(not so) salty

I'm not quite sure how I managed to let this weekend slip away from me with nothing to show for it except a half-successful batch of chocolate chip cookie bars, but here it is, Sunday night, and I don't even have that much. Well, to be fair, I left the pan of them sitting at work, where I spent nine hours of my day today. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything. 


Anyways, you should try this salted caramel chocolate chip cookie bar recipe. Only unlike me, you shouldn't be too lazy to trek to a store that actually has caramel squares. Because if you go all Martha Stewart and try to make your own, and don't pay close enough attention to what you're doing, suddenly you'll have hard-as-cement caramel that you couldn't pay to play nice and combine with the requisite heavy cream. And then you will just chuck all the dough into a square pan, throw it in the oven, and convince yourself that your coworkers will be just as happy with plain old chocolate chip cookie bars that don't have a layer of gooey salty caramel (even if you won't). 


I didn't take any snapshots because, well, I'm lazy. And horribly exhausted and absent-minded and constantly behind in life. I think I need a hefty slice of non-caramel-y chocolate chip cookie bar, a glass of wine, and a good night's sleep... 


But this is what they should look like. Mine looked just like the recipe for once. You know, minus the caramel. Now, about that wine.

from the recipe

fail

Fail...small word, big implications. As in, if I fail the class I'm taking right now, I cannot continue taking courses towards a Certificate in International Studies (although believe me, right now, it seems like the last thing I'd like to do). It also happens to be a word that describes my attempt at making cookies this evening to "relax." (In quotation marks, because I'm convinced I have forgotten how to do just that). 

If that's not a sign I should get back to the books, I don't know what is. And yet here I sit... 

Anyways, unlike a few weeks ago, today, I decided to make my "know it from heart, everyone loves it" chocolate chip cookie recipe. I've been making it since I was, I don't know, 13?, and I've known it by heart for years and years. As one of my friends recently reminded me, I used to study much like I am now: by making extremely intricate study guides, then abandoning them and making cookies. In all those iterations, I've had bigger fails than cracking an egg straight on to my counter, but this was the first fail in a good long while. Let's just say it didn't do great things for that whole relaxing study break thing.  

So I guess I'll get back to it. If you want to stop by my place for a fresh cookie, the only requirement is that you quiz me in the theories of international relations. Deal? I'll even throw in a glass of cold milk.  

nostalgia wednesdays: sister birthdays

My sister and I were born two years and five days apart. Growing up, people even mistook us for twins, which, honestly, is hilarious, because we fell pretty far apart on the appearance spectrum (blond haired, blue eyed, pale vs. brunette, brown eyed, and tan), and I don't think we were ever that close in size until we got older. Aesthetic differences aside, we tended to celebrate our birthdays as if we were, in fact, twins. My parents always made sure to get us essentially the same things, just in different colors, so that no one felt favored or left out. 


I don't know if we fully appreciated the proximity of our birthdays at the time, but I really, really miss celebrating my birthday with her now that we're grown up and live apart. This year we'll be in Denver for our cousin's wedding a week after her birthday, so I imagine we'll attempt a belated celebration. 


If we were home in NC, I'd totally make her/us these cookies. 

I've had a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe since I was in middle school. In general, I'm very "no, this recipe is acceptable, decent or good, even, but I'm not going to branch out from the safety of its mediocrity." Analyze that as you wish. I'm busy eating my new recipe's cookies. 


I'm not sure what convinced me to put my old recipe aside and take a new one for a spin. Maybe it was the effusiveness of the blogger's description of the cookies. It certainly wasn't the universe, which was clearly trying to tell me something the day I decided to make these suckers. 


I had forgone my lovely bright pink rain boots that morning in favor of flip flops, deeming the 30% chance of rain negligible. A comically torrential downpour set in shortly after my detour from the metro to the grocery to get the last few ingredients, when I was about 2 blocks from my apartment, nearly safe and dry. In a mere two blocks, I was soaked up to my waist, even with an umbrella. It rained so hard so quickly that the rivers of running water were ankle-deep. I was so tempted to toss my umbrella aside, kick off my flip flops, and just splash around like a kid.  


The two new bags of flour, cake and bread, that I had just spent $8 on to concoct these supposedly life changing cookies, were soaked. I had forgotten, again, to restock my toilet paper supply, and had to meet one of my Venice friends for dinner in two hours, but by God, I was going to make those dang cookies. Or rather the dough, for the recipe demands that you wait at least 24, but preferably 36 hours, to bake them. 


