. But I guarantee you it will be equally stellar on whole wheat or white toast, pancakes, or vanilla ice cream. Or now that I think about it, bran muffins, too… or a spoonful on top of oatmeal.

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BANANA BROWN SUGAR BUTTER/JAM (adapted very slightly from Neo-Homesteading)

Makes 1 8-oz. jar

Ingredients:

• 2 bananas, the riper the better
• ½ cup dark brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 4 tablespoons butter
• ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Directions:

1. In a small pot combine banana, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, lime juice and butter.
2. Whisk over medium heat for 5-8 minutes or until the sugar has dissolved and the the banana has softened. Adjust the heat as necessary to prevent burning. Using the whisk thoroughly smoosh the banana.
3. Once the mixture is smooth-ish, you are simply thickening without burning. The mixture will bubble 3-4 minutes over medium heat and it should be about ready at this stage. Refrigerate and use within one to two weeks.

Note: I did indeed say this recipe makes ONE 8-ounce jar. You may halve it to make a 4-ounce jar, or double it, but being I’ve done neither I can’t vouch.

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AMAZEBALLS. Super rich, buttery & caramel-y ’cause of the brown sugar. Holy crap. If you like bananas, this is a must-make for you. The only downside? Banana can’t be canned safely (unless you’ve got a pressure canner), so it has to be eaten pretty quick. But if you make a small batch, 4-8 ounces, that should be fine. Especially for a brunch date or something, where more than just one person will be having it. Maybe for a Christmas morning brunch, maybe even for an afternoon tea. Speaking of Christmas, it seems it’ll be here before we know it! Jeez, seriously, is it just me or does it seem like just last week it was June?

This has a very home-y flavor, sweet & kinda rustic. Reminds me of a fall morning, a fireplace going at a nice blaze & old family photos.

t…

That photo is so important to me because it’s the only photo that I have of my great-grandmother as a young woman. She’s all the way on the right, holding my grandmother in her lap, and the woman next to her is my great-great-grandmother. I’m lucky to have pictures like this, and I know that. This time of year especially it’s important to remember family & the generations before you, even if it’s only by doing a holiday tradition that’s been passed down through the years. As my Christmas tree goes up this week, & I start to put up my lights & garlands, I’m struck by that. How each generation of my family has done the same thing before me. I can trace parts of my family back to the 1100′s & that’s the one thing that can humanize them & make them relatable to me when they’re just names/dates on paper- that they all celebrated Christmas, albeit in very different ways, & loved their families. So time goes on and the generations go on… and at some point, we’re all just special, cherished photographs on a wall.

Well that was fucking cheerful. Sorry. Have some banana jam & you’ll cheer right up. Anyway, like I said- I personally can’t believe it’s almost December, let alone almost 2012, can you?

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So, I bought these really cute fall leaf sugar decorations & I wanted to use them desperately, and what else would I use them on but cupcakes!? Cute little fall cupcakes that are dark chocolate cupcakes, spiced with cinnamon & cayenne pepper topped with brown butter frosting. Simple, but let’s be honest, I just made them to use the little leaves. Yes, I made cupcakes just to use decorations I bought.

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But in all fairness, it’s fall! I was so inspired by the fall colors in the table runner & the icing leaves, not to mention the gorgeous fall leaves outside my window.

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So I had to. I really did. Despite the fact that I’ve been baking so much lately (& cooking) that I think by December 1st, Jay will have to roll me down the stairs & into the car… or possibly just roll me down the street like a not-as-blue-but-just-as-round-Violet Beauregarde. Yeah. Despite that, I had to make them. And of course, I had to do the brown butter thing. Jay’s leaving tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. for San Antonio, Texas. He doesn’t get any cupcakes as punishment for leaving me & going off to do cool stuff without me. Alas, someone has to do the dirty work around here- baking, cooking, etc. We can’t all be rock stars; some of us have to rock out the kitchen instead of the stage. At least he’ll be home by Thursday!

