Boozy Baking: Cachaça Cupcakes

Yesterday was all about cachaça. 

I first learned about cachaça a few months ago when cachaça microdistillery Novo Fogo participated in the Sunday Mixology Classes at Tini Bigs.  Although I didn’t get to go thanks to a grueling work schedule (Up at 4:00am, in bed by 8:00pm for the last few months.  Thank god that’s finally over.), I did Photoshop a special image for them to market the event.

Don’t ask.  There are a lot of inside jokes happening here.

Since then, I’ve really wanted to try cachaça, but never got around to it until yesterday.  However, my first taste wasn’t even in liquid form.  If you haven’t noticed by now, I love to bake, and with the opportunity to cater desserts for a wedding this summer, I’ve really kicked it into high gear recently.  Yesterday I decided to take it a step further and try my own original recipe inspired by a cachaça drink called Anywhere is Paradise that I found on Novo Fogo’s Facebook page.  The recipe consists of a Lemon Raspberry Cachaça cupcake and Cachaça Ginger Ale frosting.

Personally I am very happy with how the cupcake itself turned out, but as someone who has limits to how much sweetness I can stand, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about the frosting.  However, I had a few friends taste test the cupcakes, and those with a slightly more robust sweet tooth thought it was fine.  For those of us who prefer tart to sweet, I would consider changing up the frosting by removing the Ginger Ale and adding some lemon juice.  Additionally, I would like to try this recipe again with Novo Fogo Silver Cachaça to see how that changes up the flavors.  I’ve included the recipe below and would love to hear how this turns out for others!

After finishing the cupcakes yesterday, I went with some friends to visit one of our favorite bartenders, Michael, at Canon on Capitol Hill and got to try some cachaça libations, which were quite delicious.  Watch out, tequila – you might have some competition!

My new business plan for Burrow: hand feeding baked goods to my customers.

 

LEMON RASPBERRY CACHACA CUPCAKES

1 ½ cups flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

4 tablespoons lemon juice

4 teaspoons lemon zest

2 tablespoons Novo Fogo Gold Cachaça

¼ teaspoon vanilla

½ cup buttermilk

6 – 12 teaspoons raspberry jam

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  Line mini muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Beat butter and sugar together with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly on medium speed after each addition.
5. Scrape the sides of the bowl and add lemon juice, lemon zest, Novo Fogo Gold Cachaça, and vanilla.  Mix until combined.
6. Reduce mixer speed to low and add dry ingredients in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk in two batches.  Mix just until incorporated, and use rubber spatula to give a final mix by hand.
7. Fill muffin cups approximately 2/3 full, and add a dollup (1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon) of raspberry jam on top of batter.  For mini cupcakes, bake 7 minutes, rotate pan, and bake an additional 8 minutes.  Remove and cool before frosting.

CACHACA GINGER ALE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

4 tablespoons Novo Fogo Gold Cachaça

4 tablespoons Ginger Ale

2 ½ – 3 ½ cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring Novo Fogo Gold Cachaça and Ginger Ale to a simmer in a small saucepan.  Continue to boil gently until 4 tablespoons of liquid remain.  Set aside to cool.
2. Cream butter with electric mixer until fluffly.  Slowly add 1 cup powdered sugar and beat until smooth.  Add Novo Fogo Gold Cachaça and Ginger Ale mixture by tablespoon to taste (I used 4 tablespoons to really bring out the flavor of the cachaça).
3. Continue to add ½ cup powdered sugar at a time, beating until light and fluffy.  Add cream or sugar as necessary to achieve desired consistency.
4. Pipe or spread onto cupcakes.

Albino Hello Rhinoceros and Friends: Burrow’s First Class

It’s rare that I have a problem sharing my belongings with friends.  I’ve just never felt so attached to things that I feel like I can’t let a friend in need borrow them.  But the one thing I don’t like to share is my kitchen space.  Since I’ve been able to bake without parental supervision, I’ve never been one to enjoy baking with people.  Any time I had friends over who would offer to help, I was adamant that they just sit back and relax, because I had it covered.  My ex can attest to the fact that I would have a fit and a half anytime he tried to even stand in my kitchen while I was baking.  I’ve got systems in place, and if you’re in my way, or start grabbing chunks of unauthorized cookie dough, it isn’t going to end well for you.