You should check out the original blog post about the recipe. It lists all sorts of secrets to the success of the world's greatest cookies, all of which I attempted to adhere to strictly. I even followed the blogger's lead and tested the dough at various points in the process. 


I can't lie, my go-to recipe will always hold a special place in my heart, and I'll always think of the cookies as the dessert that stoked my love for baking. But these newbies are pretty amazing. They're an awfully significant time commitment, and there's the whole need for two types of specialty flour, but they are awfully sinfully good. Sister birthday good, you might say.


I hope you have an occasion to give them a try, even if the universe does its best to dissuade you, too. In the meantime, happiest birthday to my beautiful sister. See you in a week!

funky cookies

I by no means consider myself a total downer, but I am more of a realist/cynic than I am an optimist. Lately, though, I've been so bouncy and optimistic that I barely recognized myself. I'm honestly not even sure what brought it on, maybe my lingering infatuation with my new neighborhood? But yesterday, I came crashing back down to earth, my hot air balloon of optimism having been rapidly deflated. I also can't really pinpoint the force behind the sudden funk, but by the time I left work, I was really grumpy. I abandoned any intentions of being social, and headed straight for the kitchen, which is where I usually go to work that sort of mood out of my system.

Having scored a giant bag of chocolate chips for free using a birthday coupon at World Market, I decided to try a my hand at these triple chocolate espresso cookies. I tend to bake best when stressed, and, this recipe is basically butter, sugar, and chocolate, so my expectations were pretty high.

Fortunately, a glass of wine and a few of the cookies (consumed warm out of the oven) at least temporarily soothed my mysterious case of the blahs. All was almost lost when I switched Kitty the Kitchenaid stripper on not realizing the bowl wasn't locked in to place. Luckily my new kitchen did not end up bathed in chocolate. If there's one upside to a tiny space, it's that you're always within arms reach of just about everything, including a bowl full of batter that's about to careen off the counter.

Anyways, I'm happy to report that the cookies are as good the next day as they are straight out of the oven. Turns out they're only a temporary mood booster, though, as I still seem to be feeling a bit off, but I think that just means I need to eat more of them, right? 

DIY dressing

So, I often joke (semi-seriously) that I consider it a personal affront to serve a baked good that I didn't make from scratch. I apparently have no such qualms when it comes to salad, because the leafy stuff you see on the left here came straight out of a bag.

I'm not really opposed to bagged salad, given that I'm a big fan of things like spinach and arugula, which you can't exactly find heads of like you can romaine or iceberg.  Plus, it's a cheap and easy way to assuage my guilt over serving otherwise unbalanced meals when people come over for dinner. Normally I don't serve it directly out of the bad as I did yesterday, but I think I mentioned Sophie is a kind and forgiving soul when it comes to my culinary eccentricities.

But I'm proud to report that last night, I made my own dressing. Having forgotten said item during my many trips to TJ's this weekend, this culinary experiment was born as much out of necessity as it was any sort of crunchy desire to eliminate weird chemical-y ingredients from my salad dressing (seriously, have you read some of those labels lately?). 

Since I made broccoli and bell pepper stir fry with tofu as the main attraction, I was looking for something complementary flavor-wise, and came up with this New York Times recipe for sesame ginger vinaigrette. It also got bonus points for only requiring ingredients I already had on hand.

I used my tee tiny food chopper (kind of like a mini food processor, only smaller) to whirl everything together, throwing the garlic in at the last minute when Sophie arrived with the routine bottle of wine and the not-so-routine package of garlic (that I also forgot at TJ's this weekend, which is going to make my eventual post in praise of the list-keeping app "Evernote" far less convincing, I suppose).  This recipe was the first time I tried out a new method for grating ginger, by the way, and it was possibly the best discovery ever. 

I first read the tip a while ago via this blog post, in which the author explains that the best way to store and grate the golden good stuff is to peel it, chop it in to cubes, and freeze it. Then, when you're ready to grate, you take the number of necessary cubes out and use a microplane. Because the ginger is frozen, it doesn't get all gloopy like the fresh stuff does, it just falls into the bowl in perfect slivers.

