Y'all Know How Much I Love Cake

A little over a year ago, janjanmom introduced me to the joys of homemade vanilla.  It was a Christmas Christmas gift that she made with her own two hands.  It was divine, and I rationed it out over the course of several months, using it only for special cooking projects, and supplementing with Watkins vanilla for the run of the mill stuff.  I finally used it all up and was sad, sad, sad.  So, around January I decided to make some more.

All you do is split open some fresh vanilla beans, stuff them into a jar, cover them with vodka and let them steep in the dark for a few weeks until the liquid turns a nice mellow amber.  Which I did.  Only I used this instead of regular vodka:

Cake vodka.  For the past three months that vanilla jar has been sitting in the cabinet doing its magic, and I have resisted the urge to open it except for a nice big whiff every now and then as I checked on its progress.  Every time I thought it was done, I held off and let it sit a little longer.  It has turned a dark golden color, and after three months, I have decided it is done.

Ooh, it is good.  Real good.  Good thing I made a big batch. Yes, I have a second jar brewing.  I used some of the homemade vanilla in a recipe over the weekend, and declared it the nectar of the gods.  As it's used you can top it off with a little more vodka, let it soak a little longer and get more use out of the beans.  Hence the two jars.  I can use one while the other is brewing again.  The Hula-gen's may never buy store bought vanilla again.  And bonus!  Cake vodka has many uses.

Got Flavor?

I was perusing the Irish cream dessert recipes over at The Pioneer Woman’s site this morning, and my, what a peruse THAT was. If it’s one thing I love it’s desserts made with Irish cream. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi (I didn’t get anywhere near the correct spelling on that the first time..or the second or third time) to cookies. And cakes. And beverages. And cream sauces. And anything else that could use a splash of smooth. Anyhow; it reminded me of something I forgot to share with you back during the holidays. One day in December, I started digging around in my cabinets for something I had lost and ended up pulling out every bottle of flavoring I use in cooking. And came up with this:



Proof that Hubby is right when he says I like to have one of everything in the kitchen. Eighteen bottles of extracts and liqueurs. You want citrus? I got it. Maple? No problem. Coffee flavors? Nut flavors? Mint? I’m all over it. In fact, I’m not sure there’s a flavoring I don’t have. Is this a problem? I think not. Other than the fact, I can’t decide which one I like best. I’m partial to amaretto, but sister mercy, that Godiva white chocolate liqueur is heaven with a straw. Not that I drink it with a straw. I like to sip my chocolate martinis straight out of the glass, thank you.

Honestly, I rarely make drinks with the liqueurs. I usually just throw them into any and everything sweet I cook around this place. If you’re a teetotaler and come to my house, don’t worry, I can whip you up something without alcohol. Just don’t light a match near those cookies on the counter.

Hula-gen Family Fun Fact #96

Teen Angel is really interested in going to culinary school after she graduates from high school. The cooking gene apparently took hold of her before she grew out of her sippie cup.

I'll Take Cooking Nightly for old People for $500, Alex

Alex: What constitutes a good meal for a dementia patient whose idea of good nutrition is a piece of fried pork, two starches and two pieces of cornbread?

Buzz!

Hula: What is getting something, ANYTHING on the table and eaten before the University of Kentucky game starts, Alex!

*Let's just say there was great angst when Hula failed to realize there was a UK game broadcast starting about twenty minutes after she put food on the grill. Hula is now committed to following the game schedule so as not to create the same kind of drama we had last night. Oh, and in the future, Hula must make her Italian beef sandwiches flatter and her vegetable soup saltier. Rumor has it Mama J. was overheard telling Papa T. to shut his d*** mouth or they wouldn't get anything to eat.

Keep Out

The Hula-gen's make a lot of goodies during the holidays. It seems there is something sitting on the counter marinating, gelling or cooling just about every day, but SOMEONE, and I'm not naming any names, has a little trouble keeping his fingers out of the bowls. Which leads OTHERS to resort to things like this:

Look Who's Cookin'

Teen Angel's prayer parent at church bought her a really cool Williams-Sonoma book on baking. It was so inspiring she baked all weekend.

