gluten-free christmas cookies - almond, orange, clove

For me, Christmas cheer means cookies, and I'm not about to leave my gluten-free friends out in the cold. With bright orange, warm clove, and sweet almond, these got the ultimate thumbs-up -- total (joyful) annihilation -- on tree-trimming day.

A basic, chewy snickerdoodle recipe is a lovely start for cookies with no wheat flour -- it's forgiving as ol' St. Nick himself. (Let's hope Krampus isn't around.) If you have a preferred flour other than rice or coconut (even wheat), it'll probably work -- just keep the total flour input at 1 and 1/3 cups.

Gluten-Free Christmas Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup almond flour (store-bought or home-ground -- grind first, then measure)
1/2 cup rice flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar (if you don't have this, omit the baking soda and use 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder to substitute for both)
1 orange worth of zest (~1 tbsp)
scant 1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp salt

8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 tbsp fresh orange juice


METHOD

Set our your egg and butter and get out your nonstick baking sheets -- or prep regular ol' ones with parchment paper, a baking mat, or a good coating of butter and a tapped-even sprinkle of flour. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Measure your dry ingredients (zest, almond meal, coconut flour, rice flour, salt, and leavening agent/s) into a medium bowl and whisk to combine.

In a larger bowl, add your butter and sugar. Using an electric beater on medium speed, cream them together for 2 minutes. Add your egg and orange juice and beat for another minute to incorporate them evenly.

Add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients and mix by hand to combine. It'll be fairly wet and sticky. Drop rounded teaspoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving 2 inches between each to allow for spreading.

Bake for 8-10 minutes -- check 'em at 8. When they're done, they'll be golden around the edges and will look dry on top. Also, they'll be more springy than mushy if you poke the top with a finger.

Leave 'em on the baking sheets for a couple minutes to firm up, then remove them to a wire rack until they're cool enough to eat. Or store, I guess. These keep in a sealed container for two or three days, though they'll lose some of their crisp. Try layers of parchment paper between the cookies to preserve crispness.

If you'd like to make the dough ahead, you could seal it up and refrigerate it for up to a week or freeze it for up to 3 months, then bake on demand.

good tidings of comfort and few-to-no molten sugar burns

Happy New Year, faithful readers! I hope it's treated you well so far. (It treated me to a mini-marathon of Bones [can I register to receive one of each of the Deschanel sisters as a late Christmas present? theyaresocute], not entirely losing at Halo, and eating wonderful holiday treats from wonderful friends plus pork chops & sauerkraut and kale and roasted root vegetables cooked by an also-wonderful dreamthrum. I will gladly take a whole year of these sorts of small delights.)

If you're like me in that you're not quite ready to give up holiday foods yet, check out CurvyGirlGuide's collection of go-to holiday dishes -- they featured a few of mine!

I'm hoping to have some new ones to share with you soon. Things I've made in the recent past that I'm looking forward to refining in the near future include baklava and peanut butter cookies. If you've got any secrets to either of these, let me know! I will give you shoutouts & lurve.

And in further culinary adventures, tomorrow I'm gonna try making marshmallows! Wish me luck & few-to-no burns from molten sugar, and I'll let you know how it goes. But first, sleep, a quick run out for graham crackers and Hershey's bars, and the building of the sort of fire that will produce good hot coals. In that order, yes.

recipe: linzertorte

Some facts about the linzertorte: 1) It is basically an almondy cookie cake. 2) It is filled with raspberry jam. 3) It is spiced to taste like Christmas. 4) The amount of effort it takes to make < the amount of impressed your friends & family will be.

By "facts" I might've meant "reasons why linzertortes are a holiday tradition in my family". Here is one additional reason:



I never feel like it's really the holidays until I've made one of these. It's the perfect thing to take to parties, and can safely be made a day or two ahead (fact 5: it's tastier after a day or so) and/or in steps, as your schedule allows.