As tends to happen to me in the kitchen, the dinner and dressing were a success, but I had a massive stress baking failure (more on that later). At some point I'll learn to stop taking on too many things at once. Until then, though, I'll have to hope all my dinner guests are as understanding as Sophie when I say something like "ummm, hope you like the wine...it's what's for dessert..."

b-e- aggressive

I hope the title of this post got that horribly uncreative cheerleading chant stuck in your head. That was pretty much exactly my evil plan, because it's been in MY head ever since I made ginger spiced molasses sugar cookies last night. It all started when I realized I hadn't been nearly aggressive enough at the "roll balls of dough in granulated sugar" point in the recipe, which brought me to a larger culinary "ah ha" moment. 

But somewhere in all of that, it also brought me back to the memory of not making the cheerleading squad in middle school. All my girlfriends tried out, and, as far as I remember, made it. I, with my knobby knees and shy demeanor, did not. It was horribly embarrassing, and led to a torrent of tears. My mom took an inconsolable little Jenny to the mall, and let me buy whatever I wanted (within reason, I'm sure). "Whatever I wanted" was a Precious Moments figurine, the likes of which I collected at that age. (No, I do not wonder, in retrospect, why I didn't make the squad then, nor why I am single now). I suppose the shopping trip, and the eventual realization that I would look ridiculous in the gray and orange uniforms chanting things like "B-E- AGGRESSIVE" mollified my sixth grade angst in due time.

But the chant came back to me last night, when I realized I needed to advise anyone who intended to make said ginger spiced molasses sugar cookies to really b-e- aggressive with the sugar thing in order to get a nice sugary crisp on the exterior of the crinkly treats. And it made me realize that, in general, I'm a bit of a tentative person in the kitchen, which tends to be to the detriment of me and the dishes I'm attempting to craft.

When I cook, especially new and unfamiliar dishes, it tends to be with this skeptical air of "they don't really mean over HIGH heat, right?" And so then I err on the side of caution and saute over a safe, if boring, medium heat and then get impatient when things take longer than the recipe says they should. 

Obviously, though, the unspoken answer to my frequent culinary question is "well of course they mean it, you idiot, they're the experts." And so I've decided to tack on an additional resolution in 2012. I'm going to be a little more aggressive in the kitchen. I know, I'm a real wild child.

ps-I like to think I got a subconscious jump on the new resolution this past Monday, when I cooked on the fly, and totally without a recipe, and the product was actually edible. But, more on that later.

nostalgia wednesdays: naivete

Oddly enough, lately my Venice nostalgia hasn't been raging at quite the same levels it typically does. Instead, I've been steeping in a different type of nostalgia all together. One much harder to articulate. 


I miss being naive. You know, the days when my biggest problems were along the lines of not having as much hair or as many teeth as my toddler peers, and my baby doll was almost as big as me and yet I still had to tote her everywhere (see above). And let's not even talk about my ruffled bathing suit, which only accentuated that diaper situation. 


I miss the days when I didn't realize that there were bigger transgressions in life than hogging the Play Doh kitchen set in kindergarten. The days when I thought the worst thing in the world was my fourth grade boyfriend telling me he loved me. The days when my world was so small that I thought all I needed was a few American Girl dolls, my sister, and a long afternoon to craft endless stories at our fictitious "American Girl Academy."


I still need my sister, my whole family for that matter, but life, as it's designed to do, has gotten so much more complicated. As time seems to have sped along in fast forward lately, I've become increasingly conscious of how totally impossible it is to do everything you want to do. There are so many recipes I want to try, places I want to visit, books I want to read, projects I want to take on, jobs I want to try on for size. 


Being an adult now (whether I like calling myself that or not) is empowering in the sense that I get to decide, to some extent, which things I do and try. But as an extremely introspective person who is prone to fretting, every decision also brings me a sense of mild panic as I close the door, temporarily or otherwise, to the option I eschewed in the process. 


And the scary part is, this is just the beginning, right? The decisions I make right now are constrained mainly by my budget, my work, and my fears. There will be a point in my life (theoretically) at which a significant other's input, budget, work, and fears will also have to be taken in to account. And if he and I decide that our definition of "family" includes kids, that will, naturally, change everything forever. 


I'm not saying it isn't exciting to think about what's to come, whether it's things I try in the LKTC, places I think are worth the fear of flying to visit, choices I make in my career, or people I let in to or chose to remove from my life. 


But there are times when I feel like I have to make one too many of those choices at once.  Times when I'm convinced I can't possibly make the best decision based on the information or timing. Times when I'm fed up, and just want a reprieve from being the lowest woman on the totem pole at work without seeming ungrateful. Times when I want to throw my bowl of plain pasta down the sink and have someone there to cook something different for me for once. Times when I just need to marinate in the bad day. 


