Say You're Sorry Sour Cream Cake

A barroom reenactment of the Mantis
beseeching the neighbors for midnight
cat retrieval assistance.

Remember that time when you accidentally opened that one window which has no screen, and your boyfriend's cat snuck out and ended 40 feet up the tree in the next door neighbor's back yard at 11:30 PM on a work night? No? Well, then, that must have been me.
Seriously. Forty feet up the neighbor's tree. As midnight approached. Nothing but a pair of iridescent demon eyes reflecting the flashlight. The neighbors were good sports, holding a second flashlight and even letting the Mantis use their ladder, but no. The cat was retrievable at about 20 feet, but there was no way to get to her when she scrambled up twice as high. So, after about 40 minutes or so of keeping the neighbors up way past their bedtimes, and wondering if a real fire department would really rescue a real cat from a real tree, we had no real options except to wait for daylight. We apologized repeatedly and profusely to the neighbors, then waited it out until the alarm went off at 5:30.

Cranberry-Pecan Bourbon Bars

No spray paint was used in the baking of this recipe!

I am all about playing the Pantry Game. You know, the one where you throw open the pantry and see what you can do with whatever you have. I had just a bit of white chocolate leftover from the Thai fudge project. I had pecans and cranberries left from the cornbread Christmas stuffing. And really, when do I not have bourbon?
These bars were baked as dessert for a meal with a few friends on New Year's Eve. Really, the menu was not nearly as memorable as the cocktails. I could have served, oh, I don't know, think of the most revolting thing you have ever been served. I could have served big plates of that, and after half a French 75, you would have never noticed what was on your plate.

White Chocolate & Thai Tea Fudge

The first attempt: the tea is dry, not bloomed in water or vodka.

This is not my recipe. The original recipe is surpassingly simple and elegant, and the results are beautiful. Plus, I love a thai iced tea, so much so that I don't even care how much carcinogenic food dye they use to make that radioactive orange color.

The original recipe specified white chocolate. I am just not a fan. If it's chocolate, I want it to be dark and bitter and just a little sweet. Not bland and white and cloying. Ok, two things: first, I love thai iced tea. And second? Well, just look at the darn blog. If this woman says "Cook this, it's delicious," I am simply not going to argue. I am going to cook what she says to cook the way she says to cook it. So I bought white chocolate.

Vanilla Porter Cupcakes

11.11.11 has come and is long gone. The Canadian Chemist hosted the Nigel Tufnel Day festivities, and a good time was had by all. The Canadian Chemist also happens to be an accomplished brewer, with a brand-new batch of vanilla porter on tap. I had seen a recipe for Blue Moon cupcakes, and filed the idea away for later use...well, vanilla porter cupcakes with chocolate stout icing sounded like a good idea...

You would not think such a small number of ingredients could
wreak such havoc. You would be wrong.

These cupcakes were baked and eaten and enjoyed weeks ago. I am very late in getting this to post. I have about a million slips of paper with recipe notes, all over my house. I lost the slip with this recipe on it. I hate it when that happens. I find slips everywhere, which are unlabeled, consisting of just a list of ingredients in a mind-boggling mixture of weights and measures. What I finally found was a recipe fragment on the same slip as an unrelated recipe for pumpkin custard. A quick check of my reference recipe...yep, this is it.

Cinnamon Streusel Coffeecake

Assemble your ingredients.

So it's Thanksgiving, and there is no turkey in my kitchen. This is actually ok. There was an easy, lovely brunch with some very close friends. The Tall Acoustician spread newspaper all over the kitchen counter and floor and made bacon and pancakes. Turns out this was actually a necessary (and remarkably effective) prophylactic measure against bacon spatter and pancake batter (and he probably should have wrapped himself with newspaper as well). There was cheesy, mushroomy quiche. Savory bite-sized sausage balls. Sweet mimosas and bloody marys with sour okra pickles. Spicy cake. This cake. Later on, there was a small dinner with more dear friends, followed by a late-night adventure with Miss V wherein we failed an attempt at scoring me a Black Friday midnight TV at the Best Buy, then failed again at the Wal-Mart. Which is probably all to the good, since if I had a television I would probably never get out of my pajamas or leave the house.

Peanut Butter Cookies

With the price of peanut butter getting ready to skyrocket, what better time to bake an enormous batch of peanut butter cookies? But, the belly wants what it wants, and what it wanted was peanut butter cookies. I am no peanut butter snob, but I can taste the difference between Skippy and Jif. I know a spoonful of Peter Pan when I taste one. I won't buy store brands because they never get it right. Ok, maybe I am a peanut butter snob. When I was a kid, choosy mothers chose Jif, but my mom inevitably picked Skippy and my grandmother always had a jar of Peter Pan.

