You See, Perry the Platypus...

Welcome people! I'm on vacation (which is today's excuse for the lack of blogging) but I have two baking adventures to regale you with from the past week. Ready? Let's go.

The first adventure you may judge me for. You see, while at the supermarket, picking up groceries for my California relatives who were coming to visit, my sister made an awesome discovery. She started "Ooooh!"-ing and pointing at the section with the Pillsbury place and bake cookies. You know, those holiday themed ones with ghosts or fireworks or shamrocks or school buses (yes, they do have school buses for September). I was quite confused because, while we do make these fairly often, I didn't think the firework ones were very special. Then she looked at me like I was an idiot and pointed out the holy grail of place and bake cookies: Perry the Platypus cookies.

Firstly, am I safe in assuming that people know what place and bake cookies are? If not, they are exactly what they sound like: pre-cut, preheat the oven, place on a pan, bake, and done. Of course, I make them best. No, seriously! My family has a knack for forgetting about them and destroying our pans with circles of burnt cookie. More importantly though, some of you may not be familiar with Perry the Platypus. Perry is from the Disney tv show Phineas and Ferb. I don't care how old you are, go watch this show because it is clever and has more adult humor than kid humor. And the kids in the show have a pet platypus named Perry. Perry is also a secret agent who fights the evil (sort of) Dr. Doofenshmirtz. This probably sounds crazy but Perry is the shit. And that's all I'll say about that so that I don't end up waxing poetic about the show. But go watch it. It's on Netflix instant.

So, before you judge me for not really baking (since place and bake cookies are in no way really baking) let me just say this: I'm on vacation. And sometimes, you need a place and bake cookie. And look how freaking cute they are!

Totally awesome, right? Oh, and they changed the recipe for these cookies! Now they are made with whole wheat flour which may not sound like a big deal but they taste so so much better than they used to (and they were already pretty good to begin with). Case and point: the package had 24 cookies. With 5 people eating the cookies, they were gone in, I kid you not, less than 7 minutes. Really good cookies. And then we all felt sick.

Hmm, I was going to talk about both my baking adventures in this post but now I'm thinking that the sun is shining and the beach is warm and I'll just blog about the other one later. (Read: tomorrow.) So in the meantime, I'll leave you with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRCT30pDtVE

A Disney Moment: Aladdin


We're finally onto a new group of five movies! It took a while, I know. So now we're at Aladdin. Aladdin was one of my favorites growing up, mostly because of the Genie and Jafar was a pretty solid villain. Sadly, I didn't enjoy it as much on a rewatch as I hoped. The whole beginning was really jumpy (which had to do with late changes in the plot but that's not my problem) and I felt like there were way too many comic relief characters. Seriously, we had Iago, Abu, Raja, and the sultan. You really only need two comic characters at most. They're typically pretty flat characters and can be a bit unnecessary. Honestly, I think one of the more complex characters was the flying carpet. I really respect how they got that much characterization out of a non-speaking carpet.

The best parts were definitely the parts with the Genie. I love his songs, his jokes, and especially the flow of his dialogue. He's pretty terrific. Overall, this movie scored a 3/5. It was fine but it didn't exactly knock my socks off. That said, I can still basically recite the movie from start to finish. I'm serious. My sister yells at me for doing it during the movie.

Finally Some Brownies

Hello all! Welcome to this week's edition of "I never have any of the stuff I need for baking!" Allow me to explain. I was invited to a friend's house for dinner last week so, of course, it is only polite and proper to arrive with a dessert. Unfortunately, I didn't have any good reference points for what the family might enjoy so I was flying blind a bit. I seriously considered my first attempt at pie but then decided that there was too much room for error there. I didn't know the situation with nut allergies or dislikes so finally I just threw up my hands and found a recipe for Ultimate Fudgy Brownies in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. Everybody likes brownies.

