On the cooling rack: Baby Shower Menu #1

We spent the summer in Utah for Ted's internship, then returned to NC where I instantly became deeply entrenched in food planning/buying/prepping.

This first shower was put on by a committee of five friends because when we heard our friend was pregnant, we all insisted to help. I was first to offer, however, so I was in charge of whatever I wanted, which of course was food. But to just divvy out the house, decorations, drinks, and photographer to other people and get their help with the food anyway? Couldn't have been better. Here's the outcome.

The lemonade stand and handmade wreath:

The table:

The food:
Caprese Paninis on Sourdough or Nine Grain

Taste test:

Bell Pepper Slaw:

Mushroom Risotto in the cutest little individual cups ever:

Fruit skewers:

Various finger foods included the Most Incredible Lemon Bars Ever (not the real name, but should be), Oreo balls (Marianne's specialty), finger sandwiches, and sliced s'mores (the pregnant lady had been craving them).

Basically we had dessert first, in the middle, and at the end, a Mille Crepe Cake:

This thing was fabulous. Twenty crepes, each layered with a thin spread of raspberry pastry cream lightened with whipped cream, bruleed on top, and served with fresh berries and lemon curd. For a first time and for something off the beaten path (you know I'm a chocolate girl), this cake was to die for. I saw it on an episode of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the food network and knew I could come pretty close to replicating it. Crispy sugary top, creamy and crepe-y layers, hints of raspberry and lemon, oh heaven.

Action shot:

I've gotta get a brulee torch that means business. I made two of these cakes for the number of guests we had, and by the time I was done burning all the sugar, my hands HURT. That button you have to press the whole time is a doozy. And it was a good thing I brought extra butane.

You can't see it in this shot, but my first two fingers on my right hand are bandaged up from slicing them open on my fancy mandoline for the bell pepper slaw. Word to the wise - when the instructions say to use the safety thinger dinger, use it. I bled all over Annee's kitchen.

Guest of honor:

Ha! Nice placement of the crib mattress, Syphus. Gee whiz. Anyway, Melissa looked radiant her whole pregnancy and since I take forever to get blog posts up these days, her baby is now two months old. I know, I'm so embarrassed.

Halloween '10: Treats

We went to a few to-dos this season. Here's what I contributed:

Decapitated bears for the Young Women. I spent more time on these than on the lesson. Oops.

Bananas and cream cake for the ward Trunk or Treat's Cake Walk.

And I think this was my favorite: melon brain. I thought of the sign at the last minute and Ted quickly whipped up the sign on some cardstock. Ten points if you know the reference.

Not pictured because I had way too many other things to think about were the yummy mummies. I wrapped two hot dogs in thin strips of pie dough and used two mustard-covered cloves for the eyes of the "Mummy & Daddy", then wrapped a ton of cocktail wienies as their mummy babies. Served with formaldehyde sauce (BBQ mixed with a little deli mustard). Cute. Tasty.

On the cooling rack: Banana Bundts with Maple Cream Cheese Icing

I have complained a few times over the last year that we never have bananas ripe enough for me to make banana bread. There are three solid-food-eaters under this roof, and all three of us eat a banana almost every day. Sometimes I share a banana with Tessa in hopes that the banana spared will turn a lovely shade of spotted so I can make a smoothie or a loaf of bread with it. But then it gets eaten. Grrr!

But this week, my friends, this was it. Ted was gone in San Diego for two and a half days, and during that time, I stayed at a friend's house with Tessa and Dean. And our half dozen bananas that were ripe when we left got...riper. Ted had to leave for another trip to DC for two days, and I fed Tessa a pear instead of a banana for breakfast.

HENCE!

Banana baked goodies, here I come!