Recently, I have been buying the Smart Balance brand. It started with a coupon, but continues because I really like the deep roasted flavor. You open the jar, and it's three shades darker than any other peanut butter, smells roasty and delicious, isn't too sweet, and has just the right amount of salt. However, my latest jar was a huge tub of Planter's. Yes, Mr. Peanut makes peanut butter. It's not quite as deep and rich as the Smart Balance, but it was pretty cheap (again, it all comes down to the coupon).

So, when you google peanut butter cookie recipes, you get endless claims that these cookies are the world's best, the ne plus ultra, the apex, the epitome, the whatever best-est synonym came up in the thesaurus. It all depends on what you like, I guess. I like these. They are not fancy, they are just easy and peanut buttery. And whole wheaty, which obviously makes them health food. You probably should eat two. Or three. But then you need to give the rest away, a dozen at a time.

Everything you need to get baking!

What You Need

• 125g (1 cup) white whole wheat flour
• 150g (1¼ cup) all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 225g (2 sticks, ½ lb) butter
• 340g (12 oz, 1¼ cups) peanut butter
• 140g (¾ cup) granulated sugar
• 150g (¾ cup, packed) light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla butternut extract
• 2 TBS granulated sugar (for rolling dough balls)

Pumpkin Crunch Bars

You should never poison your friends. This is axiomatic. But sometimes, you know, it's just really hard not to.

Today's challenge: gluten free. I am not gluten-intolerant, but these were made for a dear friend who cannot eat gluten. At all. Ever. Seriously, do you have any idea how difficult this is? I didn't and probably still don't. Gluten is everywhere. Sort of like air, only most of us can (and do) routinely inhale air without the terror of imminent death. The idea of having to carefully scrutinize every label may not be so bad (some of us are compulsive label readers already), but imagine not being able to eat at any restaurant ever again. Yeah, that's what I thought. Me neither.

I was so preoccupied with being clever with this dessert that it completely escaped my notice that, while the pumpkin bars would not kill her, the marinated sun-dried tomatoes I also fed her just might, as the Italian dressing they were soaking in was loaded with MSG. The moral of the story? Eat dessert first. That way, even if your friends are trying to poison you with the entrée, you will be too full to eat any of it.

Curried Pumpkin Scones

So just recently my BFF the WX Goddess asked about pumpkin recipes. Somehow she allowed herself to be persuaded to make a trio of pumpkin desserts for a Thanksgiving celebration. We batted ideas back and forth for an afternoon, but really, all you need to do is visit the good people at King Arthur and type pumpkin into their recipe search engine.

Which I did, and if you do this you will know precisely what caught my eye first: Curried Pumpkin and Ginger Scones. Not entirely appropriate for a Thanksgiving dessert, but then, I am not the one who needs to make three different pumpkin treats for a single meal. I just need a quick breakfast.

I have mentioned before how much I detest recipe reviews wherein the reviewer hates the recipe... but did not actually follow the recipe. As in, I did not have any pumpkin, so I just used applesauce, and I hate curry so I skipped it entirely, and on and on, until they have made something, but it's not anything like the original recipe. I may have also mentioned once or twice how I'm not always good at following recipes to the letter. I always think I know better. Frequently I do (at least with respect to what'll taste good to me), and when I don't...well, those experiments just don't get posted.

Emergency Birthday Brownies

Ok, you need to tell me if it's your birthday. Seriously. Preferably a day or two in advance. You may have noticed that in the month of September, I bake cakes. If you want in on the birthday-slash-pirate fun, you have to let me know. I am not that good at cakes; I mean well, but I don't have the skills. I need advance warning. Time to plan a strategy (at the very least, I need time to hunt down and borrow a cake carrier).

New Guy, proudly displaying an
Emergency Birthday Brownie...uh...
Emergency Birthday Mudpuppy Porter.
Same difference.

Not that I won't bake you birthday brownies at 10PM, because clearly, I will. I just did. But I swear, New Guy said his birthday was in November. I distinctly heard November. But we were in a noisy bar, and I heard wrong. He said September. Three days after the Tall Acoustician, exactly a week past the Kitchen Physicist herself (oh, you just know that I am already scheming for next year's Big Birthday Week...wheels they are a-turnin'...menus they are a-plannin'...).

Anyway, it was purely an accident that I discovered New Guy's well-kept birthday secret. Ok, it was Facebook. And it doesn't really matter how I found out, just that I did. And I went into Birthday Brownie Overdrive. Because New Guy is, well, literally the new guy. He's only been here 6 weeks. Somebody has to bake him birthday brownies.