My Devious Plan to get a New Oven

Well. It's been a while, I see. Whoops. So. How to sum up the past few months before we move onto the important thing, namely cake and new ovens? The best way to describe my summer is that involved a lot of pizza and a lot of roller derby, as I worked in two different pizza joints and worked hard on my skating. Big Easy Rollergirls taught me everything I know about skating and made my last year in New Orleans amazing! I spent a lot time with my friends, especially my wolf pack, and became a regular at Twelve Mile Limit, the best snobby cocktail bar I've come across. But, come August, it was time to move again.

I moved to Boston to start my non-profit management MBA at the Heller School. It's a huge change in identity, and so far it's great! My roommate also lived in New Orleans, and her sister is a friend of mine (before we settled on that, I interviewed some truly weird potential roommates. Maybe I'll tell you about it someday). Going back to school does leave less room for creative pursuits, but I've managed somehow. Soon I'll tell you about the beer brewing in recon room of my apartment, but for now, I'll restrict my comments to the oven situation.

The apartment is lovely, but the kitchen is best described as...dated. The oven and fridge are avocado green, the floor and backsplash tiles are brown. It's 70s-tastic. The oven never worked very well, as the door would only open with a fight, and fell off every so often. The fridge is the antithesis of energy efficient. So really, using the kitchen could be an exercise in slapstick comedy. It all came to a head Thursday night. The Gentleman in Question has a nice round birthday in a few days, and I had promised him cake. After some effort, I had the batter in the pans ready to go, so I opened the oven door. Big mistake. The door came flying off, crazy hot, and crashed to the floor. I couldn't get it back on. The landlord came over, and we discovered the hinges were warped. His wife kindly baked the cake for me, and our oven door is leaning against the door to the porch. As of Thursday night, there was talk of getting a new oven. My roommate is quite pleased with that turn of events, and the Gentleman is scheming a way to get me a new refrigerator.

The cake was totally worth it. The Gentleman requested some combination of chocolate and raspberry, and being an overachiever, I decided to do a checkerboard with those flavors. To get the checkerboard effect, you need a plastic insert. It comes in a kit. There are many options, so investigate. The pans in the kit I linked to are pretty nice. Once you have that essential piece of equipment, the rest is fairly simple. Finding recipes can be tricky, because the two cake flavors need to have similar textures, and bake at the same temperature for the same amount of time. Raspberry cake was an additional challenge. Every recipe involved jello. Which is creepy. Until Smitten Kitchen saved the day, with her adapted Pink Lady Cake recipe. I changed it further, cutting it in half and subbing in raspberries. For the chocolate, I went with this recipe from Joy of Baking, also cut in half. The raspberry flavor shines through, and the chocolate is rich without being too sweet. My cake came out extra dense and not as checkerboardy because of the baking drama, but yours will turn out light and delightful. You'll get three bowls dirty making these cakes, so the mess isn't too bad.

Mardi Gras

It ate my life. It does that. So one of the great things about Mardi Gras is that in celebrating it, you make new friends and cement old friendships. There is a camaraderie on the parade route. With cheap beer as a social lubricant, and a friendly smile, you can accomplish most things during Carnival. Except driving and parking downtown. As I relearned, that is a fool's errand.

But you develop your own personal krewe during the two week slog of day drinking. These are the people that you call and text every morning to decide on what you're going to do that day. Plans vaguely alluded to the night before come together. Mardi Gras mostly happens on the weekends, but, the Thursday before, it becomes an every day, all day adventure.

Some parade goers get really angry and shouty. Thus, for Endymion, my krewe had to search pretty hard for a spot to stand. By contrast, for Proteus and Orpheus, our neighbors were friendly. And that's generally the theme during Mardi Gras. I always meet new people, usually out of town friends visiting my people, or the kindly souls who live near the parade route and open their houses (and their bathrooms) to me, as a friend of a friend.

I'm a Mardi Gras veteran. Some years I'm more into it than others. Last year was particularly intense, seeing as it was Lombardi Gras. This year was a middle of the road year for me. But the new aspect was that for the first time, I was in a parade! Two in fact. As a rollergirl, I had the opportunity to skate in Pontchartrain and walk in Muses. Being in the parade is a completely different experience. Instead of trying to catch cheap beads, I was throwing them. But I decided to mix it up. I threw skate wheels! I painted them black and gold.

Unfortunately, I almost broke my friend's nose and busted all the liquor in the process. I was aiming a wheel at my roommate, and flung it pretty hard at his face, because I wanted to and I knew he'd catch it in time. But I failed to factor in my forward momentum as I skated along. So I missed and it went straight at my other friend's nose. He was holding the cooler of cheap beer and cheaper liquor, and was completely helpless. I saw the look of terror pass over his face as my roommate reached out and ninja grabbed the wheel, saving the booze.

