Easy as Rollin' Off a Log

Hello loyal readers! It's been a while. And by a while, I mean since Christmas. And by since Christmas, I mean I HAVEN'T BAKED SINCE CHRISTMAS!!! Isn't that horrible? I was so busy with so many other things that I just haven't had the time and I was starting to forget where my mixer even was!

But here I am today, enjoying my summer hours at work by waiting at home for the refrigerator repairman. Larry said he'd be here at 1:00. It is currently 4:30. Larry is still not here. I already planted a bunch of flowers and watched a bunch of Gilmore Girls and I am BORED. And what else is there to do when you're bored except bake? So I went foraging in my pantry to see what I have ingredient-wise and ended up having just enough pecans to make Martha Stewart's Pecan Logs. I've never had a pecan log but I figure it has pecans so it must not be bad. Plus Martha's recipes are usually safe and easy to not screw up.

So I started out by putting a bunch of pecans on a pan to toast them in the oven. Mmmmmm pecans. Then I successfully softened my butter and added my confectioner's sugar (no regular sugar in this one) and turned on my mixer. And the bowl promptly jumped off the counter and fell to the floor. Yup, definitely forgot to lock in the bowl. Rookie mistake. That's as bad as forgetting to put the top on a blender. I was very embarrassed by my mistake but fortunately, I was the only one who saw it so nobody has to know about it. Shhhhh....

Amazingly, none of the ingredients fell on the floor (even though the bowl did) and I could get back to work. Very simple recipe: butter, powdered sugar, an egg, flour, salt, baking powder, pecans and OH, LARRY IS FINALLY HERE!

Ok, now he's under my fridge so I can resume. Like I said, simple recipe overall. Although I did notice that there was proportionally an awful lot of salt. One and a half teaspoons to be precise. That's not necessarily a lot but it seems like it when there's only two and a half cups of flour in the dough. We shall see. I lazily eyeballed the "half the pecans" direction because half the pecans go in the dough and half are used for rolling the pecan logs in. I tossed the dough in the fridge to set and immediately compromised with myself by saying "well, it's supposed to chill for 30 minutes but how about I let it chill for as long as it takes my oven to preheat?" Because I'm bored.

Once the dough was semi-chilled (sorry, Martha, I know you're right but I don't care today), I was instructed to roll tablespoons of dough into 2 inch logs. We should all know by now how good I am with measurements. If you don't know, the answer is: bad. Once again, I eyeballed it. The first few looked gigantic so I started rolling them smaller. I was supposed to get 4 dozen pecan logs. I got 2.5 dozen. Pretty close! I also had to roll these logs into the chopped pecans. This was not a terrible task but I felt like the pecans were falling off a bit. I wanted to press them into the dough but then I lost the shape of the log. Although, I'm not super sure why they need to be log-shaped anyway. Why couldn't they just be cookie shaped? I'm overthinking this but I'm managing my anxiety about Larry asking how old my fridge is.

Anyway, into the oven they go for 14-15 minutes (oddly specific, Martha) and I wait. And made myself a cup of tea. Finally they were done and I pulled them out and they looked perfect. Lightly browned and slightly cracked. They didn't grow at all, as I suspected they wouldn't, so with the exception of the couple of giant ones, most of the pecan logs are delightful two bite pieces. When they finally cooled, I prepared myself for a lovely little Friday afternoon treat:

Ok, so maybe it doesn't necessarily look appetizing but oh man, are these ever delicious! Crumbly, but not too crumbly. Sweet, but not too sweet. Oddly enough, I think the huge amount of salt really help the flavor although next time, I might use juuuuuust a bit less. You can definitely taste the salt. But it does help balance out the overwhelming pecan flavor.

Overall, not my favorite Martha pecan recipe (that honor still goes to the Pecan Tassies!) but delicious nonetheless! So, now I've satisfied my boredom and have two dozen pecan logs. Anybody want to come over for a cookie?

Say a prayer for the outcome of Larry's investigation...

Meet You at the [Pecan] Bar!

Hey there people! For today's adventure we enter the mythical world of bars. I had to make a shareable dessert for a coworker's going away party. I originally was thinking cookies but I just did that so time to think outside the box. Well, kind of still a box because I landed on bars. I started out thinking I'd make caramel pecan turtle bars but I didn't have any heavy cream and I legitimately hadn't been to the supermarket since the last time I baked. Oh well, pecan bars it is! This recipe comes from the good ol' American Test Kitchen Baking book. If I'm not mistaken, I've never made a bad recipe from that book. I'm sure if I'm incorrect, someone will correct me but it's a generally dependable way to go. Onward!