In searching for my loaf pans, I came across the mini bundt pans we registered and got for our wedding. I'm trying to remember if I've used them yet. My mind flashed back to one of the greatest desserts I've had at Corner Bakery - their Banana Bundt Cake with Maple Icing. It was delish. I figured I have the world's greatest banana bread recipe (courtesy of a recipe my mom created decades ago), so why not turn it into a bundt and throw some maple icing on it? Why not, indeed! So I'm here to share.

Banana Bundt Cake

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed banana (from 2 medium bananas - the blacker, the better [like my men {that was for you, Chris}])
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Grease six mini bundt pans. I use spray to get into all the nooks (and crannies). Also, if you only have four pans, like I do, you can also spray a mini loaf pan.

Cream together shortening and sugars. Add eggs and beat. Add banana and beat to combine. Sift together flour, soda, and salt. Add to batter. Spoon batter carefully into bundt pans about 2/3 full. DO NOT OVERFILL.

Bake 15-20 min or until toothpick comes out with moist crumbs on it. Let cool in pans 10 min or so, then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting

This is my go-to cream cheese frosting. I would halve it for the above recipe, then just add maple flavoring (which is already a lovely shade of brown) to it.
1 stick butter
1 8oz pkg cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla
dash salt
3-4 cups powdered sugar
Maple flavoring (optional)
Chopped pecans, toasted (optional)

Beat together butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add vanilla and salt, beat again. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time.

If using this as a maple icing, the consistency is perfect if you zap it in the micro for a few seconds, stir in a little imitation maple flavoring, and drizzle away. If you're feeling randy (always, thank you), chop up a few pecans and toast in a nonstick skillet over med-low heat for a few minutes and garnish while the icing is still wet.

Eat, and moan.

On the cooling rack: Strawberry cupcakes

Remember all those strawberries I couldn't stop gushing over? They have found a new favorite home.

We borrowed Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book from our local library in case it wasn't any good. You know how she's sooooo hit-and-miss with her creations sometimes. But this time, it looks like we, ahem, "hand-picked" a winner. I made both standard size and mini cupcakes, and both were excellent, but here's my note for that: recipe calls for "finely chopped" fresh strawberries in the batter. I didn't have patience for finely chopping the berries, and I knew a food processor would just puree them, so I rough-chopped them. Of course, since those particular berries were so darn juicy, it meant that with the mini size, I really had to make sure the batter got cooked all the way because in a few of them, the cake just around the pieces of berry were a titch underdone. Not enough to stop me from eating most of the ones in the picture below, but just so you're aware. This wasn't the case with the standard size - make as many as you want of those.

Also, she swears by this Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting. To quote her book, "If there is one frosting a home baker should always have on hand, this is it." She backs up that claim by saying it's nice to spread and pipe, silky texture, flavors and colors perfectly, etc. My personal note is that sometimes Martha can get a little too fussy for my taste. But then, that's why she has a show and hundreds of people working for her, and I don't. I followed her strawberry variation of this particular frosting to the letter, hoping I wouldn't screw it up since it calls for basically cooking egg whites with sugar without letting them curdle. I used a double boiler, and made sure my water was only simmering (not at a rolling boil), and I periodically removed the top pan from the bottom while the sugar was dissolving just to make sure it didn't get too hot. Martha suggests using the bowl of a stand mixer over a pot of simmering water, which I would have done if I had a stand mixer, which I don't. So this frosting took me about 3x as long as it maybe should have, but I must say, I was NOT disappointed. I rarely lick frosting beaters, because I have to draw the line somewhere, but I could not be restrained this time. The end result instantly took me back to homemade strawberry ice cream at Laura D's house every Memorial Day and Labor Day growing up. It wasn't as cold as ice cream, of course, but the flavor was spot-on and incredibly delicious and creamy.

Strawberry Cupcakes makes 34 standard size cupcakes

2 3/4 c. flour

1/2 c. cake flour

1 T. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp

2 1/4 c. sugar

1 1/2 t. vanilla extract

3 large whole eggs plus 1 egg white

1 c. milk

2 c. finely chopped fresh strawberries (about 20) plus more for garnish

Strawberry Meringue Buttercream (recipe below)

1. Oven to 350. Line muffin tins. Sift together flours, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

2. Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla until pale and fluffy at med-high speed. Add eggs and the white one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the milk, and beating until well combined. Fold in chopped strawberries by hand.