When that happens, I let myself, just for a little while, go back to the days of sitting on the floor of the playroom with my sister, where our toughest decision was what outfit to dress our dolls in that day.  


And since I can't actually go back, I bake. Most people leave it all at the gym, or the bar maybe. But I leave it all in the kitchen. Tonight, I leave it all in these ginger spice molasses cookies. 

baked goods & bonding with the boss

About two months ago, my new boss started. The whole office approached his start date with some trepidation, having just adjust to the antics and whims of our former interim boss. I was especially unsettled by the fact that his first week coincided with my cross-country road trip. I was really worried that he would decide in my absence that the office didn't really need me that much. 

It turns out all of our fears, but especially mine, were unfounded. The new boss is great, and we've gotten along beautifully so far. He is wholeheartedly committed to getting me in to a job that is better aligned with my skills and experience, and he fondly refers to me as his "social director." He's also a lot more perceptive than any of us gave him credit for at first. 

Case in point? Yesterday I came in to the office mostly out of a sense of obligation. I really, really wanted to call in sick so I could try to catch up on sleep, but had one fairly important morning meeting. Upon arrival, I realized I had left at home the one crucial thing that we have to use to make our computers operate (a specific kind of access card). Without it, you might as well go home, because you can't do a thing. It made my exhaustion-induced cranky mood ten times worse. 

I was trying not to punch something and halfheartedly tossing my weekend baked goods on to the little ledge at my desk (I don't have cube walls, just a ledge) when my boss came out of his office. "Uh oh, I see someone's been stress-baking," he said. "I take it you must have had a rough weekend." And he seemed genuinely concerned about whatever it was that had me in the kitchen turning out three separate types of treats. I realize it sounds insignificant, but I appreciated his seemingly legitimate interest in my life, because it's far more than I can say for past managers!

festive muffin wrappers (which dyed my muffin tins a lovely red on the bottom)

I literally threw this butter on the floor completely by accident. See: exhaustion references

I think anything with a crumb topping can't taste TOO awful... 

As you can tell from the photos, one of the baked goods was clearly muffins. They may look like coffee cake muffins, which I really want to try and make, but it's a big trick. I know, I know, I'm so clever. But they're banana crumb muffins. Surprise!

They were pretty easy to bake, despite the whole throwing butter on the floor by accident thing. After I pulled them out of the oven Saturday morning, I honestly couldn't decide how I felt about them. I thought they might be a little dry, and thus not worth serving. I threw them in a few containers, and when I pulled one out to test them again on Monday morning, a magical transformation had taken place. I don't know the science behind it, but they were suddenly delicious, and not even a tiny bit dry, so they definitely made the "take them to work" cut.


Sunday morning, despite an increasingly debilitating fog of exhaustion enveloping me, I decided like the genius I am to make shortbread and blueberry scones. On maybe 4 hours of sleep. Before going on an afternoon-long real estate adventure. Which was to be followed by a 2 1/2 hour Christmas concert.


I'd made the Pioneer Woman shortbread cookies before for an pre-ballet brunch with a few friends, and despite the effort involved in sifting several cups of dry ingredients and cutting said ingredients into obscene quantities of butter and sugar, they turned out delicious. I take no credit for that. I believe it belongs to the aforementioned large quantities of fat and sugar. Oh, and I love the hint of lemon that you get if you toss in a bit of lemon zest while creaming the butter and sugar. As served at the brunch (see below), they're really best with homemade whipped cream and strawberries, but there's only so much I'll take in to the office!

While the dough for the shortbread was refrigerating, I tried my hand at these blueberry scones. I've never made scones before, but it didn't look too difficult. Well, either I am an idiot (possible), my exhaustion got the better of me (highly likely), and/or the recipe is not half as good as the 230 people who reviewed it claim it to be. They were just...blah, for lack of a better description. Not "inedible," but definitely sporting an odd consistency and color, and certainly not something I'd serve. So into the trash the whole lot went, inciting my serious guilt complex for wasting the ingredients. And no, I am not showing you a picture, because they were ugly as sin, and I don't want to embarrass myself. 


Anyways, I'll take a two out of three success rate in the LKTC right now, especially because for about 72 hours this past week(end), none of my stove's burners would light, so I had to get pretty creative at times. And while I imagine the bake-a-thon only augmented my sleepy state, it did help distract me from the things that have been keeping me awake at night. 