Brownies. No problem, right? Wrong. First, I checked the ingredient list. It called for bittersweet chocolate, which naturally, I didn't have. But that's ok! They say you can substitute semisweet for the bittersweet. Perfect except...I'm out of chocolate. I don't even know how it happened but it did. I considered using a different recipe but then I decided to suck it up and go to the store. Before I left, I remembered to check the rest of the list. Ingredients: check. Baking implements: not so much. This recipe called for an 8 inch square baking pan. Searching for a baking pan, searching for a baking pan...nope, nothing. I briefly started doing the volume math to utilize my 13x9 inch baking pan and then decided that I'd probably need the pan eventually so I chose to buy an 8 inch square pan. Plus, my brain didn't really want to do the math.

So, last Wednesday, when it was about a hundred degrees in CT, I headed out to go to the store and to go to the gym. I got all the way to the supermarket before realizing that leaving chocolate in my car in 100 degree heat was a terrible idea. So I went to the gym first like a good girl. (Go me!) Then I picked up the pan and the chocolate (bittersweet and semisweet so I'm prepared for next time) and I was ready to go.

The first step I took was melting the butter, chocolate, and cocoa in the double boiler. That took a little while but I knew it would so that's why I did it first. See how smart I'm getting? While that was going, I combined the other ingredients (namely, sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt) and whisked them up real good. As the chocolate still wasn't completely melted, I set about preparing the pan for baking.

Here, America's Test Kitchen does something interesting. They reference the fact that brownies are a pain to cut and get out of the pan without getting them all messed up. Good point! That is usually a pain! I've heard tricks about putting the brownies in the freezer or trying to flip them upside down but nothing has been truly foolproof yet. This method is. ATK recommends a tin foil sling. That's right. Picture one piece of tin foil crossing the pan in one direction and a second piece of foil crossing the pan rotated 90 degrees from the first piece. This way, when you're done baking, you just pick up the bottom piece of foil and lift the whole thing out of the pan and onto the cutting board. I can't even tell you how well this worked. It was like magic. I highly recommend this method and hope I was clear in explaining it. Here's a picture of the nicely cut brownies in their tin foil sling:

As far as taste, these really are fudgy brownies. I think I may have overcooked them a bit because the sides were a little too crispy but the middles were all fudgy and delightful. Wouldn't do a thing differently with these brownies and they were easy and yummy so I'd definitely recommend these and would probably make them again. Success! And next time, I promise something more challenging! Really!

A Disney Moment: Beauty and the Beast


Ah, another classic. I've briefly discussed Beauty and the Beast already but now you get the in depth review. As I've mentioned, this movie ranks 2/5 right behind Little Mermaid. Little Mermaid just has a better villain. That was pretty much the tipping point for me. I still love Belle best and the music is still superb. But for some reason I was just more drawn to Little Mermaid than Beauty and the Beast. I'm not sure why. Oh wait, here's a theory...

I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D on the big screen when it came out. (Yes, that's how far behind I am with writing about these movies.) My sister and I timed it perfectly. We got up to this film just as it was being released and went on a weekday morning to the movies. A quick note on the 3D. I loved Lion King in 3D and I think Finding Nemo and Little Mermaid will all be great on 3D releases but I just didn't think Beauty and the Beast lent itself to the 3D conversion well. Not enough sweeping landscapes. It was fine but I didn't think the 3D added anything. Also, there was the matter of the creeper at the theater.

That's right, creeper. Middle aged guy came to the theater alone wearing a trenchcoat. Not strange yet. I see movies by myself all the time and I'd hate for someone to judge me for it. And the trenchcoat is an irrelevant point without the following information. Throughout the movie he was fidgeting constantly and a few times got up to presumably (?) use the restroom. Any one of these things: not creepy. All of them together: totally creepy. So, perhaps I was too distracted by the man "enjoying" the movie to truly enjoy it myself and maybe that contributed to my lower ranking on Beauty and the Beast than I might have expected. Also, eww.

