i'd rather be baking

A few weeks ago sweet Annelies from Attune Foods offered to send me a couple of boxes of their organic graham crackers to play around with. How fun! Of course I said yes. And then some butter and a lot of sugar and eggs later, this happened.

I’ll admit, it was Ryan’s idea. I made a graham cracker crust and topped it with a brownie layer, then whipped some meringue and spread it on top. And oh my, the deliciousness that ensued.

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I had an epiphany today. I dug out the bag of flavored coffee that my in-laws put in my Christmas stocking (thank you!!) and started brewing a cup, and suddenly my kitchen smelled like cinnamon and vanilla and all sorts of happy things. And I realized that I could smell this smell every day, all by myself, because Ryan is way too manly to drink flavored coffee. And we will never again have to pretend argue over the last cup. Amen.

My chocolate cravings increase and decrease in direct correlation to what time of the month it is – I’ll leave it at that. They also might be increasing in relation to having increased my running mileage. I don’t have any strictly scientific evidence on that front, but I’ll keep you posted.

This was my third (or fourth?) recipe to make out of this book, which I got for Christmas, and each new recipe seems to be more of a success than the last. Dear King Arthur Flour, I love you and firmly believe you can do no wrong. And I think I need this book for my birthday.

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Today’s recipe comes from the lovely Megan. She lives super far away but we seem to agree on a lot of things, like the importance of chocolate, magazines, and cute dogs. I appreciate that.

I can now attest that Megan is exactly right in saying that these are what you should make when you feel like a disaster. I made these yesterday somewhere around the middle of a long and ridiculous Monday. I came home feeling covered in powdered sugar and with the kind of headache that twenty screaming five-year-olds at a birthday party cause. I turned the oven on as soon as I walked in the door. I made these, and I felt better. Or butter. Either way.

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It’s only the second week of November and our third snow is on the ground already. I have approximately twenty green tomatoes that will apparently be ripening in my kitchen windowsill. It’s one of those days when clearly eight hours of sleep was nowhere close to enough and my coffee cup seems to always be empty. To top things off, the holiday season is nipping at my heels and I’m in a baking rut.

Strangely enough November is nearly always my favorite time of year. I know it’s cold and often bleak, but to me November has always meant the start of the holiday excitement, which I love. Thanksgiving is a big holiday in my family and one that I dearly love. This year we find ourselves fifteen hundred miles away from our families and for me it’s put rather a big damper on November. Which naturally, leads to chocolate.

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We enjoyed a lovely visit with my mom this week. While I did spend some time introducing her to some of my favorite vegetarian dishes (like this one), I didn’t do much baking. She left yesterday and apparently took the last of the warm fall weather with her. The days are turning distinctively colder and grayer, which makes me think that winter must be just around the corner.

I tried out this gem of a recipe last week and now, as I sit here sipping a homegrown pumpkin latte and surrounded by sleeping dogs, I really wish I had one of these blondies. I’m not usually a big fan of white chocolate but this is definitely a notable exception.

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