So I’m not sure what got into me a few weeks ago when one of my best friends and biggest Burrow supporters, MaryBeth, sent me a picture of Hello Kitty cake pops, and I suggested we make them.  Of course, this quickly grew from the two of us making cake pops to include an extra 3 friends joining in, and in addition to Hello Kitty cake pops we decided to make some robots too.  After a field trip to Michael’s for some last minute supplies, that were not limited to cake pop necessities, but stuck with the Hello Kitty theme, the madness ensued.

What we were originally trying to make…

After successfully scaring my own kitty into hiding – it’s rare I have that many people over at once – we got started with the cake pops.  I had already baked the cake, and forming the balls is about as straightforward as it gets, so I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my cool, and even let MaryBeth take the reins.  Yes, there were quite a few ball-handling jokes at this point, as I’m sure you were wondering.  But then came the decorating portion…

Now, if you’ve read my blog before, I have a previous post in which I discuss Martha Stewart.  One of my weirdest fascinations with her is how she interacts with children.  I never really understand why she even has segments on her show with children because her discomfort and irritability with them just radiates through the TV screen.  It’s like a train wreck that I want to turn away from, but can’t help getting a little sick, twisted enjoyment out of watching.  Well, I’m hesitant to admit it, but I had a bit of a Martha Stewart interacting with children moment as we decorated the cake pops.

I wish I could say I was truly creative, but even in my high school art classes I never created anything original.  Instead, I copied photographs, being too much of a perfectionist to draw anything out of my imagination.  This holds true today, and was reaffirmed as I taught my friends how to decorate the Hello Kitty and robot cake pops.  Me?  I tried with every fiber of my being to make them look like the pictures.  But my friends actually found ways to make the cake pops their own as you’ll see in pictures below.  In the moment this required me to take a time out and sit on the couch doing breathing exercises while they played, but honestly it ended up being so much more fun than 20 identical Hello Kitty cake pops ever could be (and of course they were just as tasty).

So, what you’ve all been waiting (and probably scrolled past 5 paragraphs) for: pictures!

MaryBeth: Burrow’s official model (since I refuse to get in front of a camera)

She even came prepared with freshly-manicured nails.  Such a professional.

Hello Kitty gets her bow.  Instead of using various sprinkle shapes, I just hand-piped them with red candy.

Still missing her eyes and whiskers…

Here we’ve got the whole gang (original creations by Ashley): Ewok Hello Kitty, Moustache Kitty, Hello Robot, and Phallic Unicorn

Our cake pop robot army.  You can tell which ones are girls by the bows.

Albino Hello Rhinoceros, by Kate.

Baking is so much easier than trying to read people

People are hard to read.  It’s easy for some to put on a fake smile and engage in cheery banter when on the inside they want to rip your head off.  Now, in some cases, I understand the importance of not being brutally honest.  However, in the past few years I’ve lost all patience for wasting my time with people who I don’t find engaging.  Life’s too short, and if you can’t make me laugh right off the bat, this conversation isn’t going to last very long.

Considering I’m recently single, I’m still figuring it all out and have been told by friends that I shouldn’t be that harsh.  Upon meeting someone, I can’t expect that they’ll be willing to take 100% of my shit, and I should tone it down to about 70%.  Maybe that’s true, but at the same time, I feel like it’s fair for someone to know exactly what they’re getting into when they meet me.  Sure I want to put my best foot forward, but I also don’t want to be fake and then disappoint later on.  Plus, I like being able to determine if the person I’m meeting is someone I would enjoy spending more time with, and if you can’t take my shit and dish it right back at me, I can figure that out pretty quickly.

Now, despite how much I’ve complained to friends about the quality of people out there, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of people I’ve met recently who I’ve actually wanted to talk to again (granted, it’s still a very small number, but it’s not zero).  However, I’ve encountered another problem: reading people.  While I certainly wouldn’t want to be able to read every person’s thoughts, it would be nice if people came with profiles in real life like they do on dating websites.  You would immediately know their relationship status, general interests and personality traits, and what they’re looking for at that moment: one-night stand, casual dating, serious relationship, etc.

I’m a planner and a researcher, and I at least like to know what I’m getting into before I do something.  If I had a general profile for someone before I talked to them, I could accurately set my expectations.  But don’t go telling me to actually join a dating website, cause I’m still young and haven’t been single THAT long.

So in the meantime, I’ve been filling most of my time with baking (luckily I haven’t been eating most of it…..most).  My two recent projects included hi-hat cupcakes and billions of cake pops.