Linzertorte
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking, Not Derby Pie, and The Joy of Baking.
Serves ~12 (it's very rich, so small wedges will do)


INGREDIENTS

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour (If you like/have white-whole-wheat, 1/2 c. of that plus 3/4 c. all purpose also works)
1 c. almond flour (or fine-ground blanched [skinless] almonds)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon or orange zest (1 lemon or ≥1/2 orange worth)

2/3 c. white granulated sugar
3/4 c. (1.5 sticks) butter
2 egg yolks

1 1/4 c. (~1 jar, ~10 oz.) tasty raspberry preserves
2 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon or orange juice


METHOD

Add your dry ingredients into a medium bowl (you can zest the citrus straight into the bowl to capture all the good zesty oils) and whisk to combine.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar for ~3 minutes, until they've lightened in color and texture. Beat in the egg yolks for ~1 minute until well incorporated. Stir in the dry ingredients, 1/3rd-ish at a time, until well combined.

Divide the mixture into 2 parts, one a bit larger than the other -- about 60%/40%. Ball & smush one part in your hands until it's happy (read: non-crumbly) enough to stay in ball form, then flatten it slightly into more of a disc. Do the same for the other! Wrap each disc separately in plastic/foil/a sandwich bag and pop them both in the fridge. They need to chill for 30 minutes at the very least, and preferably at least an hour. They will not be harmed by hanging out in there for a whole day, in fact, if you find that you've got Other Things To Do.

When the dough is chilled and you're ready to bake, butter & flour a 9-inch springform. (A cake or tart pan would also work, provided it's at least 2 inches deep.) Prepare to roll your dough out: sprinkle some flour on a large surface (I like sticking a piece of wax or parchment paper to the counter with a few drops of water and rolling on that for ease of turning the dough and moving it into the pan, but your mileage may vary if you can't get the paper to stick), get some flour on your clothes/face/hair, rub your rolling pin down with some flour, panic.

Next, stop panicking. This is not pie crust, this is cookie crust. It's really forgiving. Take out the larger piece of dough and roll it out into a big, evenly thick, mostly circular shape that's ~1-2 inches larger in diameter than your pan. A few cracks around the edges are okay -- just pinch them back together. Drape the dough down into the pan as centeredly as possible and press the bottom down and the sides up. The sides need to be 1/2 to 1 inch high -- just high enough to hold your jam. You can smoosh the dough around, breaking chunks off where there's too much and adding them where it's sparse -- like I said, not a pie crust.

This is a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Measure out your jam into a small bowl and mix in your citrus juice, then pour/spread the mixture evenly into the crust.

Take the second half of the crust out of the fridge and roll it out into an oval that's about as wide as your pan the short way across -- it'll be a bit thinner than the bottom crust was. With a large, flour-dusted knife, slice it width-wise into strips 1/2 inch wide.

Now, if you're very motivated you could lattice the strips properly across the top of the jam-filled crust, but what I do is just lay one set of strips down across the top, 1/2 inch apart and parallel to each other, and then lay a second set down perpendicular to and right across the top of the first set. It'll still look plenty pretty. If you do it my way, I think it's helpful to start in the middle with the longest pieces and move towards the edges with shorter pieces.

Either way, you're going to want to press the ends of each strip down into the edge of the crust. Trim off any extra lengths and smoosh them down into any gaps between the strips, and use any leftover dough to further even out the rim of the crust. I like rolling the excess dough into snakes and using strips & bits of those to fill in the gaps.

I brushed an egg wash onto the linzertorte pictured (beat 1 egg with a fork and then use a pastry brush to spread a thin layer over the crust), but it's not necessary. Iiii actually think it's prettier without it.

Pop the torte in the oven and bake for 40 minutes, or until it smells lovely and the crust is golden brown and pulling away from the edges on the pan. It'll be crumbly & sorta dry when it's warm and will get better the longer you let it sit, so try to let it cool completely before serving -- it might take a couple hours. You can decorate it with a bit of powdered sugar (put a tablespoon or two in a fine mesh sieve and tap the edge while holding it over the torte to sprinkle it on) if you like. The torte will be even nicer the next day, once the jam has had a chance to seep into the crust a little and all the flavors have really melded, so I recommend baking it a day ahead if you have time, or saving a slice for breakfast if you don't. Just seal it up in airtight containers and finish it within a week or so if there happens to be any leftover.

