De Baking Psychopath

When I was a Senior in college, my Jewish roommate wanted a Chanumas tree. My other roommate and I obliged, and hilarity ensued--involving two fake mini-lawn trees (the kind with pointy plastic trunks intended to be skewered into the dirt) skewered instead into a printer paper box, blue and white lights, YouDee dolls, mini bacteria stuffed toys, and bar crawl wrist bands.... So when I visited aforementioned Jewish college roommate recently in upstate NY where she's now a grad student, it seemed only fitting that the Chanumas/Chrismukkah theme came up again in our exploits. Namely, these black and white cookies she's been making for many years now, the recipe for which comes out of a festive and cheeky Chrismukkah cookbook. More cake than cookie, this New York-associated confection is somehow ubiquitously familiar, yet no two recipes are seem even remotely similar to each other in their components or ratios....I've seen recipes with milk, some with sour cream, some with bu...

This may be one of the ugliest Bundt cakes with icing I've seen or made, but at the same time, it is one of the tastiest-looking cakes I've seen as well. Cursed fast-drying icing!! *shakes fist at imaginary pot of icing* GRR!! You will not defeat me next time!! Happily, this cake will grace many more events in my lifetime because of how delicious it was, and so I will have more chances to make the appearance look presentable! Mid-November is a time for whiskey. Not because of some arcane cultural tradition, but because one of my classmates, who is particularly fond of the stuff, has his birthday in mid-November (celebrated belatedly in early December this year). For the last couple of years I have tried to find cake recipes in honor of the occasion, and this recipe outdid my offering for last year, I think. I started out with the Chocolate Whiskey Cake as found on My Baking Adventures and pretty much made the cake as according to the recipe verbatim. Half a cup of whisk...

One nice side benefit of having visitors is that we have extra incentives to go explore things nearby that we'd ordinarily be too lazy to go check out. Take the ice skating rink at the PPG Plaza, for instance, which was christened with the holiday tree at the annual Light Up Night a week ago. Gorgeous, crisp, cold, and clear night...holiday songs over the loudspeaker...trees decked out in lights... ...and Heinz-regalia Triceratops around the corner. And of course, a trip to Primanti's was in line. Meat, fries, and coleslaw on soft Italian bread... ...what more could you ask for in a sandwich?? Yum yum yum. And then the next day, we piled into the car and headed out to Cleveland, a city very similar to Pittsburgh in many ways, including industrial history, approximate metropolitan population size, and hatred for each other's sports teams. My general feel for Cleveland from this trip was that 1) it was very flat, 2) downtown was very clean, spacious, and pretty, 3) the house...

This year's Thanksgiving break symbolized freedom to me: four days that I refused to think about labwork (to the best of my ability) while I enjoyed the company of friends, family, cats, and leisure reading. A high school classmate of both Michael and myself came to visit us this Thanksgiving. We had a grand ol' time around the 'Burgh as well as venturing out to Cleveland for an inaugural visit. But before the three of us headed out, we spent Thanksgiving Day cooking while the Macy's Day parade blared in the background. First up, Michael prepared two roasting hens for our main course. We've come to prefer non-turkey options as neither of us particularly enjoys turkey, and I am not a lover of white meat in general, so a more reasonable option for small groups such as a turkey breast was not appealing. He used this recipe from Allrecipes.com and roasted our hens until an internal temperature of 180 degrees (about 4-5 hours for our 3 and 1/2 lb hens). Although the...