Speaking of which, I will be climbing in to bed at a dorkily early hour tonight, so here's hoping these posts soon resume some sort of more normal tone...

case of the mondays

I know that really no one likes Mondays. I think we're all prepared for a little more blah-ness than usual on Mondays. And as much as I try to give myself a pep talk and buck up somewhere between the metro and my desk, Mondays at my office always start off on an especially sour note. 


See, all of the senior staff from the DC office and the overseas office meet at 8 am every Monday via video teleconference (VTC). It's my job to get to the conference room early and make sure everything is set up properly, which is a huge joke, because the VTC system never, ever works. And rarely is anyone from IT to be found, even though it's their job to also get there early to help. Even if the entire IT staff is there, I have yet to see them fix the various malfunctions that occur. Even though it's not my fault that the machine doesn't work, I always have several angry managers staring me down as I try to figure out some crackerjack back up solution. It's beyond frustrating, and just not a great way to kick off every single work week. 

Because I'm a notorious stress baker, instead of stomping my feet or punching the VTC machine or yelling at IT (ok, that one happens sometimes), I often go home on Mondays and fire up the oven. 


Last week, I was inspired by Allie to go on a pumpkin kick. Always having success with Pioneer Woman recipes, I decided to try her pumpkin spice muffin concoction. While I wish her devotion to sifting flour weren't so fervent, I otherwise find her recipes pretty approachable, and this was no exception. 


There was a moment where I was afraid I'd bought the wrong kind of pumpkin, and did some frantic googling ("is puree the same as solid pack?" is a surprisingly easy question to answer, apparently). In case you're also naive to such distinctions, I'll save you some fretting and tell you that they are, in fact, one in the same. 


Whew. So anyways, minor pumpkin semantics aside, the muffins came out beautifully (in appearance and taste). I burned the roof of my mouth to make the taste determination, but it was worth the sacrifice. I'm not a great photographer, so you'll have to take my word (and not the quality of these pictures) for the muffins' actual aesthetic success. 

I had about half of a can of pumpkin left over, and I didn't want to waste it. I had shortbread on the brain, so I thought pumpkin shortbread would be delicious. I used this recipe, and the shortest way to put it is that something went awry. I'm honestly not sure what, sadly, but they tasted like dry, bland cookies, not like shortbread. I'm starting to learn that I really just need to stop after one successful baked good. This is not the first time I've taken on one too many recipes in an attempt to banish stress, only to see the second (and third and...) fail. 

Not to be dissuaded by the shoddy shortbread, I just stocked up on flour, sugar, and other necessary sundries today. That said, I'll be away from the office in training for the next two weeks, so I'm hoping for a hiatus from my usual Monday morning stress fest... 

one week down

I've been doing the vegetarian thing for a week now, and so far, I'm actually surprised at how well it's gone. Aside from a meat-heavy diet on the road trip, I don't normally eat a whole lot of the stuff (now sugar...that will be an issue). It's expensive, I always forget to take it out of the freezer in a timely fashion, and I really hate touching raw meat. Pretty much the only time I've had food envy was Sunday, and I blame that entirely on the smell of bacon wafting from the many brunch spots in Dupont as I was wandering around looking for apartments. I have found that it can be tough to find something meat-free during happy hour at bars (my former go-to was chicken fingers). But I'm not giving up yet...


A lot of people ask me "but what do you EAT?" when I explain that I'm trying this whole no meat thing. (Seriously, I get less incredulous reactions when I mention my semi-serious intent to join a convent). I eat basically all the same stuff I did, minus the steak on the plate! See?

then...

and now!

I'm eating a lot more fruits/veggies, which is never a bad thing, and I've tried to add more plant protein (a la edamame and the like). I'm still eating too much sugar (I'm sampling some pumpkin shortbread as we speak), but I'll tackle that later...


For now, it's a night of stress baking, and roasted green beans + baby potatoes!

you win some, you lose some

I generally don't successfully bake and cook all in one night. If I cook something resembling a grown up meal, dessert is a few spoonfuls of brown sugar in a bowl (no, really, I eat it straight...weird, but delicious and satisfying). If I go on a baking spree, I'll probably have a bowl of cheerios for dinner. 



Last night was a bowl of cheerios night, I'm afraid. I say "I'm afraid" because let's just say my pants are fitting a little tighter than I'd like these days, and the last thing I need is (multiple) dessert(s) for dinner. I also declared it a cheerios night with some trepidation given my latest "final hurrah" project. Being elbow deep in sugar means I won't really have time to make a dent in the meat supply in my freezer. And with my Vegas road trip looming, my self-imposed vegetarian experiment is also quickly approaching. 