Thanksgiving can also have tricks and treats

Happy Thanksgiving, American compatriots! If you're looking for something to do with that extra bag of cranberries you accidentally bought, I recommend sugaring them for a pretty table setting/delicious cranberry candy 2-hit combo.



My contribution to the dessert table this year will hypothetically be this Pear Butterscotch Pie from Epicurious. "Hypothetically" because it's in the oven right now, and it's looking a lot more like one of Mrs. Lovett's pies than the thing in Gourmet's picture, and we're out of tin foil so I can't tent the edges of the crust to prevent overbrowning. [Though really, if I manage to not set it on fire I'll be doing better than I have with Thanksgiving dishes in the past. (I apparently only bust out the en fuego accidental for special holiday occasions. It's the best hostess gift ever? It's thematically warm & stressful?)] Will let you know how it turns out!


In the meanwhile, a non-caloric holiday treat: a new episode of Consumerism WOW by Adam & me! Adam picked the things we talked about this month, including but not limited to this shirt design:

Thing #5


Lauren: Your dour demeanor so frequently belies your gleeful mood that you want to reassure people that on the inside, you are super excited about everything. OR you want to trick people into thinking that you’re super excited about everything so they’ll be off their guard for the unequivocal pants-kicking that you’re about to deliver them.

Adam: Well now that you explained about the pants-kicking my success rate at fooling people is going right in the toilet! And hey, I’m not dour, Lauren! I am inscrutably magi-cranky, thank you very much.


Visit Adam's blog to discover his nefarious consumer desires and learn some Science! He sure learned me about rainbows.

recipe: chocolate Guinness cookies

I made these beer-flavored cookies for the Great Guinness Toast a couple weeks ago. The recipe is cobbled together from my double-chocolate bacon cookie base and this White Beer Cookie recipe from an episode of Ultimate Recipe Showdown on Food Network that I never watched, but discovered anyway through the wonderment of Google dot com.

They took a bit of trial and error -- I wound up using sugar in the beer syrup instead of honey (which overpowered the Guinness), and my attempt to compensate for the sugary beer syrup by adding less sugar to the dough created tiny cakes rather than less-sweet cookies. (I do the Science so you don't have to.) The end result was a cookie with a hit of chocolate at first taste and an addictively bitter bite at the back of the palate. They go perfect with a pint! And if you're looking to bring something to a St. Patrick's Day party, I can guarantee that adding stout to cookies will make them more Irish than green food coloring.

Chocolate Guinness Cookies
Makes ~24 cookies. Adapted from Kathy's chocolate cookie recipe on Allrecipes.com and from Sean LaFond's White Beer Cookies, with thanks to Sarah's Sweet Tooth for testing.


INGREDIENTS

Guinness syrup

2 bottles of Guinness (12 oz each)
5 tbsp sugar

Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or 1/2 a vanilla pod, scraped)
1/3 cup prepared Guinness syrup

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda [NOTE: If you're using Dutch-process (aka pre-alkalized) cocoa powder, you should use baking POWDER instead. Otherwise you'll end up with oven-baked pancakes.]

1 tbsp powdered (confectioner's) sugar for pretty


METHOD

Set out your butter and egg first to allow them to start warming up to room temperature.

For the Guinness syrup, pour both bottles of beer into a small saucepan and add the sugar. Set the pan over medium-high heat and bring the liquid to a boil, stirring to help the sugar dissolve. When the liquid hits a boil, lower the heat to a busy simmer and let the liquid reduce to a syrup, stirring more than occasionally but less than frequently. It'll take 20 minutes or more -- you're looking for it to become a rich amber color, and gain the consistency of thin honey or thick maple syrup. Also, it'll begin foaming really aggressively when you stir it (more aggressively than that... wait for it...) and will be almost exactly 1/3 cup in volume.

Take the saucepan off the heat and transfer the syrup to a small dish to allow it to cool down.

Get your oven preheating to 350.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine your dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking powder or soda, and salt) and stir with a whisk to fully incorporate. (This helps break up any clumps and get the leavening agent fully distributed.)