Ready in a Jiffy

If I handed you a cookbook filled with everything from breads to cookies to cakes to pastries and said "Pick anything you like for me to bake today," what would you choose? I'm talking sky's the limit here. You name it, it's in this book. So, given those options, would you choose Corn Muffins? I didn't think so. But my boyfriend did so that's what I made.

I dove into the corn muffin recipe in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. The very first thing I did was defy the recipe because why wouldn't that be my way of doing things? The recipe specifies to grease the muffin tin rather than use the muffin papers. They argue that muffins baked in paper liners are shorter and paler and that half the muffin comes off in the paper when you peel it. I argue that it's easier to clean up if they're baked in the papers. So there. I defy thee, America's Test Kitchen!

Ok, meanwhile with the actual baking, I had to whisk the dry ingredients together. Easy, easy. In a different bowl, I had to mix together the wet ingredients. Also easy. By the way, did you know that there's sour cream in corn muffins? I didn't either! The last step was to fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones, being careful not to overmix. I am awesome at this. So it was no problem. Last step: portion into the muffin tin and bake. The whole process took me maybe 20 minutes before baking time. Hmm. That wasn't terribly interesting, was it? 


So let's discuss the taste. I happen to love corn muffins. I had never made them from scratch before though. I usually go with the good ol' Jiffy boxed stuff because, well, it's just so easy and yummy. So the true test was this: are homemade corn muffins any better than Jiffy corn muffins? On my tasting, I leaned towards them tasting basically the same as the Jiffy corn muffins. But what's the use of one woman's opinion? Oh, by the way, they tasted really yummy. Did I mention that yet? Anyway, I needed more opinions. 


I asked my boyfriend to taste them (since he requested them and all) and he said they were good but offered up no opinion on their comparison to Jiffy. Super helpful. So I brought in my corn muffin expert: my sister. She makes Jiffy a lot more often than I do and is more of a corn muffin fiend than I am. She was stuck with tasting day old muffins but as she put it, "I obviously know what a day old Jiffy tastes like." So in the end, with confidence, my sister concluded that they taste exactly the same as Jiffy. So, friends, given the option of Jiffy and homemade, this baker concludes that you should save yourself the time and effort and just go with the Jiffy. I guess this adventure was more of an academic success than anything else. At least the muffins tasted and looked delicious. Take a look: 

Next time, I'm picking the dish and it's going to be more complicated. I'm sick of it being easy! Which no doubt means that there's entertainment to come. 


A Disney Moment: Rescuers Down Under


Well, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that this movie ranked a 5/5 in this grouping. However, that's not because it was bad. It was just against some formidable opponents. In fact, I enjoyed Rescuers Down Under a great deal more than I enjoyed the Rescuers. It was prettier, it was smoother, the story made more sense. For once, we had a main character who is not completely and utterly stupid. Nice change of pace there. I felt that a bit too much time was spent focusing on John Candy as the bird. He just didn't read as a character in the movie, he read as John Candy. Amusing as that was, too much of the film got devoted to that notion. My only real critique was how screwed up it was for the evil dude to tell the mother that her son was eaten by alligators. I mean, that really sucks. That's it though. A fine film but not really much to write home about. 

Summertime, and the Livin' is Easy

Welcome to the start of the summer edition of A Statistician Bakes! Ok, so maybe the summer edition is no different from the usual baking adventures but it's my way of saying that I'm back! After a super long hiatus that included finals, a trip to Disney World, my sister graduating college, a conference, and a two week long cold, I am finally back to baking. There were a couple of things that I baked that I forgot to blog about so I'll briefly touch on those in this entry as well. Meanwhile, this week begins my summer of unemployment baking! My summer will consist of baking, working on my dissertation, and studying for my general exam. I plan to get a bit more elaborate than just cookies. Time to take the next step into the wild blue yonder, as they say.

