My Halloween Dilemma

It's weird writing about Halloween when last week (at least for a few days) it was at least 80 degrees and I was in a dress with no sleeves and flip flops! But since this week I'm back in my jeans + long sleeved shirt + sweater + jacket (listen I'm cold a lot, don't judge) + closed toed shoes, I guess order has been restored.

So. Halloween. I think I've entered into a stalemate of sorts with it.  I love dressing up, don't get me wrong, but I'm too old to trick-or-treat (or so the neighbors tell me) and I'm too young to have kids to take trick-or-treating so that's out.  I suppose there's always the 'have a Halloween themed party & get really drunk like all your peers' but my friends seem to really resist the dressing up part (don't get all mad at me, this is your issue). So what does that leave me with? Well the last few years I've taken to staying home, dressing up and passing out candy while watching Halloween movies with good friends. Kind of a stupid compromise if you ask me (Oh, you didn't? Oh well.). But it does mean that I get to cope by baking any and all things to do with Halloween and Fall (or so all the blogs tell me, living in the Midwest doesn't really guarantee me a lot of Falls)

Like, for example, ( look, a clean segue!...that I in no way wasted by pointing it out) these corn cookies that I found in Fudge Cupcake Murder.

Like the Pancake cookies, these were easy to make up. And unlike the Pancake cookies, these are a drop cookie! No refrigeration time! Of course that also means I have to remember on my own to write up the post and when you go out to dinner straight from work...a person might forget. 

But I digress.

Like I said, these work up a lot like the Pancake cookies in the sense that it took me in between 5 and 10 minutes to get the batter up and running.  It's got yummy pumpkin and cinnamon...and cardamon. The cardamon taste was too strong for me so next time I want to leave it out and see what happens. The recipe also read that one candy corn (how the cookies got their name) should be put into the center of each cookie, but I might experiment with 2 per cookie...or even 3 (game changer! Yes, I did just say game changer.) for the bigger cookies.

This makes a lot of cookies but have no fear for the recipe was found in a fiction book. 

And if it's fiction...

B.W.D....or That Time I Made Pancake Cookies

Let me tell you a little about myself, I tend to procrastinate. If I have to leave for something at 7am, you can usually find me on the computer/reading a book/not paying attention to the time until about 6:55am and then suddenly I realize I should be IN the car and have no idea where my sweater/shoes/books/purse/wallet/pants any of the above are and have to run around my house like a crazy person and eventually have to go back into the house at least once because I've forgotten sweater/shoes/books/purse/wallet during the rushing....am I rambling? Probably...what was I...OH right, procrastinating. I'm really good at it.

 So good in fact that last night instead of writing an annotated bibliography, which lets face it I could have finished in 45min or less, I played some Bubbletown, listened to a few episodes of the Nerdist Podcast (of which I am obsessed), and there may have been some obsessive Nashville Soundtrack googling because I just wanted to hear Connie Britton and Charles Esten sing that last song over and over and over....and I'm rambling again. So long story short (HA!) I finished my bibliography around the time that I had to get up and shower and go to class. Seriously. I haven't pulled an all-nighter in at least five years. Crazy. So I showered, and got my life together and read some fanfiction left for class and I was pretty awake, adrenaline running or some kind of shit that I do not understand. 

So anyways, I sit in class, with my Giant Diet Coke from McDonalds, and I'm 100% this class has to be over soon....I must have been sitting here for at least an hour right?? ....it was 8:30....I spend the remaining  45min trying so very hard to not fall asleep as well as not make a fool out of myself because my self-censor was just gone.  In order to help me not fall asleep I decide to think about all of the things I could/should bake today, I go home and instead take a two hour nap while attempt to watch last night's Criminal Minds episode.  I wake up and realize that I haven’t baked anything yet and while these kids that I teach surely don’t deserve to have homemade cookies…I really wanted to see what kind of blog this would be and that required me to bake.

Anyone ever bake while drunk? I have and this was a lot less fun. Typically when I play my own version of "My Drunk Kitchen" (Which happens more often than probably should because I drink and want to snack and no snacks in my house means that I bake while drunk) I laugh and fall and forget what I'm doing and generally act like a fool...but at least I'm doing it as a happy drunk. This was just an exhausted moron who stumbled about attempting to gather ingredients when really I just wanted to nap. For a functioning human (Which was totally me this morning, can't you tell?) the batter is pretty easy to put together and the only ingredient that I consider “funny” as in, “oh SHIT I hope I have X in my cabinet/pantry/refrigerator” is maple syrup, which unless you’re Wil Weaton, you probably have (check his twitter if you don’t believe me…it’s a thing I swear.).  They have to chill for an hour (lame) so during that time you can a)finally finish that episode of Criminal Minds that you slept through three times this morning, b)finally finish the 65min podcast that you've been listening to for the last 90min, c) write that blog post that really should never be published for people who aren't you to read…ever or d) actually be responsible and start (and finish) that Chem pre-lab that’s been patiently waiting for you to do all week and is due tomorrow. (HA!)

Cookies….this is supposed to be about cookies. Right, these cookies cooked up pretty fast and taste maple-y like pancakes but they definitely have a cookie texture so I won't be confusing them for pancakes like a character wanted to in Blueberry Muffin Murder (written by Joanne Fluke).  They are super pretty though!

 Although I hadn't realized how many the batch would be making....I'm already on dozen #3 and I MAY have half a batch left. Sooooo it looks like a rather large amount of cookies are coming my way. But for now, I nap.

Did I mention that annotated bibliography wasn't worth any points? I know.

My Imaginary World.

Welcome to the world in which I live. It's a nice imaginary world (see, don't run away...I'm not so disconnected from reality), where if I read a book that has a recipe in it I usually end up doing two things. I not only have to try it but I can usually convince myself that because it came out of a fiction novel, the recipe must not have calories in it. I mean fiction means it's not real, so the calories that come out of a FICTION novel must not be real either.

I did warn you that it was an imaginary world. But back in reality, you're probably wondering why I've started this. The truth is that over the last few years, a friend and I have read these books...yes fiction books. Anyways, these murder mystery type books pose a heroine who's day job is a baker and as such the book shares some of her recipes throughout the story. You may have heard of them, they're pretty famous...to other readers like myself. So just me then? That's okay, moving on. 

So these recipes vary from sweets of all kinds to even savory dishes and we had always wondered, what would happen if we made them? Yes, yes we know, we'd get to eat a new recipe...but would they actually be good?  

Well, that's what this blog is about...finding out. It was going to be set up so that my friend and I could trade off baking and writing and baking and writing...but then she went out and got herself a gluten allergy. I know, what a bitch.

So I guess the plan now is that I do all of the writing and baking and writing and baking...and she points out all of my grammatical errors? No wait, that's my job. Well, we'll figure something out.

So come take a vacation in my world...it's nice here, we've got cake.