In a large mixing bowl, combine your softened butter (you can just nuke it for a few seconds if, like some authors of this recipe, you forgot to set it out earlier) and your white & brown sugars. Cream them together with an electric blender on medium speed for 2-3 minutes, until the mixture has lightened in color and begun to hold the wavey shapes that the beaters sculpt it into as they pass through it. Add your vanilla, egg, and Guinness syrup, and blend for another minute or so until everything is incorporated.

Put down the beater! You'll want to use a spoon or spatula for this next part so that you don't overwork the flour. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and stir gently (but, y'know, firmly) until no dry pockets remain. The dough will be sticky.

Butter and flour a baking sheet (unless it's REALLY high-quality nonstick). Roll a rounded teaspoonful of dough into a ball in your hands and then flatten it slightly before placing it on the sheet, and repeat until you fill the sheet, leaving a couple inches between each cookie. (If you don't like getting your hands dirty, you can drop the dough onto the sheet directly from the spoon and flatten it slightly once it's on there, but I find that they come off easier when you do the flattening beforehand.)

Pop the sheet in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies look dry and provide a bit of springy resistance when you poke them (carefully, folks) with a fingertip. Remove the sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to continue cooking on it for a couple minutes before transferring them to a rack (preferred) or plate (less preferred) to cool.

For the pretty: Once the cookies are cool to the touch, put maybe a tablespoon of powdered sugar in a fine mesh sieve and hold the sieve over the plate of cookies. Tap the edge of the sieve to dust the powder onto the cookies. Pretty! (If you're feeling more ambitious than I was that night, a perfect topping/decoration might be a drizzle of white chocolate. Maybe with a bit of Irish cream mixed in carefully as the chocolate cools?)

I can't tell you how they hold up after the first day 'cause none of them survived the night. If you find out, you tell me. (Hypothetically, they should do okay in a sealed container for a day or two before they start going stale, and 10 seconds or so in a microwave should help perk them up after that.)

good fortune

If you're sitting around, either waiting to go out or settling in for the evening, and had the thought cross your mind that really, you'd like to do a bit more tax-deductible donating before the close of the year, then this is a fortuitous Internet meeting, friend!

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is one of my favorite organizations to toss digital monies at, firstly because they help protect the rights of adults to read and own works of literature and art as such they choose, and secondly because they offer really worthwhile gifts and merchandise. (If you're still looking for a few belated holiday gifts for folks of the geek persuasion, they're a perfect place to look -- they've got lots of signed editions of terrific comics and novels, in addition to artwork and sundry perfumes, t-shirts, and etc.) So, yes, you should check out the CBLDF store.

Child's Play, the gamers' charity set up by the kids from Penny Arcade, allows you to send toys, books, movies, and games directly to any of several dozen children's hospitals around the world through Amazon.com. Christmas is past, but sick kids can still use the entertainment. You can also donate directly to the organization through Paypal -- they've always got administrative costs to consider.

Locally, the Atlanta Community Food Bank helps a lot of people have brighter holidays -- and happier, healthier new years. If, like me, you find yourself with more desire to give than actual dollars, you can always sign up to volunteer -- or donate just a few dollars.



Some terrible things have happened this year, and I can't say I won't be a little glad to see it go. But my family is deeply possessed of good humor, my friends are magnificent bastards, and a man who delights me every day loves me. I am so grateful for my good fortune. It's five hours to 2010 -- I wish you all a lovely end to the year, an even better beginning to the new one, and all the best fortune throughout!

recipe: simple stovetop egg nog

Egg nog is easy to make! Like crème brulee, except you don't bake it. If you're thinking, "well that sounds hard and doesn't encourage me to try making egg nog," I bet you've never had anyone show you how dangerously easy it is to make crème brulee. And I'll fix that sometime soon. But for now, just consider: Do you have half an hour to stand around your stove stirring something? If so, you can make some egg nog.


Simple Stovetop Egg Nog
Adapted from Alton Brown, Simply Recipes, and Cook's Illustrated.

Makes a quart of nog, which serves 4 to 6 people, depending on how much of it they want to drink. If you have any serious egg nog enthusiasts, you might want to double the recipe.