The cupcakes were in honor of a coworker’s birthday, which he tried to hide from us; however, I am very determined when it comes to birthdays, and it is rare that I let them squeak by without being celebrated (let’s hope I still feel this way about my own birthday in about 7 years).  I decided to try a really cool looking cupcake I found on – what else – Pinterest.  The cupcake itself was my standard Hershey’s chocolate cake recipe, but the top is lots of chocolate buttercream frosting dipped in chocolate coating.  Now, keep in mind, I had never successfully made buttercream frosting before, so I was super thrilled to end up with a normal-looking, normal-tasting chocolate frosting.

You know what the secret is?  Just keep beating, just keep beating!  (Don’t let your mind fall into the gutter, now.)  The frosting looks super disgusting right after you add the butter and suddenly you are convinced that you did something wrong, but if you just let your KitchenAid keep doing what it does, it eventually looks normal again.  Granted, I realized later that there were definitely still some small pieces of butter left in the frosting, but I’ll just let my mixer go longer next time (and the butter probably could have been a bit softer before adding it in).

I would also make twice as much frosting and chocolate coating next time for dipping the cupcakes (I only had enough to successfully dip 12 of the 24 cupcakes), but I was pretty happy with how my 12 turned out.

My other project was 200 ActiveBuilding-branded cake pops for a trade show my company attended.  Seriously, if I never make another cake pop in my life, I’ll die a happy woman.  (Ok, maybe that’s not completely true – I’ll probably be over it in like a month.)  For this particular project I cheated, using boxed cake mix and canned frosting instead of making it from scratch, but considering I have a day job, I just didn’t have the time to make the cake pops from scratch.  Regardless, the cake pops were all gone well before the trade show ended, and were being talked about long after.

Burrow Does New York

I know, I know – I seriously fell behind with my blog posts at the end of October.  But I have a legitimate excuse!  Preparing for New York was no easy task.  And I’m not exaggerating when I say that my trip to New York was the best week of my life.  That’s why, despite the fact that this is ultimately a baking blog, I’m not going to focus too much on my actual baking (although I will sprinkle a little throughout the post, and then add some pictures of my latest creations at the end.

Now, I won’t bore you with all of the nitty gritty details, but let me start by saying that none of this would have been possible without my best friend, Ashley.  I know it’s mostly because of her – though I like to think I contribute at least a little – but we somehow always manage to have the most epic adventures together.

One of the highlights from this particular trip was getting on The Today Show.  Granted, any tourist that is determined enough can manage to do it, but I guarantee you no one else has created a sign as amazing as ours was.  Combining our clever ideas, art skills (I somehow dug deep to my high school art classes for this), and resourceful natures, we played off of the Kathie Lee and Hoda hour of The Today Show (everyone’s favorite!), and came up with this:

Seriously though, how could you not love this?  If only Kathie Lee and Hoda hadn’t been down in Orlando, I’m pretty sure this would have been our ticket to meet them.

Not to get sidetracked, but I have to spread a little internet gossip here.  There was one person who didn’t seem too thrilled with our sign –  Ann Curry.  Because of my work schedule, I don’t actually get to watch The Today Show, but Ashley was a fan of hers and pretty excited to meet her.  But I kid you not, Ann avoided us like the plague until the very end when there were only like 5 of us left out there to sign autographs for and she couldn’t ignore us shrieking her name asking for a picture anymore.  Now, it didn’t become clear to us just how much she didn’t want to be near us until we looked at the picture we got with her:

Could she look more disgusted?  I mean, really, it was all smiles and rainbows with everyone else in the crowd, but all we get is a smirk and “Stay well, girls.”  What the fuck does that mean???  The only logical explanation we could come up with for this blatant disgust is that she hates Kathie Lee and Hoda, since they were the focus of our sign.  And who can blame her?  Those lucky bitches get to sit inside drinking alcohol and bullshitting for an hour, while Ann is interviewing pedophiles and standing out in the freezing cold in Loubitons for occasional weather segments.  I’d hate them too, I guess (if I didn’t aspire to be them).  But still…fuckin’ Ann.

In addition to meeting all of The Today Show peeps and Robert Pattinson, who happened to be their guest that day (I was less than impressed since I don’t watch Twilight, but after I got back I was reminded that he was also in Harry Potter and now wish I had made a much bigger deal about meeting him), I saw the filming of a scene for Law & Order: SVU, totally by chance (dream come true for me, BTW), met Ames from the last season of The Bachelorette and Bachelor Pad Season 2, and bumped into Jason Segel at the bar of the Bowery Hotel.

