Baking Bits
Have you been feeling a void of food-related photos in your life?
No?
And yet, here you are.
Interesting.
PS. These are eclairs, not fingerling potatoes, so simmer down everyone.
A couple weeks ago, in celebration of Bastille Day, I met up with some other French-speaking Phoenicians and French-speaking French people to be pretentious and eat cheese and "laissez les bon temps rouler." Most people brought wine; I brought a meager attempt at choux pastry, so sue me now. It was actually a super fun night, and I only fell prey to two major vocabulary snafus when I asked a very straight married man about his husband, and conversely, a very single man about his wife. Oops, she was his mother.
This entire post would like to go ahead and apologize on behalf of itself for being so anachronistic, because no, Bastille Day and Independence Day are not chronological, but you probably didn't even notice until I pointed it out, did you? Who cares, July is the month for blatant fireworky patriotism, no matter the affiliation.
These royal icing sugar cookie biddy boys: they're cute, I'll give them that, but frankly, they ended up being way more time and effort than they were worth. Who even has that many squeeze bottles? Or patience?? And seriously, invisible internet cookie blog ladies? I have lots of time on my hands (like: enough time to make the Mona Lisa out of cookie dough), and even I found these a little too time-consuming. So gather your rosebuds while ye may and just appreciate the dern things, since they' ain't coming back for a while.
After a dessert so royally painstaking (get it? because of the royal icing? anyone???), I remembered that there's no harm in the simplicity and comfort of an ol' chocolate chip cookie. The first time I achieved true symbiosis with a dessert was when I baked these chocolate chip cookie dough cups, and from there on, we quickly developed fast feelings for each other. They gently eased me into baking in a new kitchen and a new oven, and in return, I let them take turns sitting on my new cake stand all by themselves.
Plus, cookie cupcakes are one of the best ways to repay friends who helped you move all of your everythings during the hottest part of the summer. At least, I imagine I would agree if I ever helped anyone move.
(Yes, I know there's a hair in this picture. Please stop looking at it.)
After all this experimenting with cookies first as sandwiches and now cupcakes, I attempted to branch out into other fun circular foods. It was a harsh lesson to learn that even after thousands of $$$ worth of pastry school training, I still, for the life of me, cannot make a suitable 1) quesadilla or 2) pancake.
Quick! Remedial round foods, stat!!
Enter: strawberry vanilla bean mini cakes, so that you, too, can feel like a giant. Also, these mini cakes make great appetizers to amuse your bouche before going out to dinner with a friend. (Let me explain to you how the human body works. I have to warm up my stomach first. Eatin’
And no worries, guys. If all of the guests you invite to Sunday dinner turn you down because you texted them at midnight on Saturday, never fear! More cake for you. Life lessons learned from personal experience.
Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you look in buttercream?
Now this, THIS, my friends, is the Tim Riggins of desserts: so bad, but so, so good.
Except this Butterfinger cheesecake doesn't have a southern drawl or the mysterious brooding aura of the hottest high school football player on Netflix, and yes, now I can see how my metaphor has deteriorated and I should just stop with the irrelevant literary devices. So, to sum up: Tim Riggins and cheesecake.
(In unrelated news: Friday Night Lights is taking over my life. Bah!)
Oh and look. It's the wedding cake I made THE SAME DAY I moved. That day was one for the record books. Word to the wise: next time, don't ever do that again.
Word to the wiser: why aren't oven mitts called glovens?
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