She made apple pie with crust from scratch, homemade rolls and biscuits and best of all cinnamon rolls.

I think this book is gonna come in real handy for me....I mean her.

Just Desserts

Sometimes I don’t listen to myself very well. I’m great at handing out pearls of wisdom and then forgetting to wear them. Take yesterday. Hubby and I were surfing through the TV channels when he stopped briefly on one of those infomercials. It was the one where the short woman with the curly hair makes 16,000 kinds of dishes out of a piece of bread, a tablespoon of apples and a sandwich maker for just two easy payments of $19.99. She pulled two tasty looking tostada cups out of the gizmo, and I looked at Hubby and said, “You know, that stuff always looks good, but when you get right down to it, it still tastes just like a piece of bread and a hunk of meat”. Insert smug laughter here. And flash forward to two hours later.

Mama J. called and said she had made two banana cream pies and we could have one of them if we wanted it. Since it was dessert we naturally wanted it. Not to mention the fact that we should take advantage of the fact that Mama J. cooked, because that won’t happen again for another six months. Hubby loves banana cream pie, especially his mama’s banana cream pie. It was also his one day of the week when he relaxes his diet and eats dessert…if you don’t count that vanilla shake he has on Tuesdays that he thinks I don’t know about. He was positively salivating over that pie and told Teen Angel to hop over and get it since fetching is the reason we birthed her. She went next door, brought it home and promptly dropped it on the back step. Upside down. It splattered in nine directions and wasn’t salvageable in any way. Trust me, I considered scooping up the parts that landed where I thought the dog hadn’t walked recently but didn’t think my weakened immune system could stand it. Teen Angel cleaned it up, and I broke the news to the Man on a Diet. I thought for a moment he was going to cry. He looked like I did the other night when Missouri beat Memphis and screwed up my NCAA bracket. He whined about that pie for an hour.

I thought I’d make it up to him by making the closest thing to banana cream pie I could with the ingredients I had on hand. Now, before you laugh, you should know I’m pretty good at this kind of trick. I can usually open the cabinets and whip up something tasty with the stuff that’s sitting there. I’m not braggin’, I’m just sayin’ I could do a little Iron Chef sumpin’ sumpin’ if I had to, and no one would walk away hungry. I kind of like the challenge, which is why I didn’t just make a regular pie crust out of some flour, water and shortening. Instead, I grabbed a package of refrigerated crescent rolls, a small box of instant pudding, some bananas and some whipped cream. I lined a muffin tin with the crescent rolls and baked them up like puffed pastry cups. I let them cool, filled them with pudding and bananas, topped them with whipped cream and proudly handed one to Hubby after dinner. Insert more smugness here. He gratefully thanked me, gobbled it up and said, “Mmhmm”, when I asked him if it was good. He didn’t elaborate, but I thought he was still mourning his mama’s pie. I was too full to eat my concoction. When Teen Angel came home from church youth group she foraged around in the fridge for something sweet, and I told her about the pudding cups. Her reply? “Yeah, I tried one but it tasted like a big roll in the middle of some pudding.”

Would someone please hold my pearls?

On The Down Low

My favorite holiday dessert. My second favorite holiday dessert.
Simple, yet refined. Meant to be eaten out of the can with a spatula when no one is looking.