But first, a recap. While I was MIA from this blog, I baked 7 layer cookies from the Cake Boss cookbook and Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. The 7 layer cookies were actually pretty easy and involved making 5 small cakes (two white, 1 red, 1 green, 1 brown) and layering them with layers of Nutella in between and then coating them with chocolate. I didn't have many issues with this but the parchment paper that was on the bottom of the pans made one side of each of the cakes kind of greasy and I'm not sure why. A note for the future. Also, coating these with melted chocolate makes them ridiculously hard to cut without cracking the chocolate off. Lame. They tasted pretty good but they weren't exactly my cup of tea so I sent them all away to a friend who liked them and wasn't entirely sure if I had made them since they were all professional and complicated-looking. Yay! Starting to pass as a professional! Anywho, here they are:

Also, yes, they are pretty big cookies. I don't know how you're supposed to bite all those layers at once unless you have a really really huge mouth.

Moving on...

The other thing I made was Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread. This was pretty fun because I had to do some actual hand kneading and allow for rising time and all that nonsense. There was also some drama because I totally almost forgot the raisins. Whoopsie. The only eventful thing about this was the actual baking process. When I baked the bread, it looked like this:

Yeah, it freakin' grew. It was like the tiny loaf pan couldn't contain the monstrous bread. The end result of this was that I got my very first baking burn. Trying to remove this from the oven in this state was chaos and my hand managed to hit the rack and I got a tiny, tiny burn on my hand. It's gone now but it felt like a momentous occasion. Also, a raisin managed to escape into the bottom of my oven and totally burnt there. No, I don't know how and no, I haven't successfully cleaned it off completely yet. (It really burned on there!) I have another picture here to show you my swirling technique (recall the icebox pinwheel cookies of yore. It was like that.)

Yeah, my swirling still needs some work. I think tighter rolling is the key.

And now, on to the main event! I have spent the past two hours baking in almost complete silence. That's right, silence. Why would I do that? Well, because today is my boyfriend's 25th birthday and I decided this morning that I'm insane and I wanted to surprise him with a cake. So, I consult my books and find a nice, somewhat easy chocolate cake recipe. Then I look at my kitchen tools and realize that I completely left my cake pans back in New Jersey. Good job, right? But that's ok, plan easily amended: Cupcakes! Perfect, so I go about making the cupcake batter (without using a mixer, mind you because I am being SILENT) and the recipe I chose was for Dark Chocolate Cupcakes from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. Have I mentioned yet that I love this cookbook? If I haven't, I should because it's totally awesome and has a billion great tips and pictures. Good good book.

Anyway, I mixed up the batter just fine and baked them no problem. Now, here's where you get to judge me a bit: I didn't make my own frosting. I know, I know, shame on me. But frankly, frosting out of the can is just as good as anything I would make if it's just a standard chocolate fudge frosting (which is what I used) and it wasn't worth the effort and I was trying to do this quickly and QUIETLY. So judge me if you like but that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.

What I did make was my own writing icing. I found a simple recipe for writing icing in the cookbook and it worked perfectly. I've never had an icing recipe work out quite so well for me. It was just the perfect consistency though and sweet but not too sweet and I had absolutely no problems with the piping bag which may in fact be a first for me. So, I used my mad piping bag skillz to create this masterpiece:

Work of art, right? Anyway, two hours and several unwashed bowls later (I didn't want to make any noise!) and now all I have to do is wait for him to wake up. Mission: accomplished. The only downside: It's noon and I'm staring at these cupcakes that I totally can't eat yet. Torture. I bet they're good though.

A Disney Moment: The Little Mermaid


A classic. Like most little girls, I love Little Mermaid. I was excited for a rewatch. And, in fact, Little Mermaid was only recently surpassed by Beauty and the Beast as my favorite Disney movie. After all, Belle is the best "princess" and Ariel is kinda stupid. But now, I have to say, Little Mermaid trumps Beauty and the Beast. Belle is still better than Ariel but as an entire film, I am forced to rank Little Mermaid with a 1/5 in this grouping.

