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I’m not much of a Valentine’s girl, as I’ve said here before.  To recap: the whole thing is just a little silly, in my view.  The chocolate and the booze that it encourages, however, are not silly in the least.  Oh, no.  Champagne on a Monday night?  Don’t mind if I do!  A palm-sized turtle offered up last Friday night, just before I was about to head to the gym and then dinner (the confection threatening to negate the first and spoil the second)?  Of course, I’d love one!

So, for this February 14, I’ve baked a cake that combines the two, all in a lovely bundt ring—a seductive cake shape if ever there was one.  For the booze, this cake wisely selects bourbon.  And, chocolate-wise, the cake goes for super dark and brooding.  The result is astonishingly good.

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I’m a big believer in a homemade pie crust.  Pate brisee, in fact, is one of my favorite phrases to say aloud.  Try it: pate brisee.  Pate brisee!  PATE BRISEE.  See?  And it’s not just that.  It’s the magic that is made of butter, plus flour, plus salt, plus water, plus heat.  That magic is flaky and rich, and is a wonderfully accommodating receptacle for all kinds of delicious.  Apples, peeled and chunked, cinnamon-spiked and saucy, for instance.  Or, for another, dizzying trails of pecans atop a super-sweet, salt-cut chocolate base.  And don’t forget the classic: a silky, burnt orange pumpkin custard.

I’ll happily try to convince anyone who’ll listen that the homemade pie crust is nowhere near as tricky a feat as some will have you believe.  Sure—it takes a couple tries to get the hang of it.  Mainly, you need to learn not to have too heavy or too light a hand when it comes to adding water to the flour-butter-salt base.  And it helps tremendously to work very quickly and to keep your ingredients cold.  Beyond that, I swear, pate brisee (pate brisee, pate brisee, pate brisee—sorry (but not really)) is a snap.  Not to mention incredibly worth it.

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One of my favorite posts to date deals with a subject near to my heart: bars.  You know—the type of cookie that is baked in a single layer and then sliced into bars. Not squares.  Not bites.  Not (worst of all) surprises.  But, bars.  Pronounced, preferably, in a strong Minnesota accent—the kind you’re most likely to hear in the northerly reaches of the state, which also happen to be locations where, in my experience, such bars are ubiquitous.  Say, Hibbing or Grand Marais or Grand Rapids or Duluth.  I was born in the last of these towns and have family that lives near the second and third.  Which is to say that I am kind of expert on the charm of the Minnesota accent.  And, of course, I am also an avowed fan of the bar.

For all of this love of bars (the cookie kind, that is—the off-sale establishments in the aforementioned towns are the subject of another post), you may be surprised to learn that I’ve never made lemon bars, a classic version of the bar by any measure.  And, while it’s likely that I’ve at least eaten a lemon bar in the past (perhaps at a potluck, or maybe a post-church coffee hour?), if I did, I don’t remember doing so.

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For all the cookies I have baked—and there have been many—I have never made a thumbprint cookie.  I’ve long been charmed by the name, a culinary onomatopoeia, of sorts—a name that sounds like it looks: a cookie that’s been stamped with the fleshy pad of a thumb.  And I’ve been intrigued by the endless possibilities for filling the cookies’ thumbprints—be it jam or curd or caramel or peanut butter or ganache.

So, when I set about crafting my holiday baking list, I put thumbprints right there at the top.  I left the specifics—what type of cookie (a rich butter cookie, or maybe something nut-based or flecked with cornmeal?) and what type of filling—to be worked out later.  There would be thumbprints, in one form or the other—that I knew.  There would also be a mix of treats from Christmas past—espresso crinkles, lemon poppyseed shortbread, truffles, and brittle—and from, as with the thumbprints, Christmas future (I envisioned a new confection—maybe a thick, powdery marshmallows or candy-cane-striped meringues or pistachio-studded nougat—as well Russian tea cakes (a cookie I’ve long loved to eat, but have never made) and some kind of ginger cookie).  I wanted to try an old family recipe or two, as well—maybe my grandparents’ party mix or my mom’s roll out cookies.

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It seems like I was just here raving about cranberries and the cake they should adorn and impending turkeys and travel and such and, poof!, the holiday has come and gone.  Along the way, I turned 30.  Thirty!  And this blog turned three.  Three!  Both occasions seem awfully momentous.  Momentous enough for a cookie, I’d say.  Won’t you agree?