INGREDIENTS

2 eggs
3 egg yolks*
1/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/8 tsp salt (I used sea salt 'cause it has plenty of time to dissolve)

1 cup heavy cream (that's a half-pint)
1 cup milk (anything from 1% to whole will be fine, I might not try nonfat)
2 whole cloves (do NOT substitute ground cloves)

1/2 tbsp vanilla extract (or half a bean, scraped with pod reserved, which would be so tasty and fancy-looking)
1/4 cup bourbon or dark rum (technically optional. But I used 1/3 cup, an' what?)
1/2 tsp fresh-grated nutmeg (the fresh seriously makes a delicious difference)


METHOD

In a heavy 2-3 quart saucepan, combine your eggs, egg yolks, sugar, and salt. Whisk them briskly for at least a minute, until the mixture is foamy and has lightened a bit in color. (If you're using a nonstick pan, be sure to use a silicone-coated whisk -- and if you don't have one, do the whisking in a mixing bowl! You don't want any Teflon in your egg nog.)

Add a half cup of cream and whisk it in good -- you want the mixture to be smooth and fully incorporated before you add more. Add the remaining half cup of cream and whisk again until smooth. Do the same with the milk, a half cup at a time. This makes sure that all the proteins and fats from the eggs and milk are snuggled in with each other so that your nog will be satin-smooth. Drop in the whole cloves (they'll steep while the mixture heats).

Set your pot of nog on the stove, and turn the burner to the second lowest setting. Set a timer for 25 minutes. Ready for an arm workout? Start stirring, sir and/or madam. (I like using a whisk and keeping it going at a pretty good clip, but if you're using a nonstick pan and you don't have a safely coated whisk, a wooden or plastic spoon at a splash-avoidingly sedate pace will be fine.) You want to keep stirring constantly and heat the mixture gently-gently-gently. This may try your patience, but don't be tempted to turn the heat up. After about 10 minutes the nog should start steaming a little, and you want to maintain that steam without letting it reach a full simmer. If you let the mixture simmer, you'll have finely scrambled eggs instead of lovely drinkable custard. So if it begins steaming really profusely, turn the heat down to low and keep stirring.

If you have to stop stirring and step away for a minute or so, don't worry, you won't kill the egg nog. But it's best to keep it moving so that a) a skin won't form on top [ever made gravy?], and b) it won't heat too much or too unevenly. See above re: scrambled eggs.

You'll know the egg nog is done when a probe thermometer tells you it's 160 degrees F. Or when you dip a metal spoon in the nog and then watch the way that the custard drips off the back of the spoon -- it should coat the spoon entirely and evenly, and pool a little thicker along the edge before dripping off. Or when the timer you set goes off, provided that the mixture has been putting off steam for at least 10 minutes.

The egg nog will thicken a bit as it cools, but if you like a thicker egg nog, you can safely continue cooking it for another 10 minutes or so, stirring all the while. I kept mine going for a full 35 minutes, and it turned out like melted ice cream (yay). If you're not going to be adding any booze, I'd recommend taking it off the heat at 25 minutes.

Once it's off the stove, add in your flavorings and stir (again, more, yes) to incorporate. Pour or ladle the egg nog through a fine mesh sieve into a happy-in-the-fridge container (I used a cleaned-out Chinese delivery soup container 'cause I'm highfalutin') and cover it tightly. (If you don't have a fine mesh sieve, you can skip this step -- just fish out the whole cloves. The straining gets out any little lumpy egg bits and perfects the texture, but it'll be fine without this step.) Refrigerate for at least 3 hours, and up to 3 days.


MAKIN' IT FANCY

You can serve this egg nog plain -- just stir it first (your arm should have recovered by now) 'cause it'll have separated a little. Or you can:

--Sprinkle an extra bit of freshly-ground nutmeg on top of each serving for dual-purpose eye/nose-pleasing decoration. AND/OR:

--Whip 1/2 cup of heavy cream until it forms soft peaks, and gently fold/stir it into the egg nog. (This will give the egg nog a very pretty, snowy-looking layer of cream on top when you serve it.) OR:

--Whip 2 egg whites until they form soft peaks, and gently fold/stir them into the egg nog. (I have not tried this so I don't know what it does! But Alton Brown thinks it's a good idea, and he knows stuff.)