What was I saying? Brown butter, that’s right. Brown butter is so amazing. If you’ve never had it, you need to make it immediately. I’m not kidding. It’s a game changer; a sweet, caramel-y, soft, kind of burnt taste that is sublime in frosting. You’ll want to frost every cupcake you make with it. Great with caramel, vanilla, chocolate, spice cake, malted milk cake, apple cake, just about anything/everything. It’s basically perfect. I’ve used it before on cream soda cupcakes & that was heavenly.

DARK CHOCOLATE SPICE CUPCAKES

Makes 12 cupcakes

Get these ingredients:

• ¼ cup Hershey’s® Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder (or another dark cocoa powder of your choice)
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ⅔ cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup whole milk
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Then you should:

1. Preheat oven to 350º degrees F. Line a 12-count cupcake tin with cupcake liners.
2. Sift together cocoa powder, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, flour, salt and baking powder. In another bowl whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk and vegetable oil. Gradually whisk flour mixture into sugar mixture. Mix until thoroughly incorporated.
3. Fill cupcake liners ⅔ full. Bake in preheated oven for 12 – 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
4. Allow to cool for several minutes in the cupcake pan, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely. Frost only when completely cool.

BROWN BUTTER FROSTING

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 4 cups powdered or confectioner’s sugar
• 2-4 tablespoons half-and-half
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• dash of salt

Directions:

1. For brown butter, in saucepan heat ½ cup butter over medium-low heat until lightly browned, about 8 minutes; cool thoroughly. Using a fine mesh sieve, strain the butter so that any large burned fat solids aren’t included in the frosting. Fine specks are expected & totally fine, though.
2. In bowl, beat the other ½ cup softened butter with mixer on medium 30 seconds. Add cooled brown butter; beat until combined.
3. Add powdered sugar, vanilla, and dash salt. Beat in 1 to 2 tablespoons half-and-half, use more if needed until spreadable. Use frosting immediately. If frosting begins to set up, stir in a small amount of boiling water.

Probably wasn’t a good idea to use black liners & take the pictures on a black runner, but I did like how they matched

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The ‘use immediately’ thing is 100% true. The nature of this frosting is that it sets up fairly quick. That can be a pain in the ass at times, but it’s well worth it.

I absolutely love brown butter frosting, I can’t say enough about it & I’d love it on just about any cake or cupcake or cookie. But on these it’s especially delicious. The cupcakes are like a Mexican hot chocolate-type of flavor, which I love, not to mention incredibly moist. Combine all that with the brown butter flavor & it’s just amazing… it’s so warming & fall-like. A great Thanksgiving cupcake. And don’t be scared of the cayenne! I promise you, it adds a slight warmth (or heat) but it won’t make you run for the hills. So many people are afraid of using cayenne or chili powder in their baked goods, but I’m telling you, when mixed with chocolate & cinnamon- it’s mind blowing.

And in true holiday form, as per usual, here’s the Thanksgiving tree in all her glory!

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For those of you who are unaware, my mom puts up a tree for every holiday. I post pictures of them with one of my holiday posts; it starts after Christmas with her white winter tree, then Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, etc. Most recently I posted the Halloween tree. They’re usually the same though, year to year, with just a few changes- new ornaments, perhaps some new lights or ribbon, etc. It’s a fun tradition I always look forward to.

One thing that will be different is I won’t be hosting Thanksgiving this year, so for once I won’t be doing all the cooking! I will, however, be doing the baking. I do look forward to sharing those baked goods with you next week, but in the meantime, go make these cupcakes. Seriously.

POLLY PERRY!

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Enjoy your new cookbook, Polly! I’ve sent your address to Quirk Books already!

