I can't remember when I first made these cinnamon rolls, or how they became the Holy Grail of baked goods in our house, but what I CAN tell you is that Monkey asks for these for his birthday instead of cake. (Chickie usually asks for both cinnamon rolls AND cake. And right there... you have a pretty good summary of my children.) That should give you some idea of how awesome these are. So: I make these almost exclusively for birthdays, because they're kind of a pain in the ass. But when I asked Chickadee what she wanted for Nerd Night, she immediately said "cinnamon rolls!" and I remembered...
It was a long week, last week, and even kind of a long weekend, as Monkey ended up at an Academic Team competition that we knew would be "all day" but hadn't entirely grokked would be an 8:30 - 6:30 kind of all day. (That is a long day even if you enjoy extended nerdery. I mean.) Honestly I doubt either child would've bothered getting dressed at all on Sunday if not for the siren call of Nerd Night, complete with zombie-fighting hijinks and---of course---sugar. For my part, I wasn't up for anything complicated. I wanted something I could bake in very short order on Sunday morning so that I...
Soooo... last week was sort of A Week. By Friday---no joke---I was falling asleep with my eyes open on the couch at about 8:30. (We're all fine. Our school district is in the middle of an enormous clusterfuck and as I am stupidly "involved" and "part of the solution" [geez, whose stupid idea was THAT??], it's just been... a really long week.) On the bright side, it was just the kick in the pants I needed to sit down with Chickadee this weekend and order her graduation invitations. We may have high-fived over the notion of her being nearly finished with this particular circus. At the same...
Y'all. I am so tired. I am so tired I'm saying "y'all," which I'm pretty sure is a felony for a yankee like me regardless of how long I've lived in the south. This past week was absolutely nuts and wonderful, and I am looking forward to telling you all about it... probably tomorrow or Wednesday, once I've gotten my head back on straight. Being in The Vagina Monologues is always simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating, and I don't know if you know this, but I am not quite as young as I used to be. (Weird!) Anyway. All of the highlights about that are coming, I promise (complete with a tale...
I'm still trying to decide if baking decadent things I cannot eat is a healthy sublimation of my sweet tooth or just a giant, masochistic flaw in my reasoning process. Best not to think about it too much, I suspect. The smoothie cleanse I mentioned last week? I'm going to tell you more about it, today, but after I tell you about dessert. So if you're just here for dessert and don't give a rat's ass about my weird diet things, check out the cake and then be on your way. Here I was, having just come off 10 days on kale smoothies and eating... mostly veggies, still, and it seemed like a great...
Listen, I am a person who aspires to balance. I'm not saying I'm a person who ever ACHIEVES balance, mind you, but I do aspire to it. So when I make a completely over-the-top dessert like I did last week, I try to go for something a little simpler and less-sugar-shock-inducing for the following week. I had an ulterior motive, too. Lemon bars are Otto's favorite, and I realized while looking for a recipe that I've never actually made them before. (I am a terrible wife.) Whenever we eat out somewhere that has lemon bars on the menu, he gets one. Anyway. Often we send dessert off and an empty...
We had some scrambling to get Nerd Night rescheduled, this week, which prompted our friendly neighborhood Dungeon Master to share this with the group: It's possible it made me laugh louder and longer than was strictly necessary, but I admit to nothing. Now, normally my argument against rescheduling or canceling Nerd Night is that MONKEY WILL BE SO DISAPPOINTED, but when the subject of canceling last night or moving it to today came up, this time, like the doting mother I am, I was all YOU CANNOT CANCEL I AM ALREADY MAKING A COMPLICATED CAKE. See, Boston Cream Pie (motto: not actually pie!)...
For some reason, there are several cans of