The only crisp thing about Fall around here

It's midnight, and the temperature in my kitchen right now is 82 degrees.  Yes, that is correct. The absolute coolest it has been today is 82 degrees, and I had to stay awake until now to experience it.



I've been "glistening" for weeks, along with the rest of LA, as Fall has apparently been kicked to the curb so that summer can just hang out here for a bit while the rest of the country gets to have soup and break out the flattering knitwear.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.  I just want to want to get under the covers sometime soon, that's all.

In lieu of the elusive crisp autumn days, I had to settle for these crisp shortbread bars. Mind you, my idea of settling involves brown sugar, pecans, and chocolate.



Glistening burns a ton of calories.

Sometimes you just can't bake it

There are times when life is good.

Work is interesting and productivity is high.  Your teenager smiles at you for real.  Your bank account balance is surprisingly fat, and your thighs are surprisingly thin*.

At times like these, one can tackle epic, multi-step dessert recipes with aplomb. Store-bought ice cream?  Caramel from a jar? Puh-lease! In fact, I'll just be making my own damn mascarpone cheese and zabaglione for that tiramisu, thank you very much.

Then there are times when life is just plan f$@%ed up.

People who are supposed to love you are impossibly cruel and the cat barfs on the carpet and despite your best intentions, your email box is the one on the right.

From this posting on Twitter

For those days, and for someone I love very much who is having a particularly cat-barf-y time of it right now, there are these No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Nut Butter Instant Happiness Treats.

I found the recipe online, and made a batch almost on a whim.  But the minute I took a bite, I was immediately transported back to a summer during elementary school.  I'd been sent away to a science and nature camp for city kids with a bunch of people I didn't know and they were all really mean to me.  I hated everything about it...the dingy bunks, the creepy-crawly woods, and the smelly labs, but more than anything, I loathed the girls I was grouped with. I was utterly miserable the entire time, except for one day, near the end of camp, when the cafeteria ladies served these exact same treats at lunch.  I vividly remember the taste and how happy I was, just for a minute, to be eating something so delicious in the midst of that horrible place.  I swear these saved me by making the experience, if not good, at least bearable.

I polished off my treat. Only the happiness and none of the hurt came back to me.  Life really is good sometimes.

Believe me, I do not wish the horrors of pre-teen peer ostracism or any other kind of emotional turmoil on anyone**, but just in case, it's good to be able to make your own instant ray of hope out of chocolate, peanut butter, and sugar***.   While you're waiting for the pain to fade away with time (and getting that inbox cleared out) these will definitely tide you over very nicely.

P.S.  If you are truly having a tough day, I found watching this video made me ridiculously cheerful.  As in, howling with laughter. Via Kottke.

Soccer Mom

Way back when, when my husband and I were barely married, we went to visit friends in San Francisco for brunch.  Their house was full of toys and crayons and tow-headed toddlers, and we feasted on deliciously lumpy pancakes, strong coffee, and orange juice. Sunshine poured through a huge bay window into a living room full of comfy furniture and well-worn children's books.  I was utterly charmed by the whole situation.

Looking up at the clock, our hosts suddenly brought the cozy morning to a halt, and began scooping up  strollers and hurtling around closets rooting for socks.  The oldest child donned a shiny uniform and tiny cleats, and had the maple syrup unceremoniously wiped from his ruddy cheeks by his mom.

"It's picture day."

This meant nothing to us. But we piled down the steps and followed our friends. Outside it was bright and breezy, one of those rare, gorgeous, peaceful San Francisco mornings.  As we turned a corner, we were hit by a high-pitched roar of noise.  Then, slowly, we walked into an alien sea, a veritable ocean, of what seemed like thousands of five year olds and their parents, crammed into a fenced patch of grass covering most of a city block.  All of the children were randomly running and screaming.  Parents were chatting and laughing and yelling at the running children.  Everyone had coolers, cameras, umbrellas and folding chairs.  It was utter chaos, and it terrified me to the bone.

"We have to get out of here," I said to my husband. "Now."
Best form of birth control, ever.

It didn't last.
Soon enough, it was picture day on our own patch of grass.

Not only was I no longer petrified, I was somehow coaching the team.  I had zero experience, but if you signed up to coach, you got to pick your practice time.  As a working parent, schedule trumped competence in my book.

It was a trial and error process.  Once, I brought a white board and dry erase markers to practice, intending to diagram plays, or at least try to communicate the idea of whose goal was whose.

"Oh, yay! Coloring!!! Pass the purple!!"

Needless to say, it didn't go well*.

Finally, I developed a strategy of giving big hugs for each goal, and that seemed to work just fine.