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I received this book, The Cookiepedia, a few months ago. Quirk Books sent me a copy & it’s pretty awesome. So awesome, in fact, I’m willing to ignore that little comment about how “trendy cupcakes may come & go”… *wink* Because you see, I love me some cupcakes, I do. Hell, I named my site after ‘em. But cookies are awesome. And they remind me of being a kid. Plus, cupcakes are portable cakes, yes, but cookies are the most portable of all! They’re the über-portable treat-type thing thats easiest to bring with you anywhere you go. You can ship ‘em to somewhere like Abu Dhabi with minimal damage (for the most part) & they’re eaten in less than three bites, no napkin needed. So yah, I dig cookies.

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One of my favorite things about the book (aside from the pages & pages of delicious cookies, I mean) is this quote on one of the opening pages:

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So true. I could use a nap right now.

So in the book, Stacy really goes into detail on defining popular baking terms such as sifting, dusting, creaming, piping, etc. She also gives helpful tips on how to get the best possible results, making this book really good for beginner bakers. I don’t consider myself a beginner per se, however I really enjoyed reading it cover to cover. You can never know everything, or remember everything, & everyone can use a book filled with a few refreshers on “the basics.” The book is also, and more importantly, full of crazy-good sounding cookie recipes, from really simple ones to more exotic ones. From cornmeal cookies with rosemary to alfajores with dulce de leche filling, to green tea cookies & back to pignoli cookies. Being that it’s fall, the first cookie that jumped out at me was the frosted maple pecan cookie.

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I’m not gonna lie, any recipe that says ‘toast the nuts’ makes me giggle like a 13-year-old boy, and anything that makes me giggle is worth looking into further. Also, I might have mentioned before that Jay’s favorite cookie I ever made was the maple-iced fall leaf cookie. Well have I mentioned that he stalks me to make more of them? No? Well, he does. He drops hints, he talks about them all the time, etc, etc. If I make another kind of cookie, he gets almost offended. Same with the french toast cupcakes. If I make a chocolate cupcake, or lemon, or orange, or whatever… he pouts because it isn’t maple frosted French toast cupcake with crumbled bacon. So when I opened the book & saw these, I thought of him first. I knew he’d love them, & truth be told I haven’t baked anything for him in quite some time; rock star that he is will soon be off in Texas playing the Goregrowlers Ball so I might as well give him some homemade, home-baked goodness before he’s down there away from home, playing death metal with a bunch of sweaty men, eating (probably) fast food.

Anyway, making cookies is so much fun. I almost forgot how fun. It really is a totally different experience than cupcakes, or pie. My first attempt was a failure; I didn’t let the butter soften enough, then didn’t chill the dough enough either & so the cookies spread & were thin & crispy on the edges. Blah. My own fault, admittedly. Putting the dough in the fridge for 15 minutes on a night where it’s hot & humid isn’t smart, especially when it was supposed to have chilled for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. However they tasted amazing! Great maple flavor. So I knew I had to try again, this time the right way. Also on a drier, much cooler day (whereas my previous attempt at making them was on a day we were having a heat spell in October; an unheard of 84° degrees!) since the weather the first time didn’t help my non-chilled dough any.

Yeah, they came out amazing the second time around.

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And whattaya know, the next time I made them, it was a very, very cool day (actually it was almost freezing out by the time I turned the oven on to bake), I followed all the directions exactly (including letting the dough chill for an hour), & they were a rollicking success. There’s a time & a place to be a baking rebel… cookies aren’t that time. There are some who’ll tell you there’s no room for rebellion in baking at all, but I don’t believe that. I’ve used all-purpose instead of cake flour like it’s nothing, substituted mayonnaise for eggs & made my own buttermilk like a champ. From now on though, I’ll keep the rebel yell for cupcakes. Cookies seem to be a bit more temperamental. But that’s okay, I love them anyway. And when done right… oh boy.

Like I said- the second time around, these babies were freakin’ AWESOMESAUCE. Instead of using Stacy’s exact vanilla frosting on them, I added a smidgen of maple extract to it (hence the mauve-y brownish color to the frosting). You could also add some maple syrup to it, or just keep it vanilla. I swear, this way it really was like eating pancakes!