But I was determined to come back from the sweetened condensed milk failure of last week and finally make Hello Dolly bars. I also somehow got it in my head that I need to make a mini apple crisp. I have some aging apples in my fridge, and DC is experiencing an early taste of fall, so it just seemed right. And I had been looking for an excuse to use the mini red pie pans I picked up at World Market ages ago. 


So when I came across this recipe for apple crisp after minimal searching and comparing, I immediately knew I had to pick it. See, it calls for flour OR finely crushed graham crackers. The Hello Dolly bars also call for crushed graham crackers. If two recipes can benefit from the same ingredient being whirled around in my (wait for it) mini food processor, sign me up. I really, really hate doing dishes. It takes away a small percentage of the post-stress baking satisfaction.  

After what was supposed to be a quick, frugal trip to a newly discovered Harris Teeter near my apartment, I came home with an hour less of my life and a lot less money in my pocket (never again will I go to the HT after accidentally having skipped lunch). Bowl of cheerios in my shaking, food deprived little hands, I started with the Hello Dollys...

butter + graham cracker crumbs 

(may or may not have scarfed down what didn't fit in the pan)

I really dislike coconut, but in the spirit of high school dessert nostalgia, I went for it

Mmmm, chopped pecans

a whole slew of chocolate and butterscotch

and finally, sweetened condensed milk 

(which I am convinced is the crucial ingredient)

So how did they turn out? I am really disappointed to say that they came out all wrong. See, Smitten Kitchen's recipe didn't specify how to layer the ingredients, so I just put them down in the order they were listed. Big mistake. If I had to do it again (and I most likely will try them again as I hate to admit defeat), I'd miss the coconut, pecans, and chocolate and butterscotch chips all together, then throw them over the crust. They taste ok, or at least ok enough to eat straight from the pan at 3am (I'm having some serious insomnia these days), but they just aren't spot on. All my hopes were pinned on the crisp at that point. 
 

chopped fuji apple in a lemon, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon bath

butter, dark brown sugar, and graham cracker crumb crust

finished product + a baby scoop of ice cream

The crisp was definitely the success story of the night. Perfect size, perfect flavors, perfect maiden voyage of the mini pie pan. Surprisingly I'm not in some sort of sugar coma today, although I do feel like I need to brush my teeth a few extra times to stave off cavities...

make it a double

Lately Fiona and I have been spending a lot of quality time together, and I know Kitty the Kitchenaid [stripper] was feeling lonely and unloved (yes, sometimes I assign not only names, but feelings, to my inanimate kitchen gadgets). So when I had a day last week when I just really needed to bake, it was time to put Kitty to work.


I had grand plans to try and fit in three different chocolate-based recipes: chocolate chip cookies (my go-to), chocolate chip banana bread (quickly becoming a go-to), and the afore-discussed Hello Dolly bars. The grocery near my metro stop, however, does not stock sweetened condensed milk, which is crucial for the third dish. After a near meltdown in the grocery (not at all about milk, that was just the final straw of the day), I relented and nixed the Hello Dollys. 


Turns out two chocolate chip-laden sweets were more than enough to keep my coworkers stopping by my desk all day long. Never one to resist chocolate, I did my fair share to decimate the supply, too. I may or may not have been contributing to that effort when my new boss stopped by our offices for the first time ever. It's about as awkward as you might expect to have a mouth full of cookie when you're meeting the new guy at 7am. 


I've really been slacking on the cooking front lately. I thought life would slow down a little once summer came to an end, but time is skipping along with the road trip coming up so soon. I'm already sitting here wondering how I can be watching Sunday football and planning for the work week again. 


Speaking of the end of summer, since I don't have any recent cooking/food photos, I'm bringing back the nostalgic little kid snapshots. Here's to the beginning of fall!

super bowl reese's cup

Towards the end of my impromptu week at home, we went in to the city for dinner with our family friends. We were celebrating a birthday, and as I mentioned, I wanted to handle dessert so that I could try and tweak the chocolate peanut butter square recipe that I first attempted for Allie's birthday.


When I made the squares the first time, I couldn't find Nabisco famous wafers, but managed to locate them at our local Harris Teeter this time. I was hoping that'd make all the difference in terms of a more cohesive crust. I just had to crush them with a rolling pin first (which was a surprisingly effective outlet for some pent up stress). 