Living in Seattle, it’s a rare occasion to bump into celebrities, so maybe that’s why I was so unprepared for all of this, but in the moment I was such a bumbling fool and never thought to ask the important questions.  If I could bump into Ames again, I would ask if he actually got hurt in the boxing match and why he broke up with Jackie after Bachelor Pad.  If I met Jason Segel again, I wouldn’t blurt out “I’m from Seattle!!” (like he gives a shit), and proceed to act like a giggling idiot.  Both of them were very good natured about it though, and I like to think they’ve been harassed by bigger head cases than I.

There were many more highlights of this trip that I won’t share, because I’m sure you don’t care about me crying when seeing Roy Lichtenstein’s “Drowning Girl” in person at the MoMA, or ice skating like a grandma around Rockefeller Center, but I will dive into my culinary school visits a bit.

I’ve been looking at culinary schools since January, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized I could go to culinary school outside of Seattle.  What a concept, huh?  Since I already had this trip planned, I figured, why not check out some schools in NYC.  I visited the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) and the French Culinary Institute (FCI), and was blown away by both.  Besides the fact the ICE is located very close to where I would be working if I moved to NY, they also have an extensive management program that would be beneficial for my end goal of owning a bakery one day.  FCI, on the other hand really gave me the sense that they cared about me as an individual, to the point of getting to meet one of the deans of the school, PLUS that’s where Bobby Flay graduated from.  I’m just saying, if he comes to student and/or alumni events, that could really affect my decision…

Nothing is set in stone yet – I’ve got a lot of pro / con lists to make still, and a lot to think about (ie: $$$) – but one thing is for sure: I looooooved New York.  I’ve always planned on settling down in Seattle, but I’m still young and have no interest in settling down any time soon, so I feel like it’s about time for a new city.  If anyone is inclined to donate to the Send Cate to Culinary School Fund, checks can be made out to me.  Oh, and as promised, here are some of my baked goods that I didn’t post about before my trip:

Baby girl chick cake pops for my coworker Amanda’s baby shower (yes, the cake on the inside was pink).

Baked Pumpkin Spice Donut Holes (from The Craving Chronicles) – I forgot to take a picture of mine, so I stole this.

Mini pumpkin bunt cakes, inspired by A Merrier World.  My intention was to turn these into mini pumpkins, but I wasn’t thrilled with the results.  This is how far I got:

They look more like apples than pumpkins…

Burrow Dares to Take on Martha

Let me preface this post by saying that I have a deep respect for Martha Stewart.  Since finding out who she was in 6^th grade, there has been a part of me deep down that is envious of how put together her little world is.  You can’t even bring up the “she went to prison” argument, because she was crocheting fucking ponchos with her inmates.  Seriously.  My life isn’t even nearly as Stepford Wives as her time in prison was.

Now, I know: women’s liberation, we can use our brains to do more than throw a perfect dinner party, blah blah blah.  But come on, just once in my life I would like to have all matching bath towels and be able to perfectly fold a fitted bed sheet.  I can’t be the only one!  If I could create seasonal wreaths out of hand-picked leaves or little peppermint candies, I honestly believe that everything else in my life would magically fall into place.

But there is one thing about Martha that makes me feel so much better about myself: she periodically pretends that she doesn’t actually take herself seriously.  I CALL BULLSHIT!  When watching Martha Stewart try and joke around, or work with someone who has no domestic skills whatsoever, you might notice a little eye twitch or throbbing vein in her forehead.  My favorite thing is when that anal Northeasterner acts like she enjoys children and invites them onto her show to set the table or something.  I swear, her blood pressure must skyrocket as she follows after the kids, turning the blades of the knives to face TOWARDS the plates.

Take this segment about children’s bikes and helmets.  She actually has too little boys riding around her set as she pimps the products.  Her casting director must have had a death wish when they arranged that little stunt.  Literally 4 seconds into this video, she grabs one kid’s hand as he’s reaching toward the camera.  At 28 seconds, she freaks out when the children don’t stop to show their helmets.  It gets really good at about 3:00 when she tries to get Daniel to tell her when he learned how to ride a bike.  How old is this kid?  Four?  How the hell is he supposed to remember that shit?  He’s SCARED of you!