And the reason is this: Ursula. She's freaking terrifying. She's the scariest Disney villain of all time. Ever. Those who are about to argue "But Frollo is the most evil!" are wrong. There are few children in the world who don't want to crap their pants when Ursula grows 60 or so feet. Her villain song is one of my favorites because so much happens during it. It's not just a song break; it moves the plot along while still being a catchy, intelligently-written song. Ursula is what makes this movie truly great.

Of course, the other songs are terrific as well. I'll happily say that all those songs make me smile. The pacing of the film is good. The animation is lovely. I actually think that it's a movie that will do well with a 3D re-release, mostly because of all of the sweeping oceanic landscapes and bright colors.

Anyway, I don't want to continue gushing but I loved watching this movie. It made me happy. Oh, and the hidden Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kermit in the audience at the concert at the beginning of the film absolutely made my day. If you didn't know they existed, go watch again (or just look on youtube) because it's totally awesome.

Channeling My Inner Martha

I know, I know, I've been bad again. Baking has been happening, I swear! It's just that the blogging part hasn't been happening. Believe it or not, I've been actually doing work lately! Hang on, I'll wait for you to absorb the shock of that statement. Good now? Ok, good.

Like I said, there's been baking. In fact, there was baking during a very special visit from a friend who lives very far away. We made Martha's Ne Plus Ultra cookies. They were quite good but there isn't much to report besides me buying a $2 SlapChop at the Goodwill store to chop pecans because I don't have a food processor. And alas, I ate them all before I remembered to take a picture so you'll just have to take my word for it that they looked and tasted delicious. Oh, one note about these cookies: Martha seemed to think that the recipe made 8 cookies and I made about 30. No one wants a cookie that big.

So that's the Ne Plus Ultra cookie story (by the way, ne plus ultra just means "awesome cookie") and it wasn't very interesting so we'll move on to my attempt to make an Easter themed dessert. When considering what a good Easter dessert might be, I thought long and hard about what would capture the Easter spirit and then I just caved and Googled Easter desserts. Of course, Martha recipes came up with some of the most precious looking cakes ever. I decided to tackle one of her easier ones: Rich Chocolate Cake with Ganache Frosting and Truffle-Egg Nest. Yep. The recipe can be found here. Basically, it's just a chocolate cake with a precious shaved chocolate nest built on top with homemade truffle eggs in the center. Modification #1: I was not making truffle eggs from scratch. I just didn't have the energy or the drive to color egg-shaped truffles robin's egg blue. No freaking way. I bought some Cadbury eggs and called it a day on that one.

The next adventure, so to speak, was the search for the 7 inch cake pans. To give you some context, a standard round cake pan is 9 inches. We had one 8 inch pan (and several 9 inches) but no 7 inch. Oh, and a 6 inch is about the size of the top tier of a wedding cake. So off I went to hunt for the elusive 7 inch cake pan. I asked a neighbor to start with but alas, no 7 incher. I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Kohl's, AC Moore (on the day before Easter, mind you) and nothing. So before even beginning to bake, I was already frustrated. Not cool, Martha. Not cool. I decided to pick up two 8 inch pans for my collection and resolved to watch the cakes carefully to adjust the bake time.

Here's one cool thing about this cake: it's made entirely in a pot. Seriously, all you need is a pot and a whisk. Nothing too interesting to report in the baking process except that I perhaps should have whisked more vigorously in the last step to fluff the batter up more. Anywho, baked up the cakes and left them to cool for a while. Now, here comes another point of confusion: the recipe called for both a whipped ganache frosting and then another ganache topping but I did not realize that upon my first reading. Or second. Or third. By the time I did figure it out, I realized that I didn't have enough chocolate or heavy cream for the second ganache. Maybe I'm just stressed out but this was an extremely frustrating discovery. Eventually I got over it and iced the cake with the whipped ganache frosting and covered it with the thinner ganache. The cake itself came out looking quite professionally done, if I do say so myself (and I do.) I was initially saddened by what seemed like a waste of perfectly good ganache (I pretty much had to pour ganache over the whole cake and let the excess run into the bottom of a pan) but then my mom saved the day by scraping the ganache into a container for later use in strawberry-dipping.