Step 1: Foil sling the pan with the still magical tin foil method. Then I greased the pan with some PAM. Then I fell asleep. Oops.

So now I appear to have upped the difficulty level. I now had to complete a baking project by noon while actively participating in conference calls. No problem, right? Ok, back to step 1. Oh wait, that step is still already done! I'm so ahead of the game. Next step is to toast a bunch of pecans. I needed some for the crust and some for the filling, just like making a pecan pie. So into the oven went the pecans. I was supposed to be shaking the pan every few minutes but I was on a call so let's face it: that just didn't happen. However, I was watching the clock closely so started working on everything else while they toasted. Fortunately, America's Test Kitchen always has my limited time in mind so I was directed to melt the butter for the filling while the pecans were toasting to allow the butter time to cool. How clever.

Time to start on the crust. I decided to actually use my food processor for once instead of cutting in the butter by hand. So I tossed in the flour, brown sugar, salt, and baking powder and then sat around waiting for the pecans to finish toasting. And I'm waiting. And I'm waiting. C'mon, pecans, I'm working with a tight deadline here! Ok, they're done. Tossed those in too and pulsed "about 5 pulses" which seemed oddly specific. Especially considering the next direction was to toss in the chilled butter and pulse for "about 8 pulses." Is there that big a difference between 5 and 8 pulses? Is there someone at America's Test Kitchen testing 6 and 9 pulses and then doing a taste test comparison? These are questions that I need answers to!

Press the crust firmly into the prepared pan with your fingers and bake for 20-24 minutes. Sheesh, seems like a long time considering the filling will have to bake too. Starting to get nervous about the time. Oh well, I guess I can make the filling while I wait. Good thing the calls this particular morning were more "listening" meetings than "participation" meetings. Only downside is that when you're actively listening to meetings while baking, you tend to have to check the measurements 5 or 6 times because you keep forgetting what the actual measurements are. So putting together the filling took a while. But it was pretty easy. Just whisk together some brown sugar, corn syrup, melted butter, vanilla, salt, egg, and bourbon. Hey, why is so much of the bourbon gone? I barely had enough for the recipe!

By now, the crust was done and I poured in the filling, sprinkled the rest of the pecans on the top, and stuck it back in the oven. For 25-30 minutes. For those keeping track, I've already been baking this for about an hour. I was supposed to let it bake until there were cracks on the top but it was browning and a toothpick came out clean so I declared them done. Ok, so remove from oven and let cool in pan for TWO HOURS??? I really should read recipes before I start them. So, this is only a minor problem. If I let them cool for two hours, then I'll have approximately five minutes to cut them and get to the party. Hmm. Negotiating with myself, I opted to try cutting them after about an hour and a half. I have a foil sling, how bad could it be?

So I'm waiting. And I'm waiting. And, dear God, these things smell amazing. I am literally salivating in my living room smelling these from the kitchen. I keep going back to check on them to see if they're cool yet (they're not) and every time I walk into the kitchen, I salivate a little bit more. Still waiting.

Ok, enough time has passed! Well, not really, but I'm starting to feel the time pressure. So I lift the foil sling out of the pan, put it on a cutting board, and try to get the foil off. The operative word being "try". As I started to peel the foil off the sides, I could see the middle of the bars straining and cracking. Which means it's about to become a collapsed mess. My clue should have been that the center was still warm to the touch. Dammit, back into the pan to hold its shape and cool longer.

Now I'm getting really fidgety. I gave it an extra 20 minutes to cool (for those keeping track, I've now been dealing with these things for about three hours) and tried again. This time I was extra super gentle trying to peel off the foil. Pecan bars are sticky, didja know? Finally, the bars were free from their foil prison. Ooooh, and a little bit got stuck on the foil that I can just peel off and taste and - DEAR GOD, THESE ARE AMAZING! It was freakin' heavenly. These are so good that my immediate reaction was "Screw the party, I'm keeping all of these to eat by myself and I'm telling no one, not even my husband, about these and when he comes home and asks what smelled so good in the kitchen I'll just tell him 'nothing, the dog ate it!' [We don't have a dog.]" But that would be a bit extreme, right? Yeah, that's what I thought too. But I really wanted to.