3. Divide batter evenly (I use a large cookie scoop), filling each liner three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins if necessary until golden and toothpick comes out clean, about 25-30 min (I checked at 15-20. They were done at 21 min, but my oven runs hot and I also can't stand overcooked cupcakes). Cool in pans 15 min, turn onto wire rack and cool completely. They can be stored in airtight containers at room temp for a day.

4. Frost with buttercream, or pipe onto the tops and garnish with strawberry slices and eat like crazy. note: If you refrigerate your buttercream, you must let it come to room temp before serving. Learned that by experience. Tastes SO MUCH better.

Strawberry Meringue Buttercream (makes about 5 cups, plenty for one batch of cupcakes)

1 1/2 c. fresh strawberries (8 ounces) rinsed, hulled, and coarsely chopped

4 large egg whites

1 1/4 c. sugar

1 1/2 c. (3 sticks) cut into tablespoons and allowed to come to room temp.

1. Puree strawberries in a food processor. Combine egg whites and sugar in bowl of a stand mixer set over simmering water. Whisk constantly until sugar dissolves and mixture feels completely smooth when rubbed between the fingers.

2. Attach bowl to the mixer with whisk attachment. Starting on low, whisk until stiff peaks form (mine never became super stiff like a regular meringue. It was very glossy and got firm, but the end result was perfect. I beat with a hand mixer for close to 20 min). Increase speed gradually to med-high until mixture is fluffier and very glossy and bowl is completely cool (about 10 min).

3. With mixer on med-low, add butter a few tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition. Once all butter has been added, scrape down sides and switch to paddle attachment; continue beating until all air bubbles are eliminated, about 2 min. Add strawberries and beat until well combined. Stir with rubber spatula until mixture is smooth. Keep at room temp if using the same day. Can be refrigerated or frozen, but allow to come to room temp, beating about 5 min in stand mixer, before serving.

Kudos, Martha. You make me sick.

Home SWEET Home

Let me tell you what I miss about California:

• In N Out. badly.
• My Diet Coke drinking buddies (you know who you are)
• Janet's organ playing
• Saladang Thai restaurant
• Potluck dinners with my college friends and their families
• Normal-sized bugs
• The hole-in-the-wall produce store on Lake Ave
• Being able to call our Altadena home "home"
• Diddy Reese ice cream & cookie sandwiches
• A temple that does sessions during the day
• Year-round herb garden
• Keeping up with my bad Spanish
• Settlers nights with my crew

I've written about lots of things here that I very much enjoy, most recently $2.39 milkshakes (and they're big! I can't get over it!). The walking trail near our house has been keeping me from gaining too much weight this pregnancy, the amount of green here is insane, our airport is 15 min from our door (and that's driving the speed limit), and it's so easy to make lifelong friends here because the people are so fantastic.

But until last week, those still weren't reasons compelling enough to put our roots down and call this place home. For last week we discovered pick-your-own strawberry patches.

That's not a stock photo! That represents one fifth of the berries we picked together one afternoon, and I didn't put all the good-looking ones together. They ALL looked that good. Juicy, ready to rupture in your mouth, no white tips or tartness, dark red all the way up to the tops. They are what strawberries were meant to taste like.

So often I have walked right past the display of strawberries in grocery stores because they have seldom lived up to my expectations. I have needed them to make pies and such, but those are only good because so many get pureed or chopped and covered with sugary goodness. Not necessary with these. These are...phenomenal.

Tessa knows the goods when she sees them.

But this is how she really felt. Give. me. that. BERRY!!!!

My favorite Mexican-in-training. Each of those buckets held almost 10 pounds. We filled two of them for $1.35/lb. Worth every penny.