My coaching days are long over, but a decade later, there I am on that patch of grass with my folding chair and camera, chatting and laughing.  Perfectly at home in that veritable sea, the warm, friendly, comfortable ocean of parents like me.

Cheering at the top of my lungs for my amazing daughter and her team.

Soccer Mom.
Best clichéd stereotype, ever.

Oh, and even after all these years?  Snack is still the best part of the game.

The Charlie Browniest Time of Year - Part I

'

"There must be something wrong with me, Linus.  Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy.  I just don't feel like I'm supposed to feel." 

It's not just you, Charlie Brown, believe me.  Every day the calendar* creeps closer to December 25 makes it 15 minutes harder to get up in the morning, and hours harder to climb into bed at night. I could easily be completely wiped out by Thursday.

I don't think I will be.  Because I have people around me with blue blankets** and many moments during these long stressful days that do give me that good Christmas feeling.

The one I'm supposed to feel.

There was a charity pop-up bakery this weekend that completely fit my mood.  

Walking in with my contribution was one of the good moments***.   Not a cure, by any means.  Just a really, really nice break.

Handle with Care

These are The Traveling Wilburys.  They contain George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison.

These are The Traveling Cookies.  They contain butter, sugar and pecans.

As long as you pack them well, they're good to go pretty much anywhere by USPS, and arrive as delicious as the day they left.  No special handling required.

Plus, unlike the Wilburys, they'll definitely stay together*.

High Efficiency Snacking

Are you, like millions of Americans, wasting valuable time* when you snack?

Quit pussyfooting around.  Have the potato chips IN your cookies.

These cookies are perhaps the ultimate expression of a now well-established trend in both homemade and restaurant desserts to combine salty and sweet. They just take it to a whole new level of decadence.

Naturally, I'm thinking next time I should throw in some bacon.

Getting all fancy

When I was a kid, you knew a meal was fancy when it was garnished with a sprig of parsley.

Now, you know a meal is fancy when it isn't garnished with a sprig of parsley.

Hopefully, even years from now, people will know dessert is fancy when it's garnished with these lovely lacy cookies.   Or even when dessert is just these lovely lacy cookies, all by themselves.  After all, unlike that curly parsley*, these are: 

a) actually impressive looking; 

b) meant to be eaten; and, 

c) absolutely scrumptious.

The scientific method of pie

I have two kids in middle and high school now, which means each of them is being taught the hallowed "Scientific Method" in their respective Chemistry and Life Science classes.

For those of you who have been out of school for a while, I quote here from the Science Buddies website:

• The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments.
• The steps of the scientific method are to:
  • Ask a Question
  • Do Background Research
  • Construct a Hypothesis
  • Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
  • Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
  • Communicate Your Results
• It is important for your experiment to be a fair test. A "fair test" occurs when you change only one factor (variable) and keep all other conditions the same.

Undeterred by the complete mayhem of my experience last year at KCRW's Good Food Pie Contest, I found myself once again clicking on that "enter your pie" link.  But this year, things were different.

First of all, I did not enter out of some frivolous emotional impulse ("Hey, this'll be fun!"), or a deep-seated need for redemption or revenge.  Nor was I "putting the band back together", as my fellow Fabulous Baker Girls were unavailable*.  No, I entered strictly for the free Emile Henry Ceramic Pie Dish (retail value: $50), which I totally needed.  Clear, logical thinking.  I was doing this for profit.

I didn't stop there.  I decided to apply my newfound discipline to the pie contest itself.  I would use...

The Scientific Method of Pie!

Part 1:  Ask a question
Here's my question:  How can I win?

Part 2: Do some background research
My research covered several key areas.

What pie has been successful in the past?
Last year's winning pie was yucky**.  Should I make a yucky pie? Although the data supports this approach, the sample size is too small to be valid.  Plus, making a bad pie would be a violation of everything I stand for as a human being.

Why didn't I win last year?
I have no idea.  My pie kicked ass. Everyone who ate it, loved it.  However, with hindsight, I did notice that I was in the most crowded category (fruit pies) of the contest, so purely on a statistical basis (which of course, I should have used before), I may have been handicapped going in.

How good is the competition? 
Last year, many of the contestants were professional bakers.  Science tells us that (most) people do not take up professions that they are bad at.  Therefore, at least some of the competition also probably made pies that kicked ass***.   However, many of the professional bakers also did not win.  Therefore, there is no apparent correlation between being a professional and winning the contest, but there is strong evidence that competition is likely to be stiff.

I felt I now had enough information to move on.

Part 3:  Construct a hypothesis
My theory:  Make a kick ass pie, but in a different category, and you could win.
I also made a note:  It should not be necessary for me to become a professional baker in order for my theory to be true.

