blogging with a guilty conscience

What's on your desk right now? Wait, no. Be honest. I'll be honest. I have two laptops. A package of Trader Joe's unsulfured, sweetened, dried mango. A cup of cold date tea. An Inception DVD. Six historical books, focusing on either a) Irish secret societies b) machine politics or c) the Irish exodus. Not a single pleasure read on my desk. They're all chilling just a few feet a way. I can hear them whisper (or maybe it's my lack of sleep talking to me), "Nicole, hey, Nicole. Put down that boring book. And pick me up. Crack open my spine! I can still crack! You didn't finish me yet." The Picture of Dorian Gray says those words. He's needy.

And I need sleep. And cookies. This week is going to be nuts. Nuts, as in, no-time-to-breath, nuts. Not I-met-a-cute-boy-and-we're-hanging-out nuts. Or I'm-baking-cookies-all-week nuts. Or walnuts, pistachio nuts, and peanuts. No, as in, back-to-back-semi/very-scholarly-events. Superb.

I still have work to do, guys. And yet. I'm blogging. Okay, moving on. (My conscience is catching up to me! This post will be short.)

Cookies



with Nutella,



with semisweet chocolate chips,



and smeared with more Nutella.

Um, do you need anything else when a chocolate craving hits? I don't! Have a splendid week! Recipe here. No real notes today. I followed the recipe word for word and I baked them a tad longer because my cookies were bigger.

a birthday cake and recipe networking

Lately, I've been on an "everyday baking" kick. I made carrot cake sandwich cookies last Saturday, a pear crisp with cranberries on Tuesday, and roasted chickpeas this morning. Then, I made my first ever celebration cake.




It's a birthday cake for my mom. To be honest, I've been planning this cake for weeks! Lame, right? I was thinking about smitten kitchen's best birthday cake. I then realized I didn't have two nine inch cake pans; I only have one. Oops. Luckily, I came across Big Girl Small Kitchen recipe for a one layer yellow cake with a peanut butter filling. I had a big tub of sour cream, just chilling in my fridge, begging to be used, so smittenkitchen's chocolate sour cream frosting seemed fitting.

BGSK yellow cake + BGSK peanut butter filling + smitten kitchen's chocolate sour cream frosting = a delicious, yet messy, birthday cake.

Notes: For the cake, I substituted 3/4 of the AP flour for white whole wheat. The sour cream should be 3/4 cup. The flour, sugar, baking soda, powder, salt, butter, and sour cream mixture was realllyy dry; I had to add more dollops of sour cream to moisten it. I "kneaded" the mixture with my hands. I was afraid the cake would become tough but it was fine! It's not my favorite yellow cake; I will most likely replace this cake recipe with another one.
For the filling, I only had 3 tbsp of peanut butter left in the jar. It still tasted delicious.
For the frosting, I halved everything and I still had a bit frosting left, even though I ate globs of it while I was making it. Instead of light corn syrup, I used 6 tsp of agave. Agave is similar to corn syrup because it prevents crystallization, or something like that. I dunno.
I baked the cake. While the cake was baking, I made the frosting and popped it in the fridge to chill. When the cake was taken out and completely chilled, I whipped up the filling. I sliced the cake in half, horizontally, and slathered on the filling. I saved a little and put it in a small Ziploc to pipe on the lettering. Finish it off with the chocolate frosting and it's done! Pretty simple and it tastes delicious.