Treats for appetites of every size
I love holidays. Everything about them. I like to decorate for them. I like to wear silly themed earrings for them. I like to listen to Christmas music on repeat until I annoy everyone around me. I obviously like to bake for them. But more than anything else, I love that they mean I get to spend lots of time with my family.
For the eighth year in a row, Yale lost The Game. That is sad. But want to know what’s not sad? Thanksgiving being in 4 days! I was actually in Massachusetts this weekend for the game, drove back down to New Jersey today, and will be driving back up again for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. That’s a lot of time driving through the worst state ever (95 in Connecticut is its own special form of torture – you can be cruising along, no problem, only to have to slam on your brakes, take 2 hours to drive 10 miles, and then …
This was the first weekend that really felt like the holiday season. It was cold, curl-up-inside-with-a-book weather, and it took a significant amount of self control not to turn on Christmas music while I was baking (I have a rule with myself – no Christmas music until after Thanksgiving). So, when my aunt Anne texted me a picture of what she was baking, I immediately asked for the recipe.
Ahh, November as a teacher in New Jersey. After the mayhem that is the start of the school year, this month feels like a breeze. This past weekend was a long weekend for Teacher’s Convention, which I took advantage of to journey down south to DC and Baltimore to visit some friends from college. It was a short trip, but walking around inner harbor in Baltimore made me very nostalgic for a road trip my family had taken a long time ago.
A day late, but I feel I have a good excuse – yesterday I ran the NYC marathon! So, even though I actually baked these last Friday for Halloween, you can understand that when I got back to my apartment yesterday evening, I crashed pretty hard. Like 7:30 and I was in bed hard. Thus the Monday post this week. Now, I know that Halloween is over and my cutely decorated cupcakes are no longer relevant in terms of decoration, but the base of these cupcakes in no way loses its relevance with the changing month. In fact, they are …
“Cream Cheese Spritz Cookies” is possibly one of the most unappetizing names for a cookie I have ever heard. They sound like the dessert that would go with a dinner of liver and onions served with prune juice. But the name is very deceptive – they should in fact be called creamy butter cookies with a hint of cinnamon sprinkled with colorful sugar. But that also would not be a great name for a cookie. However, they would go wonderfully with just about anything – they are pretty basic in flavor such that they could easily complement a variety of desserts …
“You haven’t made anything pretty in awhile. You should make something pretty.” That was my mom’s input this weekend when we were discussing what I should bake. So while she was puzzling over kitchen appliances with different salesmen, I spent some time on Pinterest looking for a pretty fall dessert. There were all sorts of cool shaped cookies, but I’ve done sugar cookies before, and snickerdoodles don’t lend themselves to much more than a circle. Then I found a pumpkin roll, and I was intrigued.
This weekend, a friend from college and I were going to go apple picking. Then we were going to make awesome apple-filled desserts. Then it rained. So, instead, we “picked” apples from A&P, as well as some other goodies, and decided to try a recipe she had found on Baker’s Royale for pumpkin magic bars. Now, I’m all about magic bars. I’ve posted them before here, and the addition of pumpkin was brilliant in my opinion. However, baking is always an adventure, and there are definitely some modifications I would make to this one if I were to try it …
I fully intended to bake something to bring into work tomorrow morning. I even told more than one person that I would. But then Shannon Rose didn’t have Pumpkinhead. And though Octoberfest is well and good, I didn’t get my pumpkin fix and decided I needed to make myself something pumpkin instead. I also didn’t really feel like doing a lot of grocery shopping, so granola was the clear winner. I’ve made granola before, but this one might be even better. It clumped really nicely (important in a granola), was slightly salty (also important), and was my first pumpkin adventure …
At some point this summer, I became obsessed with figs. I think it may have had to do with a flatbread I had at a bar and went back for 3 separate times. So when I was at the supermarket this week and saw that they had figs that you could buy by the box, I couldn’t resist.