Well, this weekend when I was picking up evaporated milk for Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Butter Icing, appropriately a Martha Stewart recipe, a magazine at the checkout stand caught my eye.  It was on one of the bottom shelves, and from a distance I thought it was a cool cover shoot with Lady Gaga, but I couldn’t help noticing she looked a bit haggard.  I kept staring, and soon realized it was a Halloween magazine, thinking, “Ooooh it’s a Lady Gaga costume!”  And then the small magazine title hit me: Martha Stewart.  Yes, ladies and gents, the 2011 Martha Stewart Halloween magazine is out on stands now.  And as always, she didn’t disappoint:

I’ll let you marinate in that for a bit, and move on to the real point of this blog post: Pumpkin Cookies.  Usually I stay away from Martha’s recipes cause they always seem to be 10 times harder than anyone else’s, but this one was relatively simple.  The one thing that made me roll my eyes was her direction to “Transfer 1 1/2 cups batter to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain tip (such as Ateco #806). Pipe 1 1/2-inch rounds onto parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. “  Sorry Martha, but fuck no.  I used my cookie / ice cream scoop to dole out the cookie dough and it worked just fine (minus one casualty).

Overall, the batter was delicious, the cookies were tasty, and the frosting turned out fine (although a little too sweet for my personal taste), but I wasn’t blown away.  I think I was too thrown off by the softness of the cookies – I wanted something a little heartier.  These are more like muffin tops (not the fat roll over your jeans type, but actually tops of muffins), than how I imagine a cookie.  So, needless to say, I probably won’t try this recipe again, but I got good reviews from our office’s baked-goods aficionado, Josh.

Shockingly, these are not mine.  I had to steal it from Martha’s website cause I forgot to take a picture after I frosted them.  But mine are just as perfectly round and evenly frosted…

I’m sure Martha would have had a hernia over the fact that I had to reuse my parchment paper cause I ran out halfway through baking these cookies.  But you know what Martha, I’m glad I didn’t run out and buy new parchment paper to waste on these!  So there.

A Little Crush, A Little Pumpkin Cheesecake

I have a new celebrity crush.  Well, I don’t know if he can really be called a celebrity yet (maybe a little below D-List?), but I will let you decide for yourself.  Who is this mystery celebrity crush, you ask?  Michael Patrick O’Brien.  He was brought to my attention when the Kristen Wiig episode of his YouTube series, 7 Minutes in Heaven, ended up on Hulu.

Now, I will admit, it wasn’t “crush at first sight” – mostly cause at that point I had such a lady crush on Kristen Wiig (still do, actually), that I was way too focused on her.  But this Friday I was watching something (I honestly can’t remember what) on YouTube and stumbled across the 7 Minutes in Heaven channel.  Let me tell you, I spent a lot more than 7 minutes in heaven watching Mike O’Brien awkwardly interview celebrities in a closet, and my crush started growing with every chuckle that escaped my lips.  Maybe a small part of it is that he shares a few physical characteristics with a guy I had a fling with in college, but mostly it’s because I could not stop laughing.

 

This probably sounds really dumb, because who doesn’t love to laugh, but I really LOVE LOVE LOVE to laugh.  I love reading silly British books, watching stand-up clips on YouTube, and falling to pieces talking over Skype with my BFF Ashley.  And especially considering how tough the past few weeks have been, all I really want is to feel happy and laugh.  Yesterday as I got working on my next pumpkin recipe, Miniature Pumpkin Cheesecakes with Cinnamon Crust, I had some bubbly rose wine and video clips of Mike O’Brien to keep me laughing.

Now, to avoid coming off as crazy stalker girl, I guess it’s time to transition into the Pumpkin Cheesecakes.  This was another recipe I found via Pinterest, and actually originated from Williams-Sonoma!  Since it was a store’s recipe, of course they required certain tools and ingredients that are specific to their store – Pecan Pumpkin Butter and a mini-cheesecake pan.  (Oh, how I could spend my entire paycheck on baking supplies there.  And yes, I realize you can get mini-cheesecake pans elsewhere online, but it was kind of a last-minute thing and they were the only store nearby that had them.)

But if you can get past those Williams-Sonoma-specific purchases, which I did, the recipe is worth trying.  I actually had a few adjustments to it, though.  First, and most sadly, mine were just little round cheesecakes instead of the adorable pumpkin shape they have in the picture on the site.  Second, I was only able to make 6 instead of 12.  If I had doubled the ingredients for the crust and used less cheesecake filling per cake, then sure, I could have made 12.  But if you like a solid crust – and I do – on your cheesecakes, the amount the recipe instructs to make is only good for 6 mini cakes.  In fact, if I were to make this recipe again, I would probably use even more crust per cake, just cause I like how the crunch balances out the creamy cheesecake.