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Why does my handwriting always come out so bad on labels when I know they’ll be in pictures? Ugh.

Anyway, I was really pleased with these cookies, and the book, and it made more than I had anticipated. So packing some of ‘em up for Jay (he took them to band practice, and let me just say- HUGE HIT) & other lucky folk, I came across a great idea. I decided to use some of my jars to pack the cookies in. I used two of my flip-top lid jars (the ones I’ve used previously for pickles & blueberry jam) and for the third batch I used a 16 ounce wide-mouth Ball® jar. So cute. Imagine the lid covered with a square of plaid fabric, or even just the way I did it: a cute label (thanks to this post for that idea) & some twine… it’s just the cutest idea ever for sending someone home with a bunch of cookies. Way cuter than Tupperware, anyway.

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So now that I’ve shared my cookies & cookie-packaging ideas with you, I’m going to share something else: I’m giving away an actual copy of The Cookiepedia, Stacy’s book, so you can make these cookies too!

Exciting, I know. What do you have to do to win? Easy. Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite cookie of all time is. Not only that, but tell me why. Do you love gingersnaps because your grandma taught you to make them? Do you adore chocolate chip cookies because you made the Toll House kind with your mom at Christmas? Or maybe you love oatmeal cookies because they remind you of a happy moment including wacky tobaccy & your college life. Whatever it is, tell me. I’ll choose the winner via random.org one week from today. U.S. residents only, please. I know, I suck. But I’m cute.

And for bonus entries (bonus entries are not mandatory):

• Follow me on Twitter! After that, comment here telling me you’re a follower (I have to accept you, so give me some time, but you can comment after you make the request- you don’t have to wait until I accept!). Make sure you also tweet @ me telling me you commented here first.
• Then, tweet about the giveaway! Copy & paste the following (or write up your own tweet, just make sure you link back to this post)!
  

  @CupcakeRehab is giving away @TheCookiepedia by Stacy Adimando thanks to @QuirkBooks! I entered to win, so can you: http://cupcakerehab.com/2011/11/c-is-for-cookie-thats-good-enough-for-me-a-book-giveaway/

• Become a Facebook fan of Cupcake Rehab! Then come back here and comment again letting me know.
• Share this post on your Facebook page (either personal or blog, whichever) and then comment telling me you did! (This one is honor system)
• Follow Stacy herself at @TheCookiepedia… then come back here & let me know.
• Follow @quirkbooks on Twitter, then guess what? That’s right, comment here again telling me you did.
• Become a fan of Quirk Books on Facebook… and you know the drill.

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Teavana teas are the best. I am in love with them. My personal favorites (for drinking) are Cacao Mint Black, Samurai Chai Mate/White Ayurvedic Chai blend and JavaVana Mate. However I haven’t found one yet that I’m not into. My mother has a ton of them that her friend Mara (hi, Mara!) sent her in a ‘Tea Lovers’ gift set, so that’s where I go when I want to try a new flavor. Or when I want to experiment. Like, for example, what I wanted to do when I got this particular book.

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A few months ago, I ordered a book that I had been sorta lusting over for a while. It’s called Canning For a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry by Liana Krissoff/photographs by Rinne Allen. It arrived on a warm (okay- muggy, hot & slightly stifling), beautiful August day during which I had been out gardening, so I only briefly flipped through it at first. After cleaning up, coming inside & showering, I settled in with a can of ice cold Coke Zero & pored over every page. What a freakin’ gorgeous book! Filled with amazing recipes (not just canning but baking too!) and glorious photos. If you don’t have it, buy it. You won’t regret it.