Resigned to the fact that I would have to share, I started cutting up the phenomenal bars into bite-size pieces. Oh, did I mention that this recipe only makes an 8 inch pan worth of bars? Yeah, so it didn't look like very much to bring to a party. The recipe was supposed to yield 16 bars. That was clearly nonsense. I cut them into about 64 pieces. For mathy math geniuses, that's about 1 inch square pieces. Just small enough to pop into your mouth in one bite. I brought 61 of those to the party. Three of them might have just fallen into my mouth while I was plating them. Not sure how that happened. But here are the pretty little beauties before and after cutting:

More pictures than usual but they're just so beautiful! And yes, I did eat everything that fell on that cutting board. Clearly, these little bites of heaven were gone in no time further solidifying my reputation as a super awesome statistician baker!

A Disney Moment: Wreck-It Ralph

Loved it. I'm really really really torn on the rankings in this group. Mostly because I watched them so far apart and we're in one of those new Disney Renaissances. So I'm going with a gut ranking for now and might rewatch this and the other three before my next blog post. I'm going to go ahead and call this one 1/5.

Here's why: the details. In this era of Disney films they are paying so much attention to the world-building. This is true of Big Hero 6 and Zootopia as well but there was something so charming about diving back into all of these old video games. I'm not even a big gamer so a lot of the references were completely lost on me but I feel like I see something new on each viewing.

And the story is the other thing that knocks this into first place for me. The story is more moving than I would expect. When Ralph smashes the car, it's legitimately heartbreaking. But otherwise, the story is just a lot of fun. A generally well-done film overall. And I find myself turning it on when it's on TV so that's another point in its favor.

The One Where the Baker Finally Sets Something on Fire!

Oh dear readers, you’re in for a rare treat of baker ineptitude. I’ll cut to the chase: I finally set something on fire. But oh the tale of how I got there…

In the midst of Easter preparation madness, I was informed that I had to bring a dessert to Easter. Since my brain was mostly on a work crisis, I decided to go with something easy, tried, and true…the pecan pie. I've never actually blogged about the pecan pie but I've made it twice before with varying degrees of help. It’s a great recipe that makes a very pretty pie. So with that, we commence!

I first had to make the pie crust which is a pretty straightforward process. Except that my mom usually does that part. Mixing the ingredients was easy but then I had to cut in the butter and that was such a colossal pain in my ass. I really don’t like the sound that the metal knives made against the metal bowl that I was using. Eventually, I got there though and, after confirmation from my sister that it looked ok, I set about rolling out the dough. Well, I don’t know if I made the dough too sticky or if I’m just bad at it but when I rolled it out, I got a bunch of holes, it stuck to the countertop, and when I tried to move it, the whole thing broke into about four pieces. Too frustrated to re-roll the crust, I just smooshed it all together into the pie plate. I tried to use my fingers to make it look pretty and to make it of even thickness but honestly, I was tired and didn't care that much.

On to the filling! The filling is super simple: light corn syrup, dark corn syrup, crushed pecans, eggs, and…brown sugar. Whoops. I totally forgot to check if we had brown sugar when I assessed that we had all the ingredients. So I went digging around and eventually found a little bit of brown sugar. I needed ¾ cup and I really didn’t think there would be enough. Also, the brown sugar was hard as a rock. Not exactly the consistency you want for brown sugar. But that’s ok, I know that I can microwave brown sugar to soften it up. No big deal. As it’s microwaving, I start to try to figure out what I can substitute for the remaining brown sugar that I’ll need. Eventually I found some dark brown sugar. Perfect! Except that it’s also hard as a rock.