And his little helper (I caught her chomping on half-eaten ones in the dirt):

After washing and sorting them for jam, snacking, freezing, pureeing, desserts, etc, we gave Tessa as many as she wanted. Well, we stopped her at about 25. She could have gone all night. Her bib looked like she just got out of an ER.

This was my favorite. I put her in her high chair the next morning while I went to do something or other. As I walked back I heard the familiar sound of something sliding around on the table behind her (she does it when she gets bored). I grabbed my camera and caught this:

Notice the dribbles down the front. She'd already attacked the flat I left out to dry. Just ate them whole, greens and all.

I already made loads of freezer jam, a very delectable dessert (poorly dubbed "Strawberry Delight" - I shudder whenever the word "delight" is in a food title. It's like naming your kid Chastity and then watching them grow up to be a total skank), and tomorrow I'll post what I concocted today. Just a hint: they made me shudder. North Carolina, you are doing your part in keeping me here.

On the cooling rack: Soft chocolate raspberry sandwich cookies

You might look at these and think, "Soft chocolate sandwich cookies?? Ha! Moron. Those are most definitely Whoopie Pies." But I disagree. They've got more chocolate flavor, they're a little more dense than the cakey whoopie pies I've had, and the filling isn't marshmallow. It's waaaaay better. AND they're so easy I'm embarrassed to be posting it.

These came about today because in making this cake, I made the mistake of trying to bring all the frosting makings to the hostess's house and use all her equipment. Don't get me wrong, she was fully equipped, but it wasn't MY kitchen, and I showed up with a baby after getting lost, so my state of mind wasn't what it should have been. I did the math wrong in trying to do 1 1/2 recipes of the buttercream, and ended up adding WAY too much milk. And that's not something you can just "thicken up" with more powdered sugar. So I "ruined" a whole batch before realizing it, but didn't have any more room temp butter to try to "doctor it up", so I ended up taking the whole show back home, tried to fix it, but had to start over anyway. By then, I had three full bowls of frosting, and only needed one for the cake. I got the bright idea to bring one of the bowls to the shower (the runniest/milkiest) for an impromptu fruit dip, which worked out great, but what to do with this thicker-but-not-thick-enough-for-frosting batch that already has raspberry in it?

And then I remembered the homemade Oreos someone taught me a decade or so ago. And I remember how much I love them, even though they're pedestrian because you use a cake mix. I don't care though. They're lip-smackin', gotta-have-another good. And with the raspberry frosting??? To die for!

I feel wrong taking the trademarked Oreo name (those blessed things), and besides, these really aren't that similar because they're soft and the flavor is totally different. They just look somewhat like the famous cookie, but other than that, they're nothing like 'em. But you just might like 'em better. I'M JUST SAYIN'!

Soft Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

1 devil's food cake mix

2 eggs, room temp*

scant 1/2 c. vegetable or canola oil

Mix together in a bowl. Use small cookie scoop (about 1" diameter) to scoop onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 6-8 min, or until tops are puffed up. Remove from oven, and this is the fun part, let the cookie sheet slam onto the counter or stove top. It flattens them slightly and makes the bottoms perfect for the frosting. Leave them on the sheet to cool for a few minutes. Remove to cooling rack. Cookies will be soft and flexible, but should firm up enough to frost once completely cool. Makes about 40 halves, so appx 20 cookies once sandwiched (unless you're like me and you "taste test" a couple before you can slap anything on 'em).

*I left the eggs out overnight (well, because my original plan was to make and eat them last night, but if you read the previous post, you'll know why that didn't happen), and it made all the difference in how these things puffed up. You don't have to leave them out overnight, but you want your eggs room temp!

