‘Tis the season of blockbuster movies, and I for one am getting back into the summer Marvel movie hype with gusto. I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 on opening weekend, and it reminded me of a challenge I’ve been talking about for awhile, but never gotten the motivation to start: baking my way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The fall baking bonanza continues! Josh and I went apple picking this weekend, and we ended up with 41 pounds of apples (I know, I know, I’m a crazy lady who must be stopped), so you’d best believe there are lots of apple recipes coming your way. If there’s an apple recipe you’ve been dying to make, now’s the time to make requests!
Aren’t they pretty?
Somehow PBS has already aired 8 episodes of series 6 of The Great British Baking Show, and I’ve only posted one companion recipe so far! I will blame this partly on their weird habit of sometimes showing two episodes on the same day (and often at a different time than the week before), but hey, what can you do? Make arlettes, that’s what!
We’re currently at the tail end of one of my favorite seasons of the year: cherry season! Josh and I celebrated by picking 6 pounds of them while we were in Traverse City, Michigan last week (6 pounds was me exercising restraint). I would have loved to take them ALL home, but I know there’s no way I can use them fast enough. Sigh.
Aren’t they beautiful?
Last weekend, Josh and I went apple picking and came home with more apples than I care to admit (ok, I’ll admit it: approximately 25 pounds). In my defense, Jonagolds are my favorite cultivar apples and they seem to only ever be available for about 2 weeks a year. Since we were too late to pick any last year, I might have overcompensated juuuuust a bit this year. Three gallons of home-canned apple pie filling later, I still had more apples left than any normal person should eat in a week.
You may get sick of all my apple posts soon enough, but I never will! This bakeventure started out with a well-intentioned attempt to make caramel apples my husband can actually eat. He likes apples, particularly when they’re covered in caramel and peanuts, but has a strange allergy which makes his throat itch when he eats them raw. Cooked apples aren’t a problem, so I figured there must be a way to give him that tart-sweet-crunchy sensation that embodies fall without any of the itchy throat.
Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably aware by now that our country made a historic advance in equality last week. I was in the mood to celebrate, so I decided to make some rainbow cinnamon rolls. The rolls themselves, while delicious, are fairly run of the mill. It’s the fun explosion of rainbow on top that tickles my whimsy. Hopefully your cones are similarly stimulated (as are your taste buds).
After my last attempt at Bear Claws, I knew I would have to try again. I can’t let a baked good triumph over me, after all. Despite the 85 degree weather, I cranked my oven up to 400° and turned out some pastries which were actually worth the (extremely minimal) effort.
Sometimes, baked goods don’t turn out quite as you planned. This was definitely the case with this weekend’s chocolate bear claw experiment. While they weren’t a complete and utter failure, they were bad enough that I made myself throw 11 out of 12 of them away. Still, just because this pastry flopped doesn’t mean the experience was a complete loss. In today’s post, I’ll go through exactly what I did this time and give some suggestions for future improvements. This recipe took all day and a lot of effort, so I don’t know that I’ll be trying it again anytime soon, at least not quite like this.
I Wanna Bake! 