At this point, the light brown sugar only needed about another 30 seconds in the microwave so I figure “whatever, I’ll toss the dark brown sugar in there too to soften it up.” So I do. Approximately three seconds later, there’s a loud bang from the microwave and a tiny, tiny flame on the bag of dark brown sugar. Apparently the twist tie was still on the dark brown sugar and, being metal, it doesn't like microwaves. Now things get comical. I immediately turned off the microwave and was just standing there staring at the tiny tiny flame. Seriously, it was little match girl tiny. Almost adorable. Except that it’s a fire in the microwave. Meanwhile, my sister panics and runs to get the fire extinguisher…except she ran to the place where the fire extinguisher was before the kitchen remodel and there is a refrigerator in that spot now. Actually, the kitchen fire extinguisher isn't even in the kitchen anymore (a detail that should probably be corrected). So my sister is all “I don’t know what to do! Open the microwave and we can put water on it to put it out!” Now, what do we not do if there is a tiny microwave fire? We do NOT open the microwave, give it oxygen, and turn it into a big microwave fire. Somebody wasn't paying attention to fire safety. So picture if you will: me standing calmly in front of the microwave waiting for the flame to burn itself out and saying “oops.”, my sister pacing and freaking out, and my mom…in the other room having no idea any of this happened. Until now. Sorry Mom, I cleaned it up! Microwave’s fine!

So there you have it. I finally caused a fire. But it was tiny and controllable! Here’s the best part: turns out there was actually enough light brown sugar in the bag. I never needed to put in the dark brown sugar. Oops.

Last thing to do was to make the pie look pretty. I made some lovely pecan concentric circles. And I had juuuust enough whole pecans to finish it. My sister was in charge of preheating the oven…unbeknownst to me, she set the oven to convect bake. I don’t have a newfangled convection oven so I’m not used to it. I noticed when I put the pie in the oven though and asked my sister if she did the time adjustment on the oven. Her actual response “No, but it doesn't matter, things just go more quickly. Keep an eye on it to see when it’s done.” Dear sister, that is not how baking works. So then she says “you just take off five minutes.” Ok, easy enough. My mom checked it 15 minutes before the timer was due to go off and it was already getting pretty burn-y. Alas alack. First a fire, now a burned pie. Fortunately, my mom pulled it out so it wasn't really badly burned. (I was way too busy watching Billy Crystal’s HBO special, “700 Sundays” which was fantastic).

When all is said and done, the pie still looked and tasted terrific. So it was a baking win, ineptitude and all!

A Disney Moment:…nope, we still have one more movie to watch in the next group of five. We’re so close but we just can’t make ourselves watch Home on the Range! 

Wedding Cookies

Hello everyone! Welcome to A Statistician Bakes: Wedding Edition. I was recently a bridesmaid in my very good friend, Laura,'s wedding. To help contribute to the big day, I decided to make some cookies. Because that's what I do. And because we had to be at the venue from 9 am till the ceremony at 4 pm and I figured we'd get hungry. I really wanted to make Mexican Wedding Cookies because, well, that's the cliche thing to do. Then I looked at the recipe and realized there was powdered sugar on them and that seemed like a phenomenally bad idea considering that our dresses were black. So my criteria for these cookies had to be: yummy and no-mess. I landed on the ever-classic Snickerdoodle (Martha's recipe, of course) and Buttery Pecan Rounds. I said no to chocolate because who wants chocolate in their teeth during a wedding and I said no to anything heavy because that would really impede the getting drunk process required for any good wedding.

I won't talk to you about the Snickerdoodles because I've made them so many times before so I'll talk about the Buttery Pecan Rounds. They're super easy. No really, like, 4 ingredients easy. Ok, so it's not 4 ingredients, it's 6 but still, that's pretty easy. May I interrupt for a moment to lament the fact that I haven't baked in my own kitchen for about a month now? I love my mom's kitchen but I think my Connecticut kitchen is crying out in neglect. Makes me sad.

Ok, sidebar over. There's honestly nothing worth talking about with these cookies though. Combine salt and brown sugar. Mix in egg yolk. Add flour and salt. Mix in chopped pecans. That's it. I was supposed to add half pecans for decoration on top but I wasn't feeling that so I skipped it. So...that's basically it for these cookies. These cookies were in the light and delicate section of Martha's book because I figured that'd be good. Oh! I also went to the trouble to buy cardstock to separate my new very large cookie tin. Ok, so maybe it's not a cookie tin and is actually one of those big containers that hold three types of popcorn but it serves its purpose! Here's a picture of the finished product:

As far as the taste, the Snickerdoodles were great as always. The pecan cookies were good but a little too bland for me. If I make these again, I think I'll add a bit more sugar or maybe some vanilla. They were very light and delicate though. Oh, and to round out this entry, congratulations Laura and Pat! Here's a picture of me with the bride (who also happens to be my friend for the past 20 years...which makes me feel old...)