And not just any cookie, but a shortbread cookie.  Have you made shortbread?  If not, I suggest you hop to it.  It’s a cookie that manages to be incredibly easy and super decadent and a little elegant.  It’s infinitely adaptable, too, to all kinds of flavors and additions.  Here, we’ve got a round of shortbread that’s flecked with ground pecans (though the original recipe called for walnuts and I’m pretty certain that any nut would do) and baked in a round that’s been pricked with the blunt end of a bamboo skewer.

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Here are the things I should be doing right now: making the two rounds of pie crust that I resolved to make last weekend; packing my suitcase; practicing my bowling game (as I will be ushering myself into my 30s on Saturday with a bowling birthday party, because, apparently, 30 is the new 8); cleaning out my DVR (What?  You don’t consider that a pre-vacation must?); tying up a million loose ends at work; getting my nails done (only to have them destroyed in the flurry of celery-chopping, onion-peeling, pie crust-crimping, and dish-scrubbing that will soon ensue); doing a few sit-ups in a futile attempt to ward off the feasts that are about to unfold.

And the list goes on.  I’m sure you all have pre-Thanksgiving lists of your own.  But, for a few minutes, at least, I need to set aside my to do’s and I’m really hoping you’ll do the same.  It’s about cake.  Priorities, people.

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A pecan pie is this: a thick, gooey band of sweet filling that tastes faintly of molasses, nestled into a flaky pie crust and topped with a ridged mosaic of pecan halves.  I’ve never made one and, despite Kevin’s request that I do so for this year’s Thanksgiving, I worried that it would not fit on the menu.  Not that I have a problem capping off a lavish Thanksgiving buffet with a truly gluttonous variety of pies.  Oh no, to the contrary.  But, this year, I was afraid that my appetites and my time do not quite match up.

Kevin and I fly into Minneapolis on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving, arriving well after dark.  On a normal Wednesday, I’d be heading to bed around the time we’ll get to my parents’ house.  My plan for that evening—barring travel woes, which seem to befall us every. single. holiday.—is to proceed directly to the kitchen.  I will not pass go (though I will accept a glass of wine) and I will immediately get to work on the pies, a category of the meal I’ve agreed to spearhead.

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I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line, I developed sort of a thing for flourless (or nearly flourless) chocolate cakes.  And, of course, they’re not all that hard to love.  They’re lovably easy (the most complicated recipes call for a double boiler, which I consider a small price to pay).  They’re lovably decadent—dark, fudgy, dense and rich.  And, best of all, I think, they’re lovably ugly.  They puff up in the oven and exhale as they cool, resulting in a rather undulating, mottled cake.  If you’re concerned that guests will pass up such a homely specimen, a sprinkling of powdered sugar—a little bit like lipstick on a pig—will do just the trick.

As far as these cakes go, I’m quite partial to Molly’s Winning Hearts and Minds Cake—a nearly flourless choccolate cake that is, I assure you, aptly named.  I’ve made it for holidays and parties and for a winter Saturday night in.  It’s equally at home in each of these occasions and that’s another thing I love about it.  Most recently, I served it at a going away party for our friends Matt and Maggie.  It was still summer, then, so I served the slices with fresh berries and a spoonful of just-sweetened sour cream (don’t knock it ’till you try it!).

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Kevin lodged a vague request for something banana-y and breakfast-y a couple weeks back.  Normally, I am thrilled to have a request and act on it as quickly as possible, but such jump-to-it-ness simply isn’t possible when it comes to banana -based baked goods.  Unless, of course, you store bananas in your freezer, an excellent practice and one that I am not organized enough to accomplish.  So, I did the next best thing: I snapped up a bunch of bananas at the store.  And then I waited.

When purchased, the bananas’ peels were a sunny hue, blemish-free and even tinged with whispers of lime green.  In short, these bananas were completely unsuitable for baking.  It wasn’t until a week later, when the bananas had softened on the kitchen counter, taking on a deeply freckled complexion, that they were ready.  By that time, of course, I wasn’t in the mood to bake my regular old banana bread.

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My cell phone rang on Friday as I was sitting at my desk, in my office.  I looked over at the buzzing black device and saw that it was my mother calling.  It’s unusual for her to call in the middle of a work day and a knot of worry immediately formed in my gut.

And, it turns out, it was an emergency.

A cooking emergency, that is.  She had the afternoon off from work and was busily preparing to cook dinner for a bunch of my parents’ friends that night.  She’d laid out her menu and was ticking items off her to do list, but when the time came to get started on dessert, the apple crisp she had planned no longer seemed right.  The cooler days earlier that week had given way to a return of summer temperatures.  A hot dessert—one starring autumn’s favorite fruit, no less—would not do.

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