Now, all of this is well and good from a baking standpoint. But now we get to the Martha-ness of the recipe. Anyone can make a simple chocolate cake. It takes a real pro to make a bird's nest out of chocolate. Here are the directions: "using a chef's knife, scrape milk chocolate bar at 90 degree angle, forming enough curls and shards to measure 1 1/2 cups." Sounds simple, right? Wrong. It took three masterminds to figure out that scraping down the chocolate only created tiny chocolate confetti. Eventually (and I do mean to imply that this took some time and some staring at a chocolate bar and some experimentation with potato peelers on chocolate), I discovered that instead of scraping, I could just chop thin slices of chocolate which yielded much better results. Then the last step was to build the nest. I was bad at this. My "nest" didn't look at all like a nest. My sister had to fix it for me. But whatever, I'm not the artistic one of the family. It came out pretty precious looking in the end. Here's a picture for your judgement:

As for the taste, it went over very well with my family on Easter. I thought it was a bit denser than it should have been but maybe that's just a personal preference. I bet having a 7 inch pan would have made it better. Stupid 7 inch pan.

A Disney Moment: Oliver and Company
I love Oliver and Company. I think it's adorable. And anyone who disagrees is wrong. Again, we see my affinity for cartoon cats and dogs coming out but I think it's a pretty well structured film. I like the pacing. I like the referrals to Oliver Twist. It's certainly not an original story but it's fun nonetheless. Certain moments really stuck with me. Small things like how Dodger struts every time he walks. And to me, a four-legged strut is a bit of an accomplishment. "Why Should I Worry?" is a really fun scene with a truly terrific song. The other musical high for me was "You and Me Together" which is just one of the sweetest things in the world. I may be biased because the girl is named Jenny but I just find that whole song endearing.

Let's see, what else? Oh, I was a bit surprised to discover that I didn't mind having the characters voiced by famous people. Bette Midler voicing the overdramatic show dog was especially perfect to me. Overall, I was just left with a happy feeling when the movie ended. I also really enjoyed the opening and closing landscapes of NYC. That all said, I'm still only giving this movie a 3/5. Why, you ask? Well, because, my friends, we are on the cusp of the Disney Renaissance! Great things to come. But Oliver and Company is still ranking a lot higher than the likes of Fox and the Hound, for example, despite its low group rating.

Shame on the Blogger

Ah, it appears that I haven't posted anything in a month. Whoops. Sorry about that. In that time, the whole format of blogger has changed. Erg. So confused. So anyway, I'm back! I didn't really go anywhere but I guess I've been busy or unmotivated or just plain lazy so despite baking plenty, I've been remiss with my blog posts. So I think I'll just do a very brief catch-up on my projects and then we'll get back to something normal starting this week.

Like I said, I have been baking. But for a while I was making cookies from recipes I had already used. For instance, I made the Cake Boss peanut butter cookies to bring to a housewarming party. Or I made Martha's Snickerdoodles because my boyfriend really likes them. I didn't want to blog about stuff I had already done! That would've been boring. So I suppose I set a bad precedent for posting this month. Ok, enough of me trying to defend myself.

The first new thing that I've made lately was from Martha (naturally) and was a cookie called Buttered Rum Meltaways. These were a fairly uneventful cookie so I'll just give you the highlights. The first thing I noticed was that they have all the fun spices that are seen in pumpkin cookies. So they automatically smelled delicious. The second thing I noticed was that they have a lot of rum in them. Like, 1/4 cup. I mixed up all the ingredients and had to roll the cookies into two 1 1/4 inch logs of dough. That's a really small cookie. Like really small. So small that I triple checked to be sure I had the measurements correct and even watched a video of Martha rolling the dough from the Martha Stewart show. I even got out a ruler for this one! So, I just decided they are supposed to be tiny, bite-size cookies.