Fun Monday-Our Collections

This week our Fun Monday host is Mariposa's Tales, and she wants to know about the stuff we collect. Hubby is really the collector in our family. He keeps EVERYTHING. He's what we call in these parts a pack rat. He likes antiques, old garden tools and old wooden furniture. He has a gazillion McDonald's toys and displays, all in their original packaging. His biggest collection is probably his antique toys. Here is just a sample.
I, on the other hand, have started to shed a lot of my "stuff". Every time we've remodeled a room in our house in the last few years, I've eliminated a lot of the what-nots, nick-nacks and dust catchers sitting around and pared down the furniture. The older I get the more I am compelled to live with less stuff. I do have a few things I collect, though. I have an ankle bracelet from every Caribbean island I've been to. We have more music in this house than a stray dog has fleas. I'm addicted to clothing, and I have quite a few kitchen gadgets. By far, my biggest collection of any one item is my cookbook collection. I have so many of them, I can't even show all of them to you. I've had to box up and store most of them in the attic, rotating a few dozen of them in and out of my dining room hutch every so often. I haven't counted them in a while, but I easily have 300-500 cookbooks. Most are well worn and splatted with butter, oil and cocoa residue. Here are a few of the different kinds of books I have.
There's the standard Betty Crocker book that started my cooking addiction. I got this one as a wedding gift, but I cut my teeth on mama's old Betty Crocker book when I was a young girl with pony tails and skinned up knees. It was just like this one. I have a few nice coffee table cookbooks, like the Paula Deen book in this picture. SuperCop bought me that one for Christmas. Pssst! He's going to be a daddy. We're very excited. We'll dish more about that in a later post. Back to the subject at hand. I have just about all of Paula's books, including her autobiography. I just love her cake recipes. I have a ton of those little recipe books by Pillsbury and other companies that I plucked from a rack near the checkout counter at the grocery store. Two years ago, a relative of mine put together a collection of recipes from the 2708 members of my dad's family. It contains a few recipes from my grandmother and my great aunt Nellie. That's a special book.

Most of my recipe books are the small, community books that schools, churches and clubs put together as fundraisers. The contributors to those books want to put their best foot forward, so I have found that the recipes in those books are usually very good, very easy and staples for potluck, shower and reunion dishes. Hubby bought me a huge box of those kinds of books at an auction on day, and I was so excited I promised him...umm....marital relations, as my mama would say. The box contained a lovely surprise. Amidst all of those books were two put together many years ago by my current church. The recipes were from ladies I know now as senior citizens but were young women when those books were compiled.

My collection contains one less book today. I finally mustered up the courage to give Mama J. her cookbook back. You know, the one I've been mulling over since last week's Fun Monday post. I handed it to her yesterday afternoon with some Gladware bowls I needed to return and said, "Look what I found in my hutch. It was there after all." I braced myself for the worst. She smiled a big "I told you so" smile BUT didn't SAY it. "Well, good," was all she said, and we headed out the door to Cracker Barrel. Whew! Thank goodness that's over. I can sleep at night now, and I'm not borrowing that dadgum book again.

I thought it would be nice to wrap this up with you a couple of my all-time favorite recipes from some of my favorite books. One is my favorite chocolate cake, and the other is my favorite apple pie. These two are outstanding. If you need a little sugary fortification, just whip up one of these, eat a slice or four and you'll feel better immediately. They're also great for potlucks. The chocolate cake is so moist it sticks to the roof of your mouth, and the creamy layer in the apple pie is a nice surprise for your taste buds. You'll need to run ten miles and do 500 stomach crunches after eating them, though. Enjoy, and as Paula Deen says, Best Dishes! (If you have any questions about the recipes, just email me at hulagirl@hcis.net.)

CHOCOLATE SHEET CAKE

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

1 stick butter or margarine

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 teaspoon soda

1 cup water

4 Tablespoons cocoa

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir together sugar, flour, soda and set aside. Put the water, butter, oil and cocoa in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and pour over dry mixture. Stir well. Set aside. Mix together buttermilk, eggs and vanilla; add to chocolate batter. Pour into greased and floured 9 X 13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Make the icing while cake is cooking.

Icing

1 stick butter

4 Tablespoons cocoa

6 Tablespoons milk (I use buttermilk)

1 Tablespoon vanilla

1 box confectioner's sugar

Place butter, milk and cocoa in saucepan. Bring to a boil. Do not scorch. Add confectioner's sugar. Beat well. Add chopped pecans if desired. Pour over warm cake.

GLAZED APPLE CREAM PIE

Place 1 refrigerated pie crust in a 9" pie pan. Put filling in bottom of crust.