Just one of my many adventures of the past two weeks.

Windowpane Cookies

Again, with the apologies. I'm sorry! I've been traveling and applying to graduate school, and thus not blogging. I also didn't have my camera on my travels, so the crafty things I did went unrecorded. Today, I offer up the last of my December cookie project. In coming days, I'll show you a bit of New Orleans, since the Henz will be in town.

But on to the cookies. These are a combination of recipes and concepts. I started with this recipe, but found that I was defeated by the sticky impossible dough. So I tried this one, but kept the candy concept. The dough itself is a dream. Not too sticky, and it results in a nice tender cookie.


Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened at room temperature for an hour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 ounces cream cheese (1/4 of a standard cream cheese package)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Jolly Ranchers, unwrapped and crushed

Directions:

Cream together the butter and sugar, then add in the egg and mix until everything is pretty smooth. Add in the cream cheese and vanilla, mixing thoroughly. Then mix in the next three ingredients. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour, until ready to use.

Preheat the oven to 350, and roll out the dough to 1/8" to 1/4" thickness and cut out cookies. To make the windowpane cookies, use two cutters of the same shape but different sizes. Cut out with the larger one first, then cut out the center of the resulting cookie with the smaller one. Place resulting cookie on lined cookie sheet, then carefully fill the center with the crushed jolly rancher. You don't want the rancher dust to get on the cookie, since it will stain.

Bake cookies for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on thickness, and let cool completely on the cookie sheet. The jolly rancher may look bubbly and weird out of the oven, but don't worry, as it cools it will solidify and smooth out.

Red Velvet Moon Pies

 Last night was a total Lunar eclipse. It was also the Winter Solstice, a day I look forward to mainly because from now on the days will get longer. My plan for the evening was to go to the Tulane parking deck to watch it. Even though it's brightly lit, the sky was still decently visible. Plus, I love the view up there. You can see clear to downtown, with the lights on the Crescent City Connection and the soft glow of the Superdome. My companions decided to stay in, but it was nice anyway. Very peaceful, at least. Just me, New Orleans, and the red Moon. It was even kind of warm.

But you see, I'd make these cookies in honor of the occasion, and now I had no one to share them with. There are few things better than sharing cookies, so I hightailed it out of there and headed to karaoke at Le Bon Temps (every Monday, if you live in New Orleans, you should go). My friend brought his telescope and set it up outside the bar. So I stood outside with him, his delightful girlfriend, and a bunch of drunks and watched the moon turn a watery red. The cookies were perfect. So was New Orleans, at least for a little bit.

These are easy to make. The batter is pretty liquidy; it resembles cake batter rather than cookie dough. Don't doubt, just roll with it. (Edited to add that I got the recipe here, and only really tweaked the frosting.)

Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons buttermilk (Or you can cheat and use plain milk and a splash of vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon red food coloring
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375. Cream together the butter and sugar, then add in the eggs. Once it's all creamed nicely, add in the buttermilk, extract, and food coloring. Mix in the dry ingredients in batches, beating thoroughly after each addition.

Drop the batter by tablespoonfuls onto your cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the centers look set. Let cool on the sheets for a minute or two, then move to a rack. They might stick a bit; mine did.

While your cookies are cooling, you should make the filling. It's cream cheese frosting. My approach is rather free-form. I'll adjust amounts until I get the right consistency, which in this case is slightly runny. Once you've made the frosting, smear 1 tablespoon (or enough to get a nice layer without it squelching out when you bite into it) of it on a cookie and then slap on another cookie. Sandwich made!

Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2ish teaspoons of milk
3 cups powdered sugar

Directions:
Beat together cream cheese and butter, then mix in vanilla. Start adding the powdered sugar bit by bit. Add in milk as needed to keep the frosting smooth. You can add more or less sugar as needed to get the right texture. I don't like really sweet frosting, so I play with the milk content instead. You're going to have a ton extra.

Makes 13ish sandwiches.

Linzer Cookies

I bake to relieve stress. This is almost certainly why I gained weight in grad school, but everyone else enjoyed the fruits of my labor, so it was worth it. I bring this up because today was not a good day. My Christmas/New Year's plans were dealt a setback by the Gentleman in Question's company. We've had to change a significant part of our trip to DC, and it was unclear for a bit how this would affect my flights. Several phone calls to the travel website later, and at least one crying fit (sometimes I regress to being a whiny teenager, deal with it), we got it worked out, hopefully for real.

So to deal with the frustration of dealing with online travel companies, I made Linzer Cookies. They are delicious and pretty! The darker ones got a bit overcooked because I was arguing with a travel man on the phone. You should make them. And hopefully while not arguing with customer service representatives.