FLAVOR OPTIONS

If you're cooking for people who can't have alcohol, a teaspoon of (nonalcoholic) rum flavoring added at the end with the vanilla and nutmeg might be a nice addition.

If you order flavored lattes with extra pumps of gingerbread or pumpkin spice syrup: Consider ignoring my recommendation about the whole cloves. In fact, forget the whole cloves. Instead, when you take the pot off the heat, add a scant 1/8 tsp ground cloves and a scant 1/4 tsp cinnamon in addition to the other flavorings.


*OH HAY, A TUTORIAL

Separating eggs takes a bit of practice, and is a bit messy, but don't be intimidated: Working over your sink, tap the waistline of an egg on the edge of a bowl or on the surface of the counter a couple times until a crack forms. Hold the egg upright over the sink, and carefully open it the way you'd open a hinged box. A bunch of the egg white will fall into the sink! Pull the top half of the egg shell off. If you've got two somewhat even halves of shell, you can gently tip the yolk into the empty top half, being careful not to snag the yolk on the sharp edges of the shell, and then pour any remaining white out of the bottom half of the shell -- and if that doesn't get rid of most of the white, you can repeat that yolk transfer a few times. If you end up with one "half" of the shell not being large enough to hold the yolk, just cup your palm and empty the egg into it, carefully cradling the yolk and letting the white of the egg sludge through your fingers. If at any point the yolk breaks and starts to run, don't worry about how much white is left in with it -- just add it to the mixing bowl. A little extra white won't hurt anything here.

If you want, you can also save the egg whites in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 4 days for use in this or other cocktails or baking projects. They'll also keep in the freezer for up to 6 months.

consumerism WOW it's december already

It's time, friends and colleagues, for a precociously holiday-themed edition of Consumerism Wow! Fellow Awesomancer and t-shirt lover Adam P. Knave and I have teamed up again to tell you about why we like some things -- not just t-shirts, this time! -- that we think you will like, too.

Part 1 of this veritable thing-liking extravaganza can be found here, on Adam's blog. Click through if you'd like to see some of the things that I think you should consider purchasing, along with Adam's completely vaguely super-incorrect reasons for why I think so. The following is Part 2: Adam's picks, and my explanations for why he likes them! Perhaps you should read about them now?


THINGY #1

Lauren: Oh man! Someone illustrated that fanfic you wrote and put the picture on a t-shirt? Is there a picture on the back of you as the zombie leader of the zombie-Harlem Globetrotters?

Adam: No there isn't and I'm rather ups... HEY! Nice try but you won't get me to admit my zombie-doo fanfic writing ways THAT easily!


THINGY #2

Lauren: Branding for fictional corporations is the best kind of branding, 'cause you don't have to feel guilty about how they treat their employees or source their materials 'cause they're all fictional. Also, you can't stop dreaming about electric sheep. And Rutger Hauer.

Adam: Rutger Hauer is a fine, fine looking man. You know, I wonder how Blade-Doo-Runner would go...


THINGY #3

Lauren: You want to remind people that real vampires can sparkle and be adorable if they damn well want to.

Adam: Exactly. Except for the sparkly bit. And the adorable bit. Also the vampire bit, if you want to be picky. I mean... yeah. But otherwise? Spot on!


THINGY #4

Lauren: You're just hoping that people will do weird shit around you so that you can turn them into characters and plot devices in your writing.

Adam: I don't need them to do anything special for that. No I just want the cover. The more people out there causing trouble the less my own schemes will be noticed and stopped. I just want to use society as a looky loo. Is that so wrong?


THINGY #5

Lauren: Aww, this one is actually really sweet. Unless by “things” you mean “more post-zombie-apocalyptic Scooby Doo self-insertion fanfiction.”

Adam: Why would I mean that? I mean, who would ever... what makes you think that? YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING, LAUREN!