Filling

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup whipping cream

1/4 cup butter or margarine

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

2 Tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

In medium saucepan, combine sugar, 1/2 cup milk, whipping cream and butter. Cook over medium heat until hot and butter is melted, stirring occasionally. In small bowl, combine cornstarch and 2 Tablespoons milk. Blend until smooth. Add to mixture in saucepan and cook until thickened, stirring constantly. (It WILL burn if you're not careful.) Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Put in crust.

Apple Layer

2 tart baking apples, peeled and cut into thin slices

1 Tablespoon flour

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

In medium bowl combine apples, flour and cinnamon; mix well. Arrange apple mixture evenly over filling. Top with a second refrigerated pie crust, seal and flute edges. Cut slits in top crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, until golden brown and apples are tender. Cool 30 minutes.

Glaze

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1 Tablespoon milk

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1 Tablespoon softened butter

Combine all glaze ingredients in a small bowl. Blend until smooth. Pour over warm pie. Refrigerate pie 1 1/2 hours before serving. Store in refrigerator.

A Taste of College

The main reason we took the kids to Chicago this past weekend was to visit a world renowned culinary school. It gave them a taste of college life and exposed them to college of a different kind. While they certainly enjoyed it, this pastry chef wanna-be was in heaven. I LOVE to cook, and by the end of our workshop and tour I was ready to move to Chicago and plunk down $80,000 for a four year degree in culinary arts. And I needed a Tums because there were more samples than a Sam’s Wholesale Club on a Saturday afternoon.

Chicago is one of the food capitols of the world, and Kendall College sits smack dab in the middle of some of the best restaurants in the nation.

It’s also close to a chocolate factory, so you can smell warm chocolate no matter which direction you turn. That helps to cover up the smell of Lake Michigan. I love that smell. The chocolate, not Lake Michigan. Graduates from the college usually have well paying job offers by the time they are JUNIORS. They spend their summers doing internships in exciting places like Paris, and they end up working in major cities and ski resorts. The program is tough. It’s not for wimps. There are many labs, long hours and shifts in the college restaurant. And with so much to see and do in Chicago, they probably don’t get much sleep between the studying and the partying. If I were starting all over again, I’d skip that whole journalism thing and head to Shy-town to learn how to make fancy cakes. Apparently, I’m not alone in that feeling because many of their students are adults who have a degree of one kind or another but are drawn to work with something they truly love….food.

Our tour included a workshop where we learned how to discern fine chocolate from Hershey’s kisses, and let me just say that now that I know what I’ve been missing, my next husband will be a $6 chocolate bar. We visited their labs, where I so wanted to jump in and bake something.

These guys were experimenting with leftovers to make all kinds of appetizers, and boy, were they good!


We tried stuff with cheese, stuff with meats and this stuff with roasted vegetables.


The only bad thing I can say about it is that they made me share with the other boys and girls. And you should have smelled the stuff that was in the ovens. There was some of this.


And some of these.
And the bread! Great googly moogly, you should have seen all of the warm bread. There were racks and racks of warm yeast and flour concoctions just waiting to be slathered in butter or dragged through olive oil. Is there a twelve step program for a bread addiction? I hope not. And speaking of butter, they use a ton of it here…in the pastry kitchen.

Paula Deen’s got nothin’ on these folks when it comes to butter. look at that big hunk of butter the guy on the left is using. And check out those cakes just waiting to be layered with some gooey ganache. It was at this point that I considered asking if I could lick the bowls, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to look like some redneck who’d never been to a big city before. But if they had offered…..

I lust after fancy appliances and a well stocked pantry. This pantry positively made my toes tingle. Will ya’ look at all that sugar and flour?

I touched Viking stoves, rubbed giant mixers and drooled over the refrigerated drawers and the boiling water spigots on the stoves. (I have spigot envy, but don’t tell anyone.) Everywhere we turned, there was food. Walk through a lab? Oops! There’s some fresh seafood salad with shrimp and calamari. Would I like a sample? Is Hillary Clinton hippy? Of course, I want a sample. Walk around a corner? Oops! There’s an assortment of fruits and cheeses.