One of the recipes in this book was a recipe for tea jelly. Just jelly made with tea. Well, tea, sugar, pectin and lemon juice. Sort of like an iced tea jelly, or a sweet tea jelly. I knew I had to make it. So I did. And the tea I used was Teavana’s Frutto Bianco Pearls white tea, which is described as:

Tropical fruits effortlessly complement hand-rolled, delicate white tea pearls. A blend of kiwi, coconut and candied tropical fruit bits tempt you to pull up a hammock and sip your cares away! Ingredients: white tea, apples, rose hips, lemongrass, citrus pieces, kiwi bits, coconut chips, lemon myrtle, candied pineapple & papaya.

-From Teavana.com

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I know, it sounds to die for. It is. And I thought it’d make a fantastic jelly.

The tea in the canister.

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It did indeed make a beautiful looking jelly…

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I have to say, I love all the recipes for tea-infused jellies & jams (as if you couldn’t tell?). It’s such an easy way to really make an average every day item stand out. It turns an ordinary preserve into something different, something that people can’t quite put their finger on. My family has a big history with tea; being Irish, my Nana Agnes’ side of the family drank tea like it was going out of style..I was raised on it, although coffee was a big part of life too, tea seemed to be the main component. It was always around.. black teas, green teas, herbal teas, sweetened with milk & sugar or just honey. When I was sick as a kid, my mom or nana would make me a big mug of tea with milk & sugar, and even now whenever I’m not feeling my best, I find that it’s a great cure. Tea is a huge part of my childhood memories. Now that I’m older, & my tastes have matured slightly, I like fancier stuff; but I always have a soft spot for a hot cup of black tea or English breakfast tea with milk & sugar.

So I made the jelly, labeled it, and put it aside. I sent a jar to Lyns (upon her request & also as payment for all the chutney’s she sent!) and promptly shoved my jars to the back of the line. Then recently, one Sunday morning, I was looking for another jam and found it! And I thought, “I need to make something special to serve this with.” So I took out a jar and I made some scones from the book, Regan’s Oat Scones, just specifically to have with this delicious jelly, for a brunch/lunch kinda thing.

Speaking of, you can use any tea you like, even herbal tea if you can’t tolerate caffeine, to make this jelly. Liana says she’s had excellent results with Oolong & Earl Grey, but I don’t see why you couldn’t use pretty much any kind of tea there is. Even pre-measured tea bags (although you’d typically need about 3 teabags to each tablespoon loose tea required). Trader Joe’s makes a white pomegranate tea that’d probably give lovely results, & my mother drinks a spicy vanilla chai by Bigelow that would also make a great jelly. Peppermint teas, citrus teas, musky teas. EXPERIMENT! Use a wintery blend for winter, a spring-y one for warmer weather… it’d be such a fun way to try new teas in a different way.

TEA JELLY (adapted from Liana Krisstoff’s book, Canning For a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry)

Makes 3 half-pint jars

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons loose tea leaves
• 2 ¼ cups boiling water
• ¼ cup strained fresh lemon juice
• 3 ¼ cups sugar
• 3 cups of Green Apple Pectin stock (see recipe below) or what I did- 1 package Certo liquid pectin

Directions:

1. Prepare for water bath canning: Sterilize the jars and keep them hot (in water) in the canning pot, put a small plate in the freezer, and put the flat lids in a heatproof bowl.
2. Put the tea leaves in a heatproof bowl and pour in the boiling water. Let steep for 5 minutes*, then pour through a sieve into a 6-to 8-quart saucepan.
3. Stir the pectin/pectin stock, lemon juice and sugar into the tea. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture registers about 220° F on a candy thermometer or a small dab of it passes the freezer test (place some on the frozen plate and put back in the freezer for one minute, then remove; if the mixture wrinkles when you nudge it, it’s ready), about 25-30 minutes.
4. Ladle boiling water from the canning pot into the bowl with the lids. Using a jar lifter, remove the jars from the canning pot, carefully pouring the water from each one back into the pot, and place them upright on a clean, folded dish towel. Drain the water off the jar lids.
5. Ladle the hot jelly into the jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace at the top. Use a damp paper towel to wipe the rims of the jars, then put a flat lid & band on each jar, adjusting the band so it’s fingertip tight.
6. Return the jars to the canning pot in a canning rack, making sure the water covers the jars by at least 1 inch. Bring to a boil, and boil for 5 minutes to process. Remove the jars to the folded towel and do not disturb for 12 hours, except to check the seal after one hour by pressing down on the center of each lid; if it can be pushed down it hasn’t sealed, and must be refrigerated immediately. After 12 hours, label sealed jars & store.

