Sugar Lust

Aaaaand we're back. Temporarily, at least.

I've spent the past few days going through food blogs (oh, so many food blogs), and it has rekindled my desire to get into the kitchen and mess around. Last semester I was ridiculously busy, and I had to give up Daring Bakers almost as soon as I started. My drawing class sucked up all my creative energy, even though it was loads of fun, and so I just never got into the kitchen that much. I made a few bean soups and a sort of spiced cheese and cornmeal cracker/griddle cake, and got back into the kitchen over winter break just long enough to make a batch of my Famous Perfect Fudge and a lovely cranberry orange cake.

That has to change. Partly, I want to take up baking more seriously again to control just what I eat. My father has a truly terrible habit of bringing home bags of M&Ms and miniature candy bars and all sorts of other temptingly bad goodies loaded up with high fructose corn syrup and who knows what else whenever he feels we're low on dessert in general and chocolate in particular. If I keep us stocked up on satisfying homemade desserts, I'm less likely to snack on Milky Ways all day long. I would much rather have one slice of pie or a few cookies than 15 mini candy bars. This week I made Oatmeal Pie from Pie Every Day. It's pretty good, but I feel like the oatmeal got too dry during the recommended hour of baking, rather than staying moist like I hoped it would. The lovely combination of molasses, egg, and spices that forms the syrup/custard/whatever-you-call-it is really delicious, though.

I also want to expand my horizons a bit--incorporating ingredients or techniques that I haven't used before, or improving things I've tried before that were only partially successful. For instance, last winter I made cream puffs. It was my first attempt at choux pastry, and I waited impatiently for a dry spell to take it on, as my recipe recommended. I had a few stumbles--we only had jumbo eggs in the house, while the recipe called for large, and despite my attempts to compensate the dough was still rather too wet to start with. Then, tiny weakling that I am, I didn't do the greatest job of stirring the dough over heat to dry it. My arm got tired well in advance of what probably would have been the best point to stop. Those things together meant that my puffs didn't puff as well as I might have liked, but about 2/3rds of them still puffed up enough to admit my lovely vanilla custard. (The custard, by the way, was absolutely gorgeous. I ate the extra with a spoon, and didn't regret a single calorie. Smooth and thick and rich and delicious.) The last thing that I'd do differently is my method of uniting pastry and custard. Last winter, I opted to puncture the bottom of the puffs and pipe the custard in through the hole. This time around I would probably go for the simpler expedient of cutting the puffs open and spooning the custard into them, partially for the sake of simplicity, partially so that the beautifully speckled custard could have a more prominent feature, and partially so that they don't have to be stored upside down to prevent leakage.

I'd love to give cream puffs another shot sometime soon, but it has been a pretty wet January, and I don't expect an improvement anytime soon. Also, I clearly need to spend some time at the gym before attempting to stir a the giant hunk of dough again. Instead, I'm taking a stab at the ridiculously delicious Derby Pie my mother made for Thanksgiving. Pecans, chocolate, booze, sugar. It's pretty much impossible to go wrong with that combination. I may even manage to charge my camera's battery and take a picture of it before it's totally gone.