Would I care for a wedge? Sure, just snuggle up to mama with that Havarti and we’ll have a dairy good time. If we hadn’t been with teenagers I’d have asked for a glass of wine. They had plenty of that, too. I’d show you a picture of their school cafeteria, but I was so distracted by the gourmet menu I forgot to take one. They serve what the student chefs cook, three times a day. On the day we were there, they had prime rib for lunch. That’s a far cry from that green roast beef we had three times a week at my college. At Kendall they joke about the “Freshman 50” instead of the “Freshman 15” weight gain. Students come from all over the country to earn their degree there. Celebrity chefs visit for workshops. Bobby Flay taped a turkey “Throw Down” there last year. It was a fabulous, fascinating place. They even gave Hubby a little parting gift, which he couldn’t resist sneaking into before we left the building.

Now We're Cookin'

I love to cook. I really do. For more than thirty years, I've been stirring, mixing and experimenting in the kitchen. I get excited about things like Santoku knives, fresh herbs and colorful Kitchen Aid mixers. My cookbook collection is well over a hundred volumes, and I've been known to DVR Iron Chef America. I did pause this morning in church and wonder if I'm not watching too much Food TV when I disposed of my gum in a piece of paper torn from the bulletin and realized I was shaping it like a perfect piece of homemade ravioli.

I got an early start on cooking because Mama had a series of ear surgeries when I was about twelve that laid her up in bed for a while. Fast food was not common in those days, and we had to eat. Daddy had his hands full trying to work, take care of three kids and a sick wife, so we all had to chip in and help any way we could. I would sit beside Mama on the bed while she made out a grocery list and explained how to make stuff, then Daddy would drop me off at the grocery store with a $100 bill and the list. He ran other errands while I bought a week's worth of groceries. I felt really important. My family was very patient with my early attempts at supreme cuisine like runny spaghetti sauce and chili that made you sweat bullets. Then there was my cake decorating phase. I bought cake decorating tubes and made enough roses and swag borders to cover cakes for just about every relative within a thirty miles radius one year. I still have about 200 decorating tubes and if pressed into service could whip out a decent decorated cake. It's a disease, I'm tellin' ya. Teen Angel has caught it, too. I came home the other day, and she had whipped up a wonderful chocolate cake from scratch. I was so proud.

I've always been fond of making desserts, and one of the earliest that I learned to make was apple crisp. During Mama's recuperation, I found a recipe for apple crisp in her worn Betty Crocker cookbook and whipped up a batch or two...or three. Even though I've moved on to much more difficult desserts, I still have a soft spot in my heart for apple crisp (and chocolate no bake cookies). It's perfect on winter days when you're in the mood for comfort food. I made up a big batch to take to church tonight and thought I'd share the recipe with you for several reasons. First of all, it tastes good. Anything with three sticks of butter can't be bad, right? Also, this recipe is easy to make, and it's very kid friendly. It's a hands on recipe that's great for making some memories in the kitchen with your kids or grand kids. It's versatile, too. You can use any kind of canned pie filling for this recipe. It feeds a crowd. If you double this recipe and use one of those big silver disposable pans they sell at Sam's Club, you can feed thirty people with this dessert. Here we go.

INGREDIENTS

2 cans sweetened apple pie filling

2 1/4 cups flour

2 1/4 cups quick oats

2 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

3 sticks melted butter

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and crumble them until they're well mixed. It should look like this.

Next comes the melted butter. Is there anything more lovely? I think not. Look at all of that milky goodness. You can use margarine instead of real butter, and it will taste fine. Once you've made it with the real stuff though, you'll never go back.

Add the melted butter and mix. This is the part where Paula Deen would recommend that you throw away the spoon and mix with your hands. She would be right. I suggest taking off your big diamond rings first.

It will look like this when it's properly mixed. You will be tempted to stop right here and eat this with a spoon until it's gone. Whatever makes you happy. You'd miss out on the really good stuff, though....like the apples....and ice cream. Did I mention we're going to eat this with ice cream when it's done?

Take about two-thirds of the mixture and press it into the bottom of a 9 X 13 pan. Don't press it too firmly though.