Instead of printing labels, I just tied some of the labels that come with the book (YES! Labels come with the book! SO CUTE!) on with some twine.

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How cute are they? Very. How awful is my handwriting? Very.

The deliciously special item I chose to make to eat it with was a scone. Not just any scone- but one made with oats, yogurt and honey (or maple syrup, but I used honey). Add the tea-infused jelly as a topping and it’s a free train ride to dreamy-town. I love scones anyway, but these are totally different than any other scones I’ve made. And with the jelly; seriously just forget it. No words. I halved this recipe because 5 eggs was a bit ridiculous at the time, although I wish I hadn’t! You can never have too many scones… especially these beautiful scones right here.

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REGAN’S OAT SCONES (from Canning For a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry)

Ingredients:

• 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup quick-cooking (not instant) oats, plus extra for sprinkling (if desired)
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
• 2 cups (4 sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced
• ½ cup yogurt
• ½ cup honey or maple syrup
• 5 large eggs
• turbinado sugar (optional, for sprinkling)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flours, oats, baking powder, sugar and salt. Using your fingertips, two knives held together, or a pastry cutter, cut in the butter until the largest pieces are the size of peas.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the yogurt, honey or maple syrup, and 4 of the eggs. Pour the mixture into the flour mixture and stir until just incorporated; do not overmix.. The dough will be somewhat sticky.
4. Turn out the dough onto a well-floured surface. Flour your hands, then pat the dough out to ¾” to 1″ inch thick. Cut into 2 ½” inch rounds and place on the prepared baking sheets. Gather up leftover dough, handling it as little as possible, and pat it out to cut more rounds. If the kitchen is warm, put the baking sheets in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to firm up, so they don’t spread too much in the oven.
5. In a small bowl whisk the remaining egg together with 2 teaspoons cold water and brush the tops of the scones with it. Sprinkle with oats or turbinado sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating and switching the pans halfway through, until deep golden brown. Remove to wire racks.
6. Serve warm or at room temperature, preferably split & spread with jam or jelly.

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I got about 19 scones using the above recipe halved & using my 3-inch biscuit cutter to make them. You may think that’s plenty, but not when there are a ton of grabby hands around asking for baked goods all the time! I also used oats & gold crystal sugar (instead of turbinado) on top. They were so amazing, I could barely stop eating them. Thankfully, they’re (slightly) healthier than most scones. Sweet, but not too sweet. They’d work beautifully alongside a savory jelly too, I bet. Like a pepper jelly that’s on the sweeter side?

As I mentioned above in the tea jelly recipe, the author Liana prefers to use a homemade pectin stock for her jellies & jams. I am not so particular, but I’ll include the directions for doing so here just in case you’re far more ambitious than I. I’m lazy, remember? But now is a great time to do this because of the crazy amount of apples available. It’s apple season, after all. Make some & stock up on it if you’re not a lazy bitch. Like me.

GREEN APPLE PECTIN STOCK (also from Canning For a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry)

Makes 3 cups

Ingredients:

• 3 pounds Granny Smith apples

Directions:

1. Cut the apples into eighths, removing the stems, and put the apples- peels, cores, seeds & all- in a 6-to 8-quart saucepan. Add 6 cups water, cover, and bring to a boil over high heat. Boil, stirring occasionally, until the apples are completely broken down and the peels have separated from the pulp, 30-40 minutes.
2. Set a very large, very fine mesh sieve (or jelly bag) over a deep bowl or pot. Pour the apples and their juice into the sieve and let drain for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally but not pressing down too hard on the solids; discard the solids. You should have about 5 ½ cups juice.
3. Rinse the saucepan and pour in the apple juice. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until the juice is reduced to about 3 cups (pour into a large heatproof measuring cup to check it), about 20 minutes.
4. Transfer to a clean container and store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, or in the freezer for several months.

