Bobcat Moran

Ha! I am a genius! I figured out a way to make Cook's Illustrated's super-delicious pumpkin pie that still results in a silky-smooth filling but doesn't require the horrible, horrible step of forcing the entire piping-hot filling through a strainer. The secret: a food processor. Give the pumpkin-yam-spice mixture a whirl for a minute or so before cooking it and voilá! Sooo much easier.

Oddly enough, I got the idea from CI's earlier version of pumpkin pie, which suggests doing just this. Why on earth they opted for the laborious sieve over the food processor this time around is beyond me.

You can find the recipe here, should you care to make it. It's more complex than the recipie on the Libby's can of pumpkin, but it's also the tastiest pumpkin pie in the whole world, even when you cheat like I do and use a premade crust.

I tried making The Pioneer Woman's sorta key lime pie. The "sorta" comes from the fact that it uses regular limes rather than key limes, which suits me just fine, as real key limes are about the size of large walnuts and a pain and a half to juice.

The amount of crust for this recipe is kind of ridiculous (which, to be fair, she totally mentions), but the filling is AMAZING. It's an incredibly limey firm custard that makes me think that this recipe could, with minimal adaptations, work as a key lime bar. I have a key lime bar recipe from Cook's Illustrated, and it's delicious (because it's, y'know, Cook's Illustrated, and they test every recipe to death before publishing it), but like a lot of Cook's Illustrated recipes, it's a lot of fuss to make. Plus, it doesn't cut into bars very neatly, while I've been able to slice through this pie without getting filling goop all over.

Also, making it gives me an excuse to put a bunch of graham crackers in a ziplock bag and then bash the hell out of them with my rolling pin, which is a terrible lot of fun. I suppose I could use a food processor (if I had one) to make the crumbs, but it's more fun and cathartic to do it manually.

The chocolate shortbread turned out surprisingly well, considering that we've had a rather lousy track record with this cookbook (not entirely surprising, considering that it's painfully obvious that it's a UK cookbook with the measurements converted. Most recipes call for at least one ingredient, like self-rising flour, that's common on the other side of the pond, but not a pantry staple over here).

Anyway, here's the recipe ( hiding under a cut for the sake of your f-lists )

Well, it took me two years, but a few nights ago, I sat down and finally finished "Cookies of Chaos." Here's the entire thing. Hope y'all enjoy it.

Summary: This is why you should never let robots get bored. The robot masters are taking over Skull Castle’s kitchen in an attempt to make chocolate chip cookies. Chaos ensues.

( It was a dark and stormy night… )

And, as a bonus, here's the recipie they were working from.
( How to really make chocolate chip cookies )

Wow. The weather is absurd. It almost got up to 80° yesterday. At 9:15 pm yesterday, and it was still warm enough to be out in a 3/4 length sleeve blouse without a jacket. I drove home with the windows open, subjecting the local populace to OC Remixes. I went out on a bike ride this morning and it was GORGEOUS.

On a completely different note, the massive cooking experiment that was last week had quite a few successes. This was one of the easier-to-make ones.

( Country Style Potato-Leek Soup )

In my opinion, in order to have a proper Christmas, you need to make cookies--absurd quantities of cookies so that you end up giving them to friends, neighbors, relatives, and random passers-by. It's a bit like zucchini in that way, only much more tasty.

This is one of my favorite recipies.

( Little Gingersnaps )

The best thing about these is that you can get wildly creative with the shapes. One year, we made several French Revolution gingerbread men, women, and various animals, with guillotined heads.