Pour your pie filling on top of this. Mmmmm. If you want to get really crazy you can sprinkle some cinnamon on the apples.

Now, crumble the rest of the oat mixture onto the apples. The finished product will look like this.

Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until the top is golden brown.

Don't you love it when gooey stuff oozes over the sides? And if you make it in a glass dish, you can see the layers.

Now, this dessert is fine standing alone on a plate, but it's really nice when it's served warm with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and if you're feeling really over the top, a little caramel sauce. There you go. Go forth and make apple crisp. You won't regret it. Your hips will, but your taste buds won't. And hang in there, Oreneta, one of these days we'll make fried potatoes.

Tales From the Butter Belt

Growing up in the Butter Belt, I learned to cook with layers of butter, shortening and lard. Everything was battered, breaded and fried. Grilled chicken was something that was stuck to the front of the car when one of Grannie’s roosters failed to cross the road fast enough. I had a finger lickin’ good diet for the first twenty five years of my life, but soon after I married I realized my arteries were probably on a fast train to Plaque Town, and I started to clean up my act. I dragged my family along with me.

I weaned the Hula-gens (thanks janjanmom for that moniker. It’s totally appropriate.) from whole milk. Over the course of about six months we went to 2%, then 1% and finally skim. Now the only time we have whole milk in our house in when I make homemade ice cream, and Teen Angel laps up the leftover drops in the jug like a wino slugging back Mogen David. My bunch is content with the stuff under the pink cap and doesn’t whine (anymore) about watery milk. I quit frying everything. I bake and grill. I threw away the lard and shortening and cook with light touches of olive oil and canola oil. I found sneaky ways to pass off meat free meals, and I don’t keep snack cakes and high calorie drinks around the house. We don’t eat out during the week, saving the junk food and fatty stuff for the weekends. I can’t get Hubby to use the flaxseed on his oatmeal yet but he loved the low calorie, high protein smoothie I made with soy protein powder that tasted like a banana milkshake. While we haven’t given up the occasional chili cheese dog at our favorite bar and grill, we’ve made some big changes over the last seventeen years. I hope we’re not done. I hope we continue to evolve into life long healthy eaters. However, I have decided there are a few foods that I simply cannot give up. There are a handful of things I refuse to eliminate from my diet. I love them and cannot let them go. They are dear friends that enrich my life, make my heart sing, generate world peace and save the whales. Okay, maybe not those last two.

1. Fried potatoes: Not French fries. I’m talkin’ slivers of potato fried in a thin layer of oil in a skillet with lots of black pepper and maybe some green onion until they’re soft in the middle and slightly crunchy on the outer edges. The kind that have to be drained before you slide a big old wad of them onto your plate. These can stand alone as a meal for me. If you give me a choice between ice cream and fried potatoes, I will choose the potatoes any time. Hand to God. Because they’re so bad for me, I make them only about three times a year, when I just can’t stand going without them any longer. Fried potatoes and biscuits al a mode makes me want to sing Yankee Doodle Dandy from the rooftop.

2. Italian cream cake-I like ALL cake. To me there is no bad cake. Only cake and better cake, but Italian cream is my favorite. I can resist a big piece of German chocolate or red velvet, but I cannot pass up a piece of Italian cream cake when it is within a four mile radius of my eyeballs. One of my favorite local restaurants sells this, and I thank the good Lord they do every time I belly up to their serving line. I then ask the Lord to forgive me for the sin of gluttony that is soon to follow.

3. Iced tea-The nectar of the south. The beverage that has sustained my people through depressions, recessions, wars and potato famines (as in going without fried potatoes). The genetic makeup of anyone living below the Mason Dixon line is mutated by the mass quantities of sweet tea ingested over generations. I’m told it is possible to determine during autopsy which state you hail from by assessing the levels of sweet tea in your DNA samples. We go through a gallon of tea every 24 hours at my house. I’m personally responsible for drinking about half of it. I’m a little different from most folks in these parts in that I don’t like my tea very sweet. I like it a little on the stout side. That’s probably because I grew up in a neighboring state just north of here and transplanted to Kentucky. If I had been born here, I would require six packets of sugar per eight ounce serving.