I was a little over-excited by the presence of a microwave for butter-softening purposes, and things got a little out of control. By a little out of control, I mean in the last few seconds of heating, the stick of butter simply collapsed in the microwave. And no, I did not put it in a dish to warm it...

Gross, right? But butter disaster aside, I managed to whip everything together fairly quickly (which is an impressive feat, as I swear I'm the world's slowest, messiest cook). I'm disappointed to report that the crust was still a bit of a crumbly mess. Next time, I'm nearly doubling the butter quantity in the hopes that it will help things stick together better. Anyways, I threw together a little assembly line, and the (very heavy) pan was in the fridge in no time. 

We threw that in the cooler with wine, the mini peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's, and dark chocolate gelato that I'd made earlier in the day. 

If you have an ice cream maker, by the way, I am telling you this with all the seriousness I can muster: drop everything now and go make this. It is insanely delicious. If you can find Hershey's "special dark" cocoa powder at your grocery, that really takes it to the next level. And if you, like me, decide to make the batter before a marathon day of shopping, and leave it in your fridge for more than the one hour they suggest, fear not. That pudding like consistency that you come home to? Yeah, it still makes lick the bowl-worthy gelato. 

After dinner at our friends' house, we pulled out the dessert and set up yet another assemble line. Onto the plate went a peanut butter square, a scoop of gelato, a sprinkling of leftover cookie crumbs, and a few mini peanut butter cups. By dessert, the men-folk were watching football while we ladies chatted elsewhere, and from the den emerged a declaration from one of our friends: "Jenny, I am so proud of you...this is like the...Superbowl of Reese's cups!" He then begged for seconds of what is possibly the world's richest dessert. Success. 

(currently wondering why I didn't steal any leftovers...)

too chic to be here

One day, maybe six months ago now, I was wearing a dress I'd worn plenty of times before--just a plain black work dress.  I think I had on red shoes and my favorite long necklace (it was a gift from my parents, and has a beautiful chain with a tiny charm of the Eiffel Tower).  Nothing special, right?

see? not too cliche, just, well, cute!

I ran in to a coworker in the bathroom, and she complimented the ensemble.  "What are you doing here?" she asked me.  Confused (I mean, wouldn't you be? Isn't it a bit obvious...?), I just looked at her.  "You're just too chic to be here!" she exclaimed.  I don't think she meant just the bathroom. 


It was a very sweet sentiment, and I appreciated it, but it just made me laugh.  Sure, I've had plenty of what am I doing here? no really, WHAT AM I DOING HERE? moments at my various DC jobs, but none of them were incited by my wardrobe.  


Usually those moments were the result of a scathing conversation with a boss or a particularly menial task.  They usually led to slight concern that Wake Forest would soon send me a letter asking me for my business degree back.  They nearly always led to stress baking.


Today was one of those days where there were one too many hold the phone, how did I end up here? moments, and not one was because I looked chic.  


No, they were all because of little mistakes I kept making.  Mistakes I know better than to make.  Mistakes that are my job to avoid.  Mistakes that, in turn, made a few coworkers' days harder, too.  Mistakes that I'm sure many people have made before, but that I am particularly hard on myself for. 


And I feel terribly about it.  So I am stress baking.  Tomorrow, those coworkers will arrive to chocolate chip cookies, which I hope will reinforce the litany of apologies I subjected them to today. 


But as I was cooking, I was reminded of what that coworker said months ago about my outfit.  


I looked down and realized my apron, and many of the pretty/fancy things in my kitchen, must feel way too chic to be here.  And by here, I mean covering up my paint spattered, hole-y jeans and old sorority t-shirt.

kinda funny, right? the apron would totally be judging the jeans if they were, you know, animate objects.  the top of the apron is really the chicest part of all, which you might remember from here.

Not that I don't love my bumming around jeans--quite the opposite (how do you think they got so hole-y?)--they are my first pair of "designer" jeans, and I've had them since I was about 14.  I'm just amused by the juxtaposition of beat up old jeans and pretty little apron (another birthday gift from my sister). I'm also amused by the contrast of my mediocre culinary skills and my fairly well-stocked kitchen.  