You can use whatever frosting you want for the middles - buttercream, white, vanilla, [choke] store-bought, but I'll leave you with my go-to cream cheese frosting. It makes enough to frost a whole cake, so....you might want to half it for this.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz. cream cheese, room temp

1 stick butter, room temp (please, for the love, don't use margarine)

dash salt

1 tsp vanilla*

3-4 c. powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter together until nice and creamy. Add salt and vanilla - mix. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time, tasting for sweetness and checking for spreadability.

*If you want the raspberry flavor, add 1/4 tsp raspberry extract at this point. Also, if you're feelin' it, a drop or two of red food coloring. Note: you want the raspberry. OM NOM NOM

Have your cake and eat it, two

Have you ever had an idea pop in your head that was so perfect and got you so excited that you nearly wet your pantaloons and somewhere amidst the swooning at your own cleverness you neglected to care about things that normally would alarm you, like a leaking poopie diaper or the fact that you're in your underwear while the apartment complex gardening company is outside your sliding glass door mowing your lawn whilst you stand there in raptured glee among poo fumes?

That happened to me.

The grand idea popped into my head after much deliberation and pondering upon the subject, so the moral of the story is to always ponder and you will be considered wonderful by any and all.

The subject? Upcoming baby shower for a friend.

The deliberation? I volunteered to help with the shower, so what cake to make? What flavor? Frosting or ganache? Which frosting? What decoration? Why is her favorite color blue when she's having a girl?

Further deliberation? What do I do for a gift? I've always been the practical type who gives diapers and wipes and boobie pads because EVERY MOM NEEDS THOSE and we all hate paying for them, but they're necessities of life, like Diet Coke and Peanut M&Ms. And bacon.

The pondering? I have recently become....obsessed? no. Addicted? no...Curiously engaged in pursuing acts of craftiness as long as 1) it can be perfect the first time I make it, 2) it's not something someone would throw away after looking at it and moving it around your dining room table for a week, hoping it will find its own niche in your home (sorry, papercrafters), and 3) it doesn't cost me more money to make than it would take to just buy a completed and better version of it.

Further pondering. I went through a gamut of ideas to hopefully fulfill the "what can I make to add to the diapers and boobie pads?" conundrum. Dyed and appliqued onesies? Never done them before. Freezer paper onesies? Still haven't purchased my own fabric paint and I remember the good designs being tedious. Sew a skirt? Maybe I could swing it, but there are a lot of women who could do it way better and might try, thereby making my skirt look like something a hobo would wear. Bead a few bracelets? Done that - have the materials, but want to try something different.

And that's when the almost-pantaloons-wetting and poo-fume-ignoring and Mexican-gardeners-getting-a-free-PG-13-rated-peep-show-cluelessness kicked in.

The cake would be chocolate chunk raspberry because she's had it before and couldn't stop foogasming over it (which is the basis of our friendship). That was the only given in this scenario. Everything else came together in a flurry of converging neural synapses that almost exploded my brain. The convergence went something like this:

Cream cheese frosting won't hold up as well as a buttercream so I'll do the buttercream even though I haven't made it as often OOH! and since the cake has a hint of raspberry the buttercream should too and I suppose I could decorate it with raspberries but I had such a bad experience relying on that last time because when we bought them the day of the party all the good raspberries were gone so we had to pay a dollar more per box for the last two organic boxes where half of them were already beginning to mold or mush under the weight of the others God bless pesticides screw the raspberries strawberries are looking gorgeous right now and huge so I'll use those does that mean I should try to find a strawberry extract? maybe I can if not I can soften the raspberry extract with some vanilla after all I only want a hint and I don't care if her favorite color is blue she's having a girl so she's just gonna have to get used to pink dammit we all do so the frosting will be pink which will be perfect since it's going to be raspberry buttercream anyway besides who wants a blue frosting that tastes like raspberries it's not like I'm running an Icee machine out of a 7-11 so pink it is with strawberries and OOH! there's a pattern for a crocheted slice of cake in that book Ted gave me and it's easy enough to change the frosting color from white to pink yarn but that pattern only has it as a two-layer cake and this one will most definitely be four layers with berry bits between because that's just what I do so I can't settle for a two-layer slice of cake but the rest of it looks pretty cute so maybe I can adapt it to three layers instead because if I try to do four layers it will be monstrous and this is supposed to be a little crawling baby's toy and OOH! I can put jingle bells in it so it's like a little rattle but would that be too much like a cat's toy I don't want this thing to look like it came straight out of PetSmart so OOH! I'll crochet a few strawberries to go with it since that's what's going to be on the real cake and then it'll look even more like food and I'll add bells to those too so when she opens it and shakes it around I'll say it's CAKE AND JINGLEBERRIES!