A third adjustment I made was cooking time.  Since I used all of the filling for half the cakes the recipe calls for, I had to add about 10-15 minutes in the oven.  Other than that, I was pretty impressed with how easily the cheesecakes slid out of the pan – and they were all intact!  When I took my first bite I was a little confused because I think I was expecting pumpkin PIE versus pumpkin CHEESECAKE (trust me, there IS a difference in taste), but by the end of my mini cake, I was ready for a second.  However, I resisted and went running instead.

I mean, I am going to NYC in a month, and I happen to have previously met someone who works with Mike O’Brien. (Did I mention he’s a writer for SNL?  Yeah…)  It’s a long shot, but that means I have to keep eating the pumpkin deliciousness to a minimum.  I don’t want to look like a pumpkin when I’m there.  Good thing I can always dump my baked goods on my coworkers!

THE MONTH OF THE PUMPKIN

I’m pretty sure I’ve developed Adult ADD.  I constantly jump from one activity to another and get anxiety about doing something that will prevent me from multitasking (writing this blog post for example).   I have 17 tabs open in Google Chrome hiding behind my Word document right now, and it’s stressing me out that I have to get through an entire blog post before I can go back to jumping between websites and attempting to organize my life (this has been at least a 13-year project).

I experienced a similar anxiety yesterday morning when I was trying to decide which pumpkin recipe to choose first.  See, I’ve been pinning like crazy on Pinterest, finding all kinds of amazing-looking recipes, so I finally decided to stop pinning and start baking.  Considering it’s October, probably my favorite month of the year (aside from June, my birthday month, of course), I decided to make it all about the PUMPKIN!  Fortunately, I have come across more than enough pumpkin recipes on Pinterest to fill up a months’ worth of blogs.

Now, I also started this little project because I haven’t blogged for so long.  To counteract my AADD I am trying to focus on a few things that I love doing, and make goals for myself so I actually do those things.  Considering I am also visiting culinary schools (Baking & Pastry programs, what what!), I want something to show for myself.  I don’t know how many people go into these programs with no experience working in bakeries, but I will most likely be one of them.  So at least I can broaden my repertoire to include more than delicious cookies and Twofer cupcakes.

If you can follow my jumping mind right now, I was talking about experiencing some anxiety in choosing my first recipe.  I had narrowed it down to about 7 pumpkiny recipes to try this month, but the first needs to make a statement.  I didn’t want it to be too simple – I wanted to make a splash – but I also didn’t want to have to run out to the store and buy too many extra ingredients or baking utensils.  And did I want to do a breakfast theme since it was going to be my first post (get it: morning = beginning of the month), or did I want to wait until I actually had someone around to feed that breakfast to?

By some miracle, I finally landed on Pumpkin Spice Pull-Apart Bread with Butter Rum Glaze, originally found on the Willow Bird Baking blog.  (What is it about alcohol in recipes that makes them sound THAT much more enticing?)  Although I did need to pick up a bread tin (who knows where my last one ended up) and some bread flour, it wasn’t too much extra to get started.  Now, I didn’t realize that I was also supposed to have a candy thermometer to measure the temperature of my butter and milk as it cooled for the dough, but that is what you get when you don’t thoroughly read through instructions before getting started.  Oh well.

Despite the lack of candy thermometer and a few other bumps along the road, things didn’t turn out too terribly for my first go.  Granted, the edges of the bread turned out harder than I would have liked, but at least the middle was cooked through.  And I definitely could have drizzled the glaze a little nicer, rather than slopping it on with a knife, but I’m pretty sure that didn’t affect the taste.  Also, I’m not sure if it was my fault or just how the recipe is supposed to turn out, the bread mostly tasted like warm, delicious cinnamon rolls (minus the roll), with not much of a pumpkin taste – but I wouldn’t call that a bad thing unless I really wanted something super pumpkiny.

So, I did it!  I fought through my anxiety and self-diagnosed AADD and made my first recipe for THE MONTH OF THE PUMPKIN (and wrote this blog post)!  Maybe next week I will make the breakfast-themed recipes I have on my list and invite Adam Levine over…you know, to talk about AADD of course…

Some pumpkiny breakfast foods would really be great for my ADHD right now, thanks.