Superheroes eat cupcakes.

Let me start this little baking story by letting you know that I’m a librarian.  I once had a man ask me how he could get himself “one of those easy woman jobs like a librarian.”  He had worked as a window washer for years and had been forced in to retirement because of the adverse effect all the stress was having on his health.  So he wanted a woman’s job. You know.  The kind with no stress.  There’s a reason women live longer than men, he said.  They have no stress.  Sir, you are talking to the wrong librarian.

I’m pretty sure I’ll remember this guy forever for many reasons, but mostly because he said in a not-so-tactful way what people say to me all the time.  “It must be nice to have a job where you get to sit in the quiet and read all the time.”  “I thought about being a librarian, but it just seems so boring.”  I don’t even know what to say to people after such comments.  This doesn’t describe my reality at all.  My day is never quiet and relaxing.  I actually spend very little of my day thinking about books let alone having a quiet corner in which to read them.  My job is very often chaotic and even sometimes dangerous.  My job is more politics than book lending, and am charged with the very serious business of empowering people through information.  And while most of you know me as someone who isn’t very serious most of the time, I am serious about this.  I am trying to be the best librarian superhero I know how to be, and it’s not easy.  And sometimes that means I have days like yesterday where I feel stressed and grouchy and I don’t want one more thing to do.  But I promised cupcakes for our monthly work potluck.  So I make cupcakes.

Well, E and I make cupcakes.  I’ve been wanting to try these Apple Pie Cupcakes for some time now, mainly for the cuteness factor.  So when Lovely Lady Baker called us up to the Big Time and let us pick October’s Easy Bake Coven recipe, I took advantage.  After all.  What’s not to love?  Almost a pound of butter and more sugar than one person can safely eat.

We followed the recipe pretty exactly.  I had grand ideas of fresh whipping cream instead of frosting, but with the impending potluck I needed something that would hold up over time.

The end was a lovely sweet cupcake with a bit of spice.  And boy howdy were they pretty.  Just take a look-see.  E was skeptical about the tartness of the Granny Smiths, but I promised that with the amount of butter and sugar we’d be putting in, it’d all be ok.  By the way, if you pass E on the street, you might just let him know what a fine dice he got on those apples.  I’m just saying.  He’s pretty happy with his knife skills.

So we made cupcakes instead of me checking my work email for the 50th time that evening, instead of me trying to catch up on the back log of collection development I need to be doing, and instead of E grading more papers.

Sometimes having one more thing to do at night is a good thing., because I get to worry about sugar and eggs for a while, and because I work with people that looked like this when they were wee babies:

And they like my cupcakes.

A mission definitely worth hours of my time

There are many delicious restaurants within walking distance of Fort Awesome.  This and the secret garden around the corner are the primary reasons we selected the neighborhood.  One such delicious restaurant is No Frill Grill.  It’s decent, interesting food, without much pretension.  They do mountains of nachos but also deliciously delicate scallops.

My favorite dish and standby comfort food there is their shrimp and chips.  It’s over a dozen butterflied and fried jumbo shrimp with Old Bay fries.  It’s delicious and sets my soul right after those weeks when I’ve worked 7 days without a break.  But it’s bad for me, and though I never finish it, I always give it my best effort.  Especially when they bring me a side of their pesto ranch dressing.  Oh boy.  But I recently discovered a somewhat better alternative.  It’s not exactly healthy but a step in the right direction.  It’s the Sesame Shrimp Salad.  it’s those fried shrimp again but a lot less of them and ones fried in a black sesame batter over a mixed green salad with oranges, radishes, wontons, a whole number of other vegetables, and…wait for it…Red Dragon Dressing.  I have no idea what Red Dragon Dressing is.  I’ve never seen it on a menu before, and I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.  It’s opaque almost looking like that ginger dressing they glop on everything at Japanese Steakhouses but the flavor is more mild and sweet.  It’s got a sesame taste to it as well.  I’ve been searching all week online, trying to find an Asian dressing recipe that looks like with no avail.

So if anyone reads this blog yet (and my blog stats indicate no) and has any ideas what is in Red Dragon dressing, please let me know.  I feel like my happiness factor would be increased significantly if I could make this dressing.  My happiness is in your hands.

Easy Bake Coven – There’s an Amish joke in here somewhere.

Deceptively simple

We’re in a baking club, and this is the story of a soft pretzel.

I am not much of a soft pretzel fan.  Frankly they just taste like regular white bread most of the time, but I am a fan of fake cheese.  So much like a stale corn chip, I will tolerate the soft pretzel if only to use it as an excuse to eat some cheese, the kind that you pump.

E does like soft pretzels, and on a little trip to Philadelphia, he got to watch some Amish folks make them.  And then he got to eat one. He really liked it.  (It is at this point that I intended to share a picture of E eating the aforementioned pretzel.  However, I can’t find it anywhere and am guessing it is trapped on the computer that died a slow death.  Please close your eyes and imagine E in a gentleman’s cap eating a soft pretzel while a guy with lots of facial hair flings pretzel dough around in the background.)

That long story was all to say, “We had mixed feelings about this challenge.”

We chose the mall-pretzel variety.  I’m often skeptical of those Food Network folk and their recipes.  I am scared that there might be Sandra Lee cooties somewhere around that rubbed off.

We followed the instructions exactly except for the final touches (fresh Parmesan and basil) and an egg wash before it went in the oven, and were only slightly stumped when it came to kneading the bread.   I know what texture to look for when making a loaf of bread and rolls but was uncertain about the desired texture for pretzels.  It seemed to all work out in the end though, with the final product having a decent density.

That brings me to the final product.  Have a look.

Does that look like a pretzel to you?

If I hadn’t had a mercy killing of my old computer I could then show you the picture of that Amish pretzel, and you would agree with me.  That does not look like a pretzel.  It looks like a cinnamon roll or maybe a mini-pizza.

My thought is that we did not roll the ropes of dough out to be thin enough, and I let it rise too long the second time.  But I found these little cinnamon roll/mini-pizza/pretzels kind of endearing.  Joyful little suckers, puffing up, refusing to keep their shape, all puff and no restraint.  And because they looked like cinnamon rolls, and cinnamon rolls need toppings, and because we have a mighty basil plant on our fire escape that refuses to die despite our best efforts to neglect it, we topped those puppies with fresh Parmesan and basil and called it done.  (How do you even punctuate a sentence like that?) The cheese didn’t come out of a pump, and there wasn’t a guy with crazy sideburns to do the twisty-flippy bit in the air with the dough, but I must admit I kind of liked them, even if again they were just another bready vessel for delicious cheese.

That basil is magic.