Here was the cake:

Here's the inside, which we'd already cut into before the present-opening (all part of the master plan):

And after pulling out the diapers and boobie pads, she saw this:

And she promptly freaked out. So much that I forgot to say "CAKE AND JINGLEBERRIES!" And here's the side-by-side:

PS - thank you to Ted for buying me the book that prompted the fun in enough time to have it ready for the shower and for coming up with the "two" pun in the post title. You didn't really think I was that much of a grammar idiot, did you?

On the cooling rack: Birthday "Pizookie"

I say "Pizookie" in quotes not because my version was a cheap, sub-par imitation, but because if it didn't come from BJ's Brewhouse, it's not technically one of their someone-needs-a-medal creation. But heaven help me, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference in a blind taste test.

The actual word "pizookie" is so catchy that it took me until only recently to realize that it's a combination of "pizza" and "cookie'. Duh. But it's not just a pizza cookie because it's bigger and more perfectly round than a normal cookie.... No, no, no. Some genius up there in the BJ's R&D department came up with a beauty. They cook a phenomenal tasting cookie dough at a high temperature in a 6-inch diameter deep dish pizza pan with a little butter on the bottom that makes the bottom and sides ever so delicately crispy while the inner 4-inch diameter stays gooey, but nice and hot, which instantly starts melting the LARGE scoop of vanilla ice cream they plop on top. It's a simple dessert done to perfection, and anyone who's had one will swear by it.

Ted does.

Let me start by saying that this success story didn't come easily. As an amateur baker, I like to try new treats and experiments, and of course if you live under my same roof, you're subject to the tasting and forming of opinions about them. Ted and I have now been married three years, so that's three birthdays, three V-days, three sets of the Fat Holidays, and 156 weekends, most of which have sponsored some sort of concoction-making. Gee, and I wonder why my rump is lumpy.

When I do make something, especially if it's something new, I guess my need for accolades hinders honest opinions from the man. He's not one to emote effusive compliments if they're undeserved, and even if they are deserved, they're nearly impossible to eke out of him. He just doesn't moan in epicurean bliss, whereas I do it on a pretty regular basis. So I've had to learn to take anything above "It was good" as something that really blew his socks off (I have a translator in my brain, thankfully). For instance, when I made a turkey and rice soup from scratch the other day and he said, "This tastes just like my mom's", I about fell over and thanked my lucky stars (she's a great cook and I've witnessed him get wistful every now and then about certain meals and treats of hers).

There's the background to the next chain of events. We were on a walk a few weeks ago, and Ted was pushing the stroller. We had somehow gotten onto the topic of BJ's in general or Pizookies specifically, and either topic induces a wave of nostalgia for a chocoholic version of their Pizookie that I had about a year ago when a gaggle of girls from our freshman year at college got together for a weekend. I shared a Chocolate Chocolate Chunk Pizookie made with Ghirardelli chocolate and double chocolate ice cream with a square of dark Ghirardelli chocolate on the side with a friend at that meal. Neither of us can figure out why we shared. One bite and we almost ordered another one. So when Ted mentioned the word "Pizookie", he was speaking of the original and my brain had skipped right to the too-chocolate-for-words version. I replied with something like "Well, the original is good but that choc-" when I was EMPHATICALLY interrupted by my dearly beloved. He stopped the stroller mid-push, stuck his hand out in front of me and yelled, "Stop! You can't just stand there and say, 'the original is good.' You know it's way better than 'good'. It's freaking incredible, and I will not let you take another step until you acknowledge that."