4. Circus peanuts, Sweet-Tarts and a variety of other small candies that are perfect for nibbling on while reading a good book in the comfort of my recliner and wallowing with my lap dog. I have to be careful though. If I leave the candy on the end table when I get up to go to the bathroom, the dog will eat it. Have you every seen a miniature schnauzer eat banana Laffy Taffy? I’m not big on truffles or chocolate bon bons, but I cannot kick the circus peanut, Sweet-Tart habit. And I make the most of January and February when the Brach’s Conversation Hearts (large please-no knock offs) are in season. This is the biggest flaw in my diet; a big black gaping hole that swallows me up and coats me in sugar. I have learned to cut back, but I can’t eliminate this crap completely. If I didn’t log 60 gazillion miles on my running shoes each week my backside would be the size of the Hindenburg solely because of candy.

With a little effort I could give up meat. I like pizza but could do away with it. I could even say goodbye to ice cream. Heck, I could give up hamburgers if I tried. I am disciplined in many ways when it comes to food, but my Achilles heel is the stuff listed above. However, I have decided these are the vices I’m keeping around. I don’t smoke. I rarely drink. I don't do drugs. Jeepers! A girl’s got to have something bad in her life. And Johnny Depp is taken.

The Sweetest Hangover

Roll my hair and call me Betty Crocker. I have been a baking fool today. While I can't clean for spit, I am a pretty decent cook. I love to bake, and I'm so addicted to the Food Network that Hubby has considered a twelve step program for me. I dream of Bobby Flay showing up at my house for a hashbrown casserole throwdown. Every year right before Christmas I am overcome with the urge to bake every cookie and sweet treat lurking within the pages of my 200 plus cookbooks. I never know for sure when the holiday baking binge is going to hit, but I always know it's coming, so for the last month, I've been stockpiling sugar and butter like a wartime widow with six hungry kids. I felt it coming on yesterday. It's kind of like going into labor. You're not sure if that first twinge is the real thing, but in a few hours it's rolling over you in unstoppable waves. By noon today I was ready to give birth to several dozen goodies.

In the last few hours, I have mixed, rolled, kneaded, cut and baked. I've drizzled, swirled, iced and topped. I've washed my KitchenAid mixer bowl six times. And let's just pause a moment to praise Jesus for the KitchenAid stand mixer. I love my KitchenAid. Adore my KitchenAid. Can't live without it. If it dies tomorrow I will buy it a memory box. It's the Cadillac of mixers. Now the Bosch is the Porsche of mixers, but the KitchenAid is not too far behind. Sometimes I pat it when I walk by it, just to show it some love. For you men out there who don't get into cooking, it's like holding a Dewalt cordless drill in one hand and a chili cheese dog in the other while watching the Super Bowl on a 52" HDTV. Mmm hmm. That's what I'm talking about. Thank you Lord for the Kitchen Aid mixer and forgive me for all the sugar I'm about to put into my body this week. Amen.

Today I have used all six of my measuring cups, both sets of measuring spoons, and just about every pan I own, including the big muffin pan and the mini muffin pan. I have used up every stick of butter (salted and unsalted), every crumb of cocoa powder, five pounds of sugar, five pounds of flour and the last drop of vanilla from a very large bottle. There were pecans, homemade caramel sauce, miniature peanut butter cups and golden drops of Bailey's Irish Creme. White sugar, light brown sugar, dark brown sugar, powdered sugar and even peanut butter. It was one of my biggest baking binges evah, and I will share the results with my family and my coworkers. However, I will NOT tell them how many calories are in each of those chocolate sandwich cookies with the Bailey's filling (120). As my friend Yvonne used to say, I might as well rub it on my butt because that's where it's going!

It was great fun while it lasted but now comes the food hangover. I have tasted, checked and sampled so much dough, filling and batter, that I can't eat another sweet. I am full, done, finished, ready for a nap and ready for something savory. Hey, I have a party later this week that requires appetizers! Lord have mercy! Is that another pain I feel?