Ingredients:
2  cups  all-purpose flour (about 9 ounces)
1/2  teaspoon  baking soda
1/4  teaspoon  salt
1/4  teaspoon  ground cinnamon
3/4  cup  granulated sugar
1/2  cup  butter, softened
1/4  cup  egg substitute
1/4  cup  seedless raspberry jam

Directions:
Cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the egg substitute. Blend in the dry ingredients, adding them slowly. Divide the dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap, flattening it into a disk. Chill at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 and roll the dough out to 1/8-1/4" thickness. Using a jar or a pint glass, cut out round shapes. Using a smaller cookie cutter, cut out center shapes in half the disks. Re-roll scraps and cut more shapes, until there's none left. Bake for 10 minutes and let cool completely. Spread 1/2 teaspoon of jam on the whole cookies, and place the holey cookies on top, smushing together. Chill in the fridge and eat!

I got 12, but you could get more if you used smaller cutters.

The Sweater Curse

 All female knitters are told early in their learning process that they should never, ever, knit their boyfriend a sweater. Because if a female knitter were to make that mistake, said boyfriend would break up with her.

There are a multitude of theories regarding this phenomenon. All assume that the man in question does not like knitting. Or commitment. The most common, contemporary theory, argues that a handknit sweater is a symbol of love and devotion, given that it takes quite a while to make such an item. This potent symbol of regard and affection thus scares off the fickle man, who apparently wants a woman who's not that in to him. He never wears it, and it languishes in the closet as the woman stews over his ingratitude. He dumps her for her clingyness and moves on to a hipper girl.

Poppycock. Balderdash, I say! Why do we give men so little credit? Male knitters aren't told anything like this; there's no reverse sweater curse where your girlfriend leaves you crying over a pile of wool. Moreover, while obviously there are men who are afraid of lasting ties, there are just as many who would love to be with someone who loves them enough to wrangle with the wool.

No, I think there's more going on with the sweater curse phenomenon, and I have my own theory, developed during my year working in the yarn store. One of the most common customer complaints was that the recipients of these beautiful, lovingly crafted pieces, were completely ungrateful. I heard countless stories of daughters and daughters-in-law holding up the delicate white baby sweater and saying, "Oh, that's nice." Or the teen son looking at the new sweater his mother made with a sneer. Such an item could never be cool! What many of these knitters failed to account for was the personal taste of the recipient. Just as you don't buy a vegan a box of dry aged beef, you don't knit a lacy pink sweater for a baby girl whose mom is into death metal. In short, know your audience.

The fact of the matter is this: for many knitters, the effort that goes into a sweater is immense. You stretch your boundaries, try something new. You make mistakes and have to rip back. There's drama and personal growth! But no matter how much love you put in this sweater, it will never mean as much to the recipient as it means to you. If you are not prepared to accept that fact, then you should only knit for yourself.

He bought the yarn himself in Iceland.

However, if you are willing to forgo the surprise element, and knit something that you personally may not like, there is a way to knit successfully for others. The solution to this problem is to ask your intended recipient, no matter how close the relation, if they would like you to make something. And you must commit to not being offended if your intended recipient says no. Then, you make the recipient pick the yarn (or at least colors) and the pattern. The object becomes a collaboration, with a greater chance for success.

All of this to explain that I'm knitting the Gentleman in Question a sweater.

Peanut and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Here I present cookie #2 in my December cookie project. I realize they look a lot like cookie #1, but I assure you, they taste completely different. I gave half to Diana, and her response was to offer me anything I wanted in exchange for making her several batches...

They're easy to make. I used this recipe, with no alterations. The only thing I'd do differently is add more chocolate. Also, toasting the peanuts is completely essential. Mine were lightly salted; I'm not sure there are unsalted peanuts in stores anymore.


Ingredients:

1/4  cup  unsalted butter, softened
1/2  cup  granulated sugar
1/2  cup  packed brown sugar
1  teaspoon  vanilla extract
1  large egg
1  cup  all-purpose flour (about 4 1/2 ounces)
1/2  teaspoon  baking powder
1/4  teaspoon  baking soda
1/3  cup  semisweet chocolate chips
1/3  cup  coarsely chopped unsalted, dry-roasted peanuts
1/2  teaspoon  coarse sea salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350, and toast the peanuts on a cookie sheet for 5 minutes. Cream together the butter and sugars, then add the vanilla and egg. Mix thoroughly, then add in the dry ingredients. Once it's all together, stir in the peanuts, chocolate, and extra salt. Drop by spoonfuls on the cookie sheets and bake for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and try not to eat them all. Makes 24 cookies.