I was blown away. In our three years of marriage, 5 months of engagement, 1 month of second-time dating, 6 months of friendship, 1 year of not talking at all, and 2 months of first-time dating, I have NEVER heard him speak so highly of a single dessert in such a tone. Yes, I wish it had been about one of my desserts, but I loved the effusive outburst so much that I really didn't care.

So for his birthday last Thursday (tax day), it didn't take too much to come up with what I would make this time.

I was given the recipe for some of the BEST chocolate chip cookies I've had in my life, so instead of using store-bought tubes of pre-fabricated cookie dough, which I've known some people to do... (you know who you are), I took great care in making the best version I could. I have a 6-inch deep dish pan (what self-respecting amateur baker doesn't?), but I opted for the heart instead because despite his lack of food-induced moans, I love my birthday boy very much.

So you can use any good recipe of cookie dough you want (or cheat - it's not like I'm going to know), but preheat the oven to 425. It's not your typical 350, but this ain't your typical batch of cookies. The higher heat cooks the whole bottom, edges, and top of your pizza cookie and keeps the very middle in its highly desirable salmonella stage. Cooking times will vary with the size pan you use (I really don't recommend you go bigger than a 9-inch cake pan, but even that's pushing it. The heart pan is 7" at its widest point), so watch it. Mine cooked about 13-15 min if I remember correctly. Should look like this:

Notice it looks completely cooked (I just typed "cookied" and I'm drooling). You don't want to take it out before the top looks done like that lest you have just a raw liquid-type thing you have to drink with a straw. Wait. Hmm.. next experiment?

WHILE STILL HOT OUT OF THE OVEN, plop a hefty amount of quality vanilla ice cream on top (pictured is Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean) so the contact heat starts melting it into pure sweet cream that creates rivers of pleasure all through your little hills and valleys of dough and chocolate. Eat immediately. DO NOT let this thing cool down, DO NOT be scared to blow on your first few bites of it, and DO NOT ever reveal to your cardiologist the real reason for your skyrocketing cholesterol. Blame it on genetics.

The aftermath:

I'm embarrassed to admit that I almost needed an oven mitt to remove the pan off the table. That's how warm it still was...

Oh, what bliss. Happy Pizookie Birthday, sweetie. I hold your food orgasms in my heart.

On the cooling rack: Valentine's Day cookies

I'm not sure why it took me so long to post these. My friend Ashley invited me over to decorate cookies with royal icing as a birthday present last month, so while her husband and our home teacher played with Tessa for two hours, we whipped up icing, colored it, piped it, flooded it into the cookies, and voila:


I'd never worked with royal icing before, and I must say, though the final product is smooth and pretty, it was a royal pain to work with. It's a finicky frosting and it takes a lot of time, and quite honestly, I like the taste of a good buttercream MUCH better. True, you can't decorate all fancy with it, but taste is the #1 criterion for me with any food, especially dessert. I like my sugar cookies soft and sweet and buttery, like my boobies when I'm nursing, and like Jana's incredible recipe that she has perfected over several years. The royal icing dries quite hard, and I wasn't fond of biting into such a crispy thing. I'll save that for my chips and toffee, thank you.

I think the lips were a favorite among the three women doing the project. I provided the cookie cutter with the arrow going through the heart, and after seeing the cookies it made, it looks like I'll have to go and bend it back into a decent shape. The upper left hand corner cookie had me singing the 80's band Human League song "Poison Arrow", except I forgot it was "poison", so my lyrics went something like "shoot that broken arrow through my heeaaaart", and only when I tried to picture an image of shooting something already broken, expecting it to pierce your target and how ridiculous it was did I realize I must have it wrong. Oh well - it fit my cookies.