Lyns had tried the jar I sent her long before I remembered mine, and she said it was amazing- I have to agree. This tea made a spectacular jelly! It also just goes to show you that you don’t have to make the pectin stock to get a delicious jelly. Of course, I’m sure it feels slightly more rewarding if you do. But lazy bitches unite- we don’t need no stinking apple stock. We have modern convenience at our fingertips.

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And the scones, they are phenomenal. Together, they’d be a great pair on Thanksgiving morning for breakfast. They have a sweet/not sweet borderline flavor that makes them more biscuit-y & perfect for accompanying a hearty bacon & eggs breakfast too. Also would be excellent on a cold winter’s night, right before bed. I had mine warm, and I definitely think they’re best eaten that way. Warm yours up if you’re eating them the next day, etc, or even toast them.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, it’s almost that time! With each post, as I did for Halloween, I’m going to post a vintage or retro postcard, just because I like ‘em.

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Each year, this particular time of the season is my favorite. I love fall weather, when it’s cool but not too cold yet (well, usually, this year we had snow before Halloween), the leaves are changing (again, usually, not so much this year), and of course Halloween & Dia de Los Muertos. The Mexican Day of the Dead has always been a holiday I’ve appreciated. The concept of it is one I think more Americans should embrace.

Dia de los Muertos is a traditional Meso-American holiday dedicated to the ancestors; it honors both death and the cycle of life. In Mexico, neighbors gather in local cemeteries to share food, music, and fun with their extended community, both living and departed. The celebration acknowledges that we still have a relationship with our ancestors and loved ones that have passed away.

- source

This year it especially hits home for me. Halloween marked the beginning of a long season of “first holidays” without my grandmother. My grandmother loved Halloween, as did her mother before her. And ever since I was a child, my Nana told me about All Saints’ Day/All Souls’ Day. She told me about all the superstitions her Irish grandmother & mother told her as a child. And those two holidays have a big tie-in with Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The main difference being the Irish are very melancholy, sad and superstitious about it, whereas the Mexican view is much more celebratory: celebrating the dead AND the living, and reflecting but not being regretful. I love that! I’m not religious, not particularly spiritual, yet I find this to be a wonderful “holiday” that most Americans get totally wrong but could really, genuinely learn from. I also love the tradition of going to the cemetery & cleaning up & sprucing up the graves, decorating them & making them beautiful. Too many Americans forget about their deceased ancestors remains, and don’t bother to ever “visit” them… and trust me, the “Perpetual Care” you pay for ain’t so perpetual. Not only that, but opening yourself up to another culture & it’s traditions is so amazing. You learn so much, & not just about yourself.

Anyway, one of the most famous images of the Day of the Dead, aside from the sugar skull, is the Catrina, or the female skeleton. Popularized in 1913 by José Guadalupe Posada in a print/zinc etching he created of a figure he called La Calavera de la Catrinas or La Calavera Catrina.

© José Guadalupe Posada

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On that same note, one of my favorite artists, Sylvia Ji, paints a lot of Catrina-themed women. I just adore her work and I think they’re so beautiful. The Catrina or Calavera is another aspect of Dia de los Muertos that makes me love it. I’m so inspired by these, as well as the imagery of Dia de los Muertos.