However, the Scientific Method also requires that a hypothesis needs to be testable***.  I was a little concerned that the phrase "kick ass pie" might be too vague to test objectively, so I refined things a little further by proposing a sub-hypothesis:

A kick ass pie has an awesome crust and a super tasty filling.****

That seemed to add some much-needed specificity. My revised hypothesis was now ready:

Make a pie with an awesome crust and a super tasty filling, but in a different category, and you could win. 

Part 4:  Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment.
It is important for your experiment to be a fair test. A fair test occurs when you change only one variable, and keep all other conditions the same.

My first variable was the awesome crust, and I think I did a really fair test.  I made 4 different crusts.

• My mom's tried and true all shortening crust, which uses boiling water and milk as the liquid.
• The crust I have in my cookbook, which is cold butter, a little shortening, and a combination of vodka and ice water as the liquid.
• The recipe from The Foster's Market Cookbook, which is 1/2 cold butter, 1/2 shortening, an egg, and a combination of ice water and vinegar as the liquid.
• An all butter crust with just ice water as the liquid.

 

 

 

 

I bagged them up, labelled them, and put 'em in the fridge overnight.

  

The next day, I was back in the lab.  I rolled out two small circles of each kind, labelled the sheet so I could remember which was which, and baked up my samples.

I tried to take some photos.  And then I gave up and just ate.  I mean, tested.

The one with the egg

 

The all butter

 

Mom's all shortening

 

The Cheesy Pennies Mix

In order to avoid bias, I got a second opinion from my daughter.  She liked the one with the egg. I thought the texture there was too hard and flat, so I dismissed her as a statistical outlier. I loved the all-butter, a result that was consistent with tests conducted at an outside lab.  I also felt the mostly-butter Cheesy Pennies crust was a very close second.  Both were flaky, very tender, and flavorful without being overwhelming.  My mom's crust was right up there, too, but was a little crumbly. When being served by a stranger, it could display breakage on the plate.  I had no hard evidence that presentation was a factor, but I had to believe it would count for something.

Several pounds of butter and shortening later, I had two viable candidates for the awesome crust part of my hypothesis, and a bunch of extra dough for another time.  This was working out very well.

Moving on to the second variable.  The super tasty filling.

I had two possible custard mixtures, three possible add-ins, and two different kinds of pecans.  I also needed to put my crust candidates into a real life filling situation.  Doing the math****, I would clearly need at least a couple of muffin tins worth of mini pies to do a fair test.

The custard options:

• My go-to recipe for the last several years, involving softened butter, brown sugar, whole eggs, vanilla and a mixture of light and dark corn syrup, mixed with an electric mixer.
• A recipe from Darn Good Sweet, a New Orleans cookbook that has never let me down, involving cane syrup, brown sugar, mostly egg yolks, cream, bourbon and vanilla, done by cooking a caramel on the stove and whisking that into the eggs like a more traditional custard.

The add-in options:

• Candied pepper bacon bits
• Bittersweet chocolate chips
• Both

The pecan options:

• Raw pecan bits and halves
• Roasted and salted pecans

This is why God invented Sharpies******.  So I could write on my muffin tin.

This second, more in depth tasting phase was conducted right there in the lab setting. I should have taken notes, but I was too busy stuffing my face.  

My testing of the sub hypothesis had come to an end.  I analyzed my data, and drew a conclusion: The following combination resulted in the most verifiably kick ass pie:

All butter crust
New Orleans-style custard
Bittersweet chocolate chips
Salted pecans

The fateful morning arrived, and with it, the most critical part of the experiment:  Making my kick ass pie, and entering it into the contest.

As before, the array of entries was formidable.
As before, the pies were sliced and judged by a panel of "experts"*******.
And, as before, I did not win.

Part 5:  Analyze the Data and Draw a Conclusion
The line of eager pie tasters snaked back to Wilshire Blvd.  I looked down at my non-victorious, kick ass pie.  Then at all the other gorgeous, luscious pies that also did not win a ribbon that day. I was in great company, it was a fabulous, sunny day, and lots of regular people were gobbling up my pie quite happily.  The data was maddeningly inconclusive!

As I served the last sliver to a guy who closed his eyes in happiness when he took a bite, I tried a little of what was left on the plate, and wrinkled my nose.  It was a tiny bit too salty, and with a margin of error this small, I at last had a scientific explanation I could cling to:

Too much NaCl.

Part 6: Communicate the Results
Done!

As a bonus, check out this slideshow of the fantastic array of pies this year.  You can also see a recipe from the Best in Show winner here, and see a version of her winning pie on her website********.  The full list of winners is here, and this inside story from one of the judges makes a very fun read.