To put my laziness in perspective, these cookies had to be in the freezer for about 30 minutes and I left them for 3 days. All I had to do was slice and bake and I was too lazy to do it. Well, ok, slice, bake, and coat with powdered sugar. I thought they were decent cookies in the end but not really to my taste. My mom described them as "like a gingersnap...now they're rummy...now they're like a pie!" They're basically that gum from Willy Wonka that is a meal in a stick of gum. Anyway, decent, but not great. Here's a picture:

Next, I made Martha's giant chocolate sugar cookies for colloquium. The recipe was supposed to yield 8 cookies but that was impractical so I made about 4 dozen. Easy recipe. Nothing super interesting. Fine cookies but not great. I prefer the Death by Chocolate chocolate fudge cookies. I don't really ever feel the need to go back to these cookies. So, moving on. But here they are:

Lastly, my mom and I made Martha's Browned Butter Toffee Blondies. These are freakin' amazing. Probably my second favorite thing behind the Pecan Tassies. It wasn't a hard recipe but there were steps involved. First, we had to brown 2 1/2 STICKS of butter. That's a whole lot of butter. Anyway, we had to cook it in a saucepan until it was "browned," whatever that really means. It smelled good though. Then we had to mix that with a huge amount of sugar and brown sugar. From there, your standard flour, baking powder, salt, egg type stuff. Oh yeah, and vanilla. My mom kind of dumped the vanilla in instead of measuring carefully. That vanilla must have tried jumping from her hands or something. So there may have been a bit of extra vanilla. Oh well. And finally, a cup of toffee bits and a cup of chopped walnuts pecans. That's right, we made a substitution in a Martha recipe. I know that Martha knows best but sometimes in life you just don't want to have to pay for walnuts and you happen to have pecans in your house. Yep, that was indeed the thought process.

Anyway, Martha had instructed us to butter a pan, lay down a layer of parchment paper, and then butter the parchment paper. We initially resisted this direction but finally decided to trust Martha. It was a good choice. My goodness though, these things smell heavenly. They almost smell like maple syrup. My mom and I were supposed to let them cool completely and then flip the pan upside down to cut the blondies but we didn't even wait for them to cool before digging in with a knife and cutting off a slice. They're so so so good. I mean, amazing. So yummy. Especially warmed up. Mmmmm. I still have a few left and I'm excited to go home and eat one. Oh, we were supposed to use cookie cutters to make shapes. We didn't. That is all, here they are:

A Disney Moment: Great Mouse Detective
On to a new group of 5! Here we get into the Disney Renaissance with Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company, Little Mermaid, Rescuers Down Under, and Beauty and the Beast. So, I first saw Great Mouse Detective fairly recently as it had somehow not been on my Disney radar as a kid. It's a pleasant enough movie. It sets a really nice tone with the dancing ballerina toy because the animation in that moment is just so smooth and lovely. But from there, without being a Sherlock Holmes fan, there just wasn't much that grabbed me. I could get the most general Sherlock Holmes references but I think a lot of the nuance was lost on me. So, it's possible that if I had read Sherlock Holmes I would have appreciated it more.

Meanwhile, I loved seeing some callbacks to old films. Namely, Dumbo in the toy shop and the lizard from Alice. It was just a sweet touch. Anyway, the final verdict is that it was entertaining but somewhat forgettable. As such, it warrants a 4/5 (you fiend!).

We're Running Out of Thyme!

Happy Leap Day everyone! And what a joyous Leap Day it has been. To celebrate Leap Day, I decided to make something a little crazier than usual (because anything can happen on Leap Day) and finally make the Martha Stewart Cornmeal Thyme cookies. In anticipation of making these cookies, I had previously picked up some thyme and some Zante currants. The recipe specified dried currants. I combed every aisle of two supermarkets and didn't find a single thing labeled "dried currants" so I picked up the next best thing, Zante currants. Which, as it turns out, are the exact same thing as dried currants. Or at least that's what Wikipedia is telling me. Whatever, I didn't even know what currants were before now. Apparently they're like raisins.