A Disney Moment: Pocahontas

Oh, this movie. I liked it as a kid. I belted out "Colors of the Wind" with the rest of the world. But when I rewatched it...well, let's just say it was an experience. Let me set the stage: my sister and I were all geared up to watch and my mom would occasionally flit in and out to see if the movie was over yet. Apparently she REALLY dislikes Pocahontas. Which I guess is understandable if you have two daughters who watched it obsessively in their youth and sang along (badly) to all of the songs.

First of all, I don't like the character animation in this one. I'm sure this is a controversial point of view. But in my household, this was a rage-inducing experience. "Her ass is HUGE!" and "Why does she have gigantic calves one second and then by the next scene they're gone???" are just a couple of the issues we have with Pocahontas. My personal issue is her hair. It defies all laws of physics. And you know what? If the wind keeps pushing strands of her hair the same direction, eventually she won't have any hair left on one side of her head. It's illogical.

Ok, that aside, the rest isn't too bad. I have mixed feelings about Grandmother Willow. I truly appreciate the background animation which is beautiful. I can't understand how Pocahontas magically understands English all of a sudden. And don't give me that "listen with your heart" stuff because that's crazy. Honestly, I buy characters talking to animals more than I buy a suddenly bilingual protagonist.

Also, my mom had a couple gems to add when watching this movie. Including, "you know why Grandmother Willow's bark medicine works so well? It's aspirin!" I should point out that my mom is a chemist. And my favorite: "She is picking up a baby bear cub! The mother would have mauled her by now! This is just teaching children to pick up bear cubs! Why is Pocahontas stupid enough to pick up a bear cub?" This went on and on during the rest of "Colors of the Wind" and was completely hilarious.

I know there's a lot of Pocahontas love out there but I just didn't feel it. It wasn't a great masterpiece. It was ok. It was a 4/5 in this grouping. I will be bracing myself in preparation for all the people who are about to tell me I'm wrong.

The One Where the Baker Won't Share

Hello all! Sorry for the long absence. I spontaneously decided to go home last weekend which was nice because I got to go out to dinner for NYC restaurant week. Hey, check out me embedding links like that! I'm getting better at this! But don't go look at that yet. Finish reading this first, of course! Anyway, I planned ahead and brought one of my new cookbooks home with me (from now on, books related specifically to baking will be referred to as cookbooks because baking books sounds weird). I brought with me Martha Stewart Cookies partially because the next recipe in the Cake Boss book is for peanut butter cookies and my mom doesn't care for peanut butter and partially because the book has so many pictures! Seriously, instead of an index, it's just pages of pictures with the name of the cookie and the page number listed underneath. Can't go wrong with that.

So, this time, I let my mom choose the cookie we would make because I'm sick of deciding myself. She decided on the Pecan Tassies. Now, to paraphrase every graduation speech ever, the dictionary defines tassie as "1) a cup, goblet, or glass or 2) the contents of such a vessel." Yes, I did just have to look that up because neither my mom nor I knew what a tassie was and in fact, we kept calling these cookies Pecan Tartlets by mistake. Martha is very big on tartlets so that's where our confusion came from. Anyway, I'm rambling without even giving you a clear idea of what we're making! Silly me. Essentially, what we're looking at is a pastry shell molded into a mini muffin tin and filled with pecan filling and baked. I guess that's where the cup definition comes in because they look like little cups of delicious.

Now that we know what we're dealing with, let's get down to it. The first step was making the dough for the pastry crust. I put my mom in charge of finely chopping the pecans to go in the dough. It's a good thing I was making this cookie at home because guess what I don't have in my kitchen? That's right, a food processor! So my mom pulls out this teeny tiny food processor that looks like it hasn't been touched for twenty years. Seriously, the base was caked with grime. It grossed me out. My mom thoroughly cleaned it though and used it to chop up a bunch of pecans. Cool. Meanwhile, I had the extremely challenging job of combining butter (only half a stick!) and mascarpone cheese. I'll be honest, I don't really know what mascarpone cheese is but I'm told it's like Italian cream cheese. Sure, I can buy that. Oh, and by the way, it wasn't extremely challenging. It was actually absurdly easy. I could have combined this stuff with a wooden spoon.

From there, I added the flour. The recipe called for "a pinch of salt". Now, I don't really know what a pinch is and we used salted butter instead of unsalted so my mom and I decided that there was probably a pinch of salt in the butter so we eliminated that step. A pinch...Martha obviously thinks I'm more knowledgeable than I am. Then, we stirred in the finely chopped pecans and voila! The dough for the crust was done.