THINGY #6

Lauren: I don't care why you want this. If you saved all of your NES and Genesis came cartridges, and all that stands between me and the most badass throwdown marathon of Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers and Bubble Bobble is the purchase of this gadget and a plane ticket, I'm coming to your apartment in 3 to 5 processing & shipping days.

Adam: I was thinking of buying a few of my old carts back, actually. Yer on, Spanky!


THINGY #7

Lauren: They didn't have a Duck Dodgers statuette?

Adam: Oh, see, now that's just mean, that is. It's Buck! The original space badass! We don't mock Buck, we just don't. That's like mocking the baby Jeebus.


THINGY #8

Lauren: Okay clearly this is a joke shirt 'cause we've already discussed that if you could travel back in time, you'd be wearing really sleek suits and drinking martinis in the 60's, not hanging out here & now wearing t-shirts. You want this shirt so you can throw rival time travelers off your space-time scent.

Adam: Well that was the plan until you ruined it! If it wasn't for you and those zombie kids!


THINGY #9

Lauren: Shiny bits of plastic to taunt your kitty with from a high-standing shelf! Before you make this purchase, I recommend making sure that kitty hasn't built a jetpack based on the design from that Buck Rogers statuette.

Adam: My cat could not use a jetpack. She has no thumbs. I gave her one, to make sure, and she just licked it and sat on it. She has no interest in flying.


THINGY #10

Lauren: Oh, nevermind, with this you will have all the protection your shiny bits of plastic will need from evil bejetpacked kitty. Kitty will be easily subdued! This is a titanium folding kitty-incapacitation system! PLUS it will be a handy tool for eating with when I serve you some delicious homemade kittypop tarts that are too fresh and hot to pick up!

Adam: Can we please do a comic - Jetpack Kitty vs The Spork? Like, serious please? C'mon. No, wait, why are you running away, Lauren? Was it something I said?


And other than posting this evidence of why she fled, Lauren the grammarmonkey was never seen nor heard from again. Happy Consumer Holidays, folks!

no fate but what we make for ourselves

Okay, my post title is a Terminator 2 reference. And it doesn't even apply that hard to what I'm trying to get at. AN' WHAT. I like that movie. It's about family and Linda Hamilton's awesome arms and a mixture of practical and digital effects that continues to hold up to my aesthetic discrimination.

Perhaps you should forget everything I said after "family".

Families are mutable. Members are born or grafted in, and others pass or branch away. My closest friends & I call each other family nouveau, though at this point I feel like the "nouveau" is superfluous. When I spend time with them doing the most human things -- cooking, laughing, holding their children's hands, sharing our stories -- we are family.

This has been a strange, difficult year for me. I've come to virtual emotional fisticuffs with depression, anxiety, new loves and loves past, and sudden loss. But, luckily for all of us, the universe doesn't revolve around me & my tribulations, nor around any of my family members or their own troubles. For as much awkwardness and hurt as any of us experience, there are still days bright & brisk, grandparents lavish with hugs and gifts, favorite movies and games to re-experience, technically and calorically hazardous new recipes to attempt, dessert tables, espresso and sambuca, comfy pants, ready smiles. I will save these things up to remember when everything seems terrible, because the world is every bit as beautiful as I'm capable of helping make it.

thanksgiving panic planning

Thanksgiving is next week! I'm shocked, frankly, shocked. And trying to come up with something to bake.

Traditionally I've done a linzer torte, which is like a very large spiced almond cookie with raspberry jam-type filling and pain-in-the-tuchus latticework on top -- but my dear family nouveau includes a child with a nut allergy, so I figure that probably, grinding a bunch of almonds into airborne powder in their kitchen would be rude.

A couple years back I made my other favorite holiday dessert, my mother's apple cake (which I posted a pear riff on awhile back -- most of my friends dislike cooked apples). I'm bored with that, though! Hello, my name is Lauren and I am Short Attention Span Theater.

This pear-butterscotch pie, which The Kitchn kindly pointed me towards, is a serious contender. The only Thing about it is that I hate pastry crust. Hate. Seriously. Don't tell me it's not that hard. The salt in my pie crusts comes from my tears of suffering and humiliation. Yes, even the storebought kind. Hate. Pastrycrust.