Anyway, slightly stressful shopping aside, I was anxious to try a cookie that had such a seemingly weird mix of ingredients and moreover, was specified to be a tea cookie. This makes it perfect for colloquium where everyone is already having coffee or tea. So, this morning, I had to get my act together and make these cookies in time for colloquium. I was all ready to go and was pulling out the ingredients when I noticed one small detail that I had overlooked. The recipe calls for yellow cornmeal. I had cornstarch. A Google search told me in no uncertain terms that these are not the same thing. I suppose I should have guessed that. I have before seen homemade cornmeal. But, lacking corn to grind (and knowing that it makes a huge mess. Long story. It involves my college kitchen covered in some terrifying yellow paste. Don't ask.), I headed out to the store dressed in my blue and yellow Leap Day best.

Now though, I was really under the gun. I had only about an hour and a half to make the cookies and during part of that time, I had to be on a conference call. Rushing around my kitchen, I started creaming the butter and sugar and gathering the dry ingredients. The butter was not working well for me because one of the sticks of butter had come from the freezer. Whoops. Eventually it more or less got to the right consistency though. For once, I even combined the dry ingredients in a separate bowl instead of dumping them all in separately. I figured that it would be wise to really combine the cornmeal and the flour to ensure an even distribution in the dough. From there, the rest of making the dough was easy.

The last things to add were the currants and the thyme. At this point, I was already on the conference call and let me tell you, thyme was of the essence! Don't you groan at that pun, I've got a million of these. Anyway, the currants were easy to measure out, despite being all stuck together and sticky. It was the thyme that got kind of annoying. I was supposed to finely chop the thyme. But, I mean, it's thyme. It's already super duper tiny. So I didn't chop it. It was really a big thyme saver. Hehe.

Ok, ok, I'm done with those puns now. I popped the cookies in the oven and baked them without any incident. The recipe specified that I should use parchment paper but I think all of Martha's recipes do and I don't mind washing my pans so I didn't bother with the paper. I baked them all up, put them in a container to bring to colloquium, and checked my email one last time before walking out the door. Lo and behold, I discovered an email informing me of a snow day! It's a Leap Day miracle! So, no school for me and no colloquium so what do I do? Well, I grab a cookie, make myself a cup of tea, and snuggle in for a several hour marathon of Big Bang Theory, of course!

Oh, by the way, the cookies are quite good. Not very sweet but a nice, chewy texture and a lovely flavor. And I'm patting myself on the back because they look exactly like the picture. The only problem is that now I have a whole tin full of cookies and no colloquium to bring them to!

A Disney Moment: Black Cauldron
To further quote 30 Rock in this blog post, "Oh good God, Lemon Black Cauldron!" It very well might be worse than Sword in the Stone. And that's really saying something. My sister and I actually took a break halfway through this movie! We never do that! But let me bring you back to the beginning...

The beginning confused us. Why? Because we were slightly distracted and then all of a sudden, we're into the actual movie and we had missed all of the credits! We love reading the credits! So we rewound the movie. Watching carefully, we discovered that no, we had not missed the credits. The credits are just at the end for the first time. So we got off on the wrong foot with this movie to begin with.

But it didn't get much better from there. The plot reeked of Lord of the Rings, I couldn't remember any of the character names, and the sidekick creature, Gurgi, was entirely distracting because we couldn't figure out what the hell he was supposed to be. Is he a dog? Is he a mythical creature? Is he Gollum? Regardless of what he was, he was super annoying. Oddly enough, after watching this movie, we met a dog that looked pretty much exactly like Gurgi. The whole movie just felt like torture to watch.

I will say that all of the evil stuff is pretty freakin terrifying. It was like all the worst parts of Fantasia in several really terrifying sequences. I can see why this movie was rated PG. In fact, while I was watching, I even questioned that rating because the whole movie was pretty dark. Ok, rant over. 5/5 and we're done with this block of films. Ugh. Black Cauldron.