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Last year I made tres leches coconut cupcakes for Dia de los Muertos with little hand-painted sugar skulls. I still think they were completely amazing & adorable… but I didn’t want to repeat the same thing this year; I hate reruns. I wanted to do something a bit different. My friend Xenia asked me for my grandmother’s photo to add to her altar which was chosen for Noche de Altares (A Night of Altars), an event in Santa Ana that takes place tomorrow, November 5th. I was flattered that she would think of me… but also it gave me the bug. So I thought it was a great idea to make my own! It was a very small & simple one, but I think it served the purpose. I used the traditional marigolds, but some chrysanthemums too. So here are some pictures of my altar, and once the event is over I’ll add the pictures of Xenia’s as well, or a link to her post about it.

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It’s just a small, simple altar, but I think it’s beautiful. Represented in the altar: my grandmother Agnes & grandfather Clarence, my great-great-grandmother Winifred Mackin, her daughter Mary & husband Thomas Rooney, my other great-great-grandmother Frances Hebrank & her husband Henry Sonnanburg, my great-uncle Pat, my great-aunt Winnie & her husband Sam Prybuski, my uncle Kenny, my great-aunt Eleanor Sonnanburg & her husband Frank Rooney, and my great-uncle Jack Sonnanburg; all deceased. I think it’s a gorgeous tribute. So in addition to creating my own altar this year, I also made Pan de Muerto. My grandma loved my baking, and my uncle Pat couldn’t eat a lot of sugar or carbs, being a diabetic, so as my offering to them this Day of the Dead, I thought this was appropriate on so many levels. Plus, it’s a day for celebrating life too, and what’s more celebratory than baking delicious bread & enjoying it!?

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PAN DE MUERTO (BREAD OF THE DEAD) (from Look What We Brought You From Mexico! by Phyllis Shalant)

Makes 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup milk
• ¼ cup (half a stick) margarine or butter, cut into 8 pieces
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 package active dry yeast
• ¼ cup very warm water
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, unsifted
• ½ teaspoon anise seed
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons sugar

Directions:

1. Bring milk to boil and remove from heat. Stir in margarine or butter, ¼ cup sugar and salt.
2. In large bowl, mix yeast with warm water until dissolved and let stand 5 minutes. Add the milk mixture.
3. Separate the yolk and white of one egg. Add the yolk to the yeast mixture, but save the white for later. Now add flour to the yeast and second egg. Blend well until dough ball is formed.
4. Flour a pastry board or work surface very well and place the dough in center. Knead until smooth. Return to large bowl and cover with dish towel. Let rise in warm place for 90 minutes. Meanwhile, grease a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
5. Knead dough again on floured surface. Now divide the dough into fourths and set one fourth aside. Roll the remaining 3 pieces into “ropes.”
6. On greased baking sheet, pinch 3 rope ends together and braid. Finish by pinching ends together on opposite side. Divide the remaining dough in half and form 2 “bones.” Cross and lay them atop braided loaf.
7. Cover bread with dish towel and let rise for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix anise seed, cinnamon and 2 teaspoons sugar together. In another bowl, beat egg white lightly.
8. When 30 minutes are up, brush top of bread with egg white and sprinkle with sugar mixture, except on cross bones. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

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I made mine a bit differently. I used about a ½ teaspoon anise extract in the actual dough, seeing as how I had no anise seed. I used 100% butter, not margarine. Also, obviously, I made my bread in a round shape and covered it with a rough-shaped cut-out dough skull & crossbones. Of course, as the bread bakes & rises the shapes don’t exactly stay together but I think that adds to it. You can also paint the dough or color parts of it using food coloring. The anise didn’t make it overwhelmingly “licorice-y” at all, so don’t be afraid to do it. It actually was so subtle, I could barely taste it. I put this bread in the ‘quick & easy’ category because I was surprised at how simple it was to make. I think it definitely makes things easier if you have a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, however. The crumb of the bread was fantastic, too.

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I hope all my family had a wonderful Day of the Dead, wherever they are in the great beyond. Maybe they came to pay a visit & saw my altar for them.

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“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.” Leonardo da Vinci