I forgot to mention that while all this was happening, we had the remaining pecans for the filling in the oven to be toasted before adding. Wow. Toasted pecans. Here's a tip: always toast your nuts. The smell is amazing. Fortunately, Martha specified that the pecans should be toasted so I got to experience the beauty of toasting nuts. It's not too challenging. Just stick them on a baking pan and put in the oven at about 350 degrees for about 5 minutes. It really brings out the flavor and aroma of the nuts and it's magical. Just keep an eye on them because burnt nuts do not smell good. I know that from Thanksgiving chestnuts that we forget about in the oven pretty much every year. Alright, that was my ode to toasted nuts. Let's return to the baking, shall we?

From there, I gave my mom the job of molding the dough into the mini muffin tin. She had to roll the dough into 1 inch balls and press it into the bottom and up the sides of the cups in the tin. I appreciated her taking that job so I wouldn't have to get my hands dirty (Thanks Mom!). Meanwhile, I was busy making the filling. The filling only contains an egg, vanilla extract, maple syrup, brown sugar, salt, butter, and pecans. Mmmmmmm. You just can't go wrong with those ingredients. Martha instructed me to whisk all those ingredients together. It mostly went well except for the butter. I whisked my hardest but I still had some small lumps of butter. After that, my mom took over and she was able to get everything a bit more combined. Mommies always save the day. From there, I just had to fill the cups of dough with the filling and bake for 15 minutes.

Let me tell you, letting those tassies cool completely in the pan was torture. They smelled so so so good and we just wanted to dive in and eat them. Not fair. Eventually though, they did cool and we were able to easily lift them from the pan. Here's two pictures of the result, including a side shot so you can see how tall these tassies are:

Adorable, right? Only Martha makes desserts that adorable. And the taste, oh the taste! They're delicious! They're amazing! They're scrumptious! They're not really sweet at all, the crust is soft but neither soggy nor crumbly, and the whole thing together just tastes light and delightful. Now, all that said, here's my dilemma. My mom and I each had two last night and they were lovely. I left some for her when I headed back to CT this morning. Which means that I have about 10 for myself. 10 isn't a lot to share with people, right? I mean, I can't bring them to colloquium because there wouldn't be enough. I could just share with a couple people but you know what? I don't want to! I'm trying to justify not sharing these with people but (as I pop another of these into my mouth) they're just so good that I don't want to share them! I'm sorry! I will not give up my Pecan Tassies! And if that makes me a bad person, then I don't want to be good!

Side notes: I am eliminating the Critical Reception part of my blog. It isn't fun to write and I'm fairly sure it isn't fun to read. Also, please somebody let me know if I should start including links to these recipes in my blog. I get all of my recipes from cookbooks but many of them can be found online. If anyone is interested, please leave a comment so I know to include recipes. Baking is fun! Get in the game with me!

A Disney Moment: One Hundred and One Dalmatians
Here it is, the winner of this group of five, 101 Dalmatians. The movie kicks off with a great tone. The credits at the beginning are fun and are not just lists of names. This is the first instance we see of Disney really having fun with the opening credits. This is a trend that continues through the next few movies and can include some of my favorite moments in the film. So anyway, the credits are adorable and fun. That's the first positive point about this movie.

The second is that, remembering that I am not a dog lover, these puppies are all adorable. I just want to hug them. Pairing that cuteness with the pure and slightly psychotic evil of Cruella De Vil really lets you feel the fear that the puppies have for her. I mean, her character design and her voice is just fantastic. I love it.

Musically, there isn't a lot to say because there are only three songs. But "Cruella De Vil" is a classic. I love the jaunty quality to the song and the lyrics are clever and fun. And I know it's barely even a song but the Kanine Krunchies jingle is awesome. It always gets stuck in my head but it's so cute.

Other small things I loved were the dogs matching the owners in looks, the narration at the beginning by Pongo, the What's My Crime game show that the villains were watching, the cameos by characters from Lady and the Tramp, and the smooth pace of the film. Honestly, the only place where the movie felt like it dragged was the scene with Sarge which lasted about two minutes too long. That's my only complaint though. The movie just works. Loved it from start to finish and that's why it's ranked a 1/5 (though, admittedly, a very close 1/5 to Sleeping Beauty).