I'm glad it's well-stocked, though, because I imagine that, until I settle in to this new job a little more gracefully, there's going to be a lot of stress baking and cooking in the near future. 


ps-in the spirit of being an informative blogger, I taste tested two cookies.  they're sinful if I do say so myself.  (hey, I deserve a touch of self-congratulations after such a spectacularly terrible day!)   

pps-Mom was the only participant in the "help me name the KitchenAid" game.  Therefore I want you all to meet Kitty.  (And while my mom was slightly concerned it sounds stripper-ish, it stuck the minute I read it.  So stripper associations or otherwise, I'm going with it.)

womp womp

lesson learned: hold the bag by the base (also, yes, that is the same bottle of V8 fusion juice that's been in that same place on the counter for, well, don't even ask me how many months)

cute? yes. precise? maybe not so much...

egg separation fail

lesson learned: frozen berries go rogue in the oven

For what I lack in meal preparation skills, I like to think I make up for in the baking arena.  I don't say this because I like to brag, but because I feel like I should be able to do at least something right in the kitchen. 

And usually, I can.  Usually, I can make an addictive batch of chocolate chip cookies for overseas friends, or a spot-on tiramisu for Sunday girls dinner.  I've expanded the repetoire lately to include the often-baked blueberry buttermilk cake, and I have a bevy of bookmarked links with new things to try.

So when my office decided we needed to send our boss off in style, I offered to crank out a few things for our final staff meeting with her.  I already knew my new go-to guy, mr. blueberry buttermilk, was going to make an appearance.  But this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to yank Pioneer' Woman's coffee cake recipe right out of the "someday file."  The Pioneer Woman's recipes have never failed me (see: bbq sauce, shortbread cookies), and I'm a sucker for anything with that much butter (there must be some French lineage in there somewhere...). 

Things did not get off to a fortuitous start.  As I was attempting to grease and flour the bundt pan, I grabbed the (very full) bag of flour by the top, and dropped a good cup to cup and half of flour in the sink.  After I defrosted a plethora of frozen blueberries, I dripped bright blue juice all over the floor.  As that cake baked, I noticed a remarkable absence of blueberries (meaning they'd all sunk to the bottom of the pan, which, unfortunately, became a very unattractive TOP of the cake). 

If all else fails, I've got the Pioneer Woman cake, I thought.

So while the blueberry cake baked along in the oven (losing a few reliability points, mind you) I chopped pecans, I creamed butter and sugar, I separated eggs....or should I say "I tried to separate eggs?" As i was cracking egg number two of three, I managed to drop a bit of yolk into my bowl of whites.  And I didn't have enough eggs to just start over.  Trying to embrace the Pioneer Woman's nonchalant attitude, I rolled with it (after kicking myself). 

When it came time to beat the egg whites into stiff peaks, I felt like the tiny bit of yolk was leading the whole crew on a revolt, because after several minutes of trying (with an electric mixer and with a whisk), I admitted defeat and accepted that the eggs were staunchly against moving past the soft peak stage. I folded them in to the batter, threw it in the pan, and poured the sinful topping on there (I say sinful because, well, it's butter, sugar, cinnamon, and pecans.  Heavy on the first two). 

I mean, really how big of a deal are properly beaten eggs? Right?

So, while me and my type A self would've been content to sit in front of the oven and watch the cake (hopefully) bake up properly, I had about eighty bajillion dishes to contend with.  See, I always start out all "clean as you go" and organized.  Then egg yolks go rogue, blueberry juice is all over the floor, the egg whites join the egg yolks in revolt, and I just don't have time to worry if the counter is littered with various tools that were pressed in to duty in an attempt to stave off a kitchen uprising.  

After what seemed like ages, my hands were pruney, but the casualties around the kitchen had all been accounted for and were scrubbed and drying peacefully on various towels.  I finally had time to check on the cake.

It was puffing up, not at all like the delicious "sinking" of the sinful toppings as Pioneer Woman had described in her recipe.  Even when I pulled it out of the oven and gave it a gentle (ok, maybe slightly violent) thwack on the counter, there wasn't much settling. 

But I am happy to report that when both coffee cakes were sliced up in oh-so-professional fashion (thanks to my years behind the counter at Midtown Cafe), they were incredible.  The Pioneer Woman cake in particular was a hit (I mean, three sticks of butter might be responsible for that...just sayin).  If there was any lingering hesitancy to my acceptance here in the office, I think it was decimated by the coffee cake. 

So anyways...normally "stress baking" manages to assuage whatever nagging worries have been keeping me awake at night.  The farewell coffee cakes certainly distracted me, but they were a little unexpectedly stressful.  Nevertheless, the overall success of the endeavor has re-convinced me that I can do at least one thing right in the kitchen, even if said kitchen ends up covered in blueberry juice.