This is also the Thing about this s'mores pie, which also sounds wondermous.

Perhaps I shall grow some lady-balls and make one of these happen.

Unless you have any better, non-pastry-crust-related suggestions?

recipe: Spiced Pear Cake

This recipe is based on a German/Jewish Apple Cake that my mother used to make around the holidays. She died when I was a kid, and her recipe box was lost in my father's & my resulting move to Florida -- we moved to be closer to my father's mother, who could look after me while my father was at work. When I started getting into baking in college,* I tried to reconstruct the recipe based on shoddy memories of being 6 years old and up to my little elbows in thin-sliced, cinnamon-sugar--coated apples. It never quite came out the way I remembered it, and it wasn't until I was 25 that I thought to ask my family about it -- upon which I received a recipe card in the mail in about a week, hand-written in my grandmother's neat script with the kind of blue ballpoint that she'd always come back with a box of after visiting her State Farm agent.

It'd be lovely for Thanksgiving -- the cake comes out super-dense & moist with a sort of buttery toffee flavor, and the spices are classic fall fare. I modded the recipe to use pears instead of apples 'cause I've got a lot of friends who don't like cooked-apple texture. (The pears are nice, but I still recommend apples -- and the fruit is sliced so thin that it ends up more soft-caramely than pulpy/mushy anyway.) It can be served warm or cool or chilled, with ice cream if you want, or a melted chocolate drizzle maybe, or plain and with coffee.


Spiced Pear Cake

INGREDIENTS

4 medium pears
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, gently melted (but not hot)
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt


METHOD

Peel the pears and slice thin (but not VERY thin... maybe 1/8th of an inch. thick enough so they don't fall apart on you). In a bowl, toss the slices gently with the spices and 1/4 cup of sugar and then set aside.

Beat the sugar and eggs together with an electric mixer until the mixture lightens and expands a bit in volume (maybe 2 minutes?). Add the butter and beat for another minute or so, then stir in the vanilla. (You could do all this with a whisk if you needed a workout.)

Sift together the dry ingredients. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture (adding it in 2 or 3 batches works well) until the batter is smooth. Grease an 8x8 baking pan (if it's not nonstick) and pour in the batter. A 9-inch round should also work.**

Now is a good time to preheat your oven to 350.

Take the bowl of now-macerated pear slices and discard some of the pear juice/melted sugar that's collecting in it -- you don't want to add too much moisture to the cake. Then, starting about 1/8th of an inch in from the outer edge of pan, lay the pear slices down on top of the batter one at a time, parallel to the sides of the pan, overlapping each slice just a bit. Go around the pan in a ring, and then start a second ring inside the first, overlapping the rings a bit, too. Keep going until you fill the pan or run out of fruit (hopefully the former). This will be a pain in your ass.

When you're done, pop the pan in the oven for ~60 minutes. (If you ended up using a 9x9 pan 'cause you're a naughty baker like me and don't own all that many pans, try ~40 minutes.) When it's done, the cake should be pulling away from the sides of the pan and poking up between the pear slices, which should be golden-caramel-brown, and a toothpick near the center should come out clean. Allow pan to cool at least 15 minutes before serving, but it's even better the next day. Preferably for breakfast.


SUPER-SEEKRIT SHORTCUT & OTHER NOTES

If you wanted to, you could chop the pears into smallish chunks instead of slicing them all fancy, and just kinda scatter the macerated chunks over the batter. But the fancy slices really are pretty.

If you're going to use apples, I like Granny Smith 'cause I'm quaint like that but any tart, firm, baking-approved apple would be okay. Just slice the apples VERY thin if you're doing the fancy slicing thing -- ~1/16th of an inch, or as thin as you can get them consistently and still be able to handle them. And add up to 1/4 cup more sugar during the maceration process, and make sure the mixture sits for at least an hour. Apples are stubborn.

The spices you add to the fruit are a flavor adventure (i.e., spice to taste). I think 1.5 tsp of total spice is a good amount to aim for, though.

* Man I wish I didn't know enough potheads that this sounded less than innocent.

** Baking 911 has a good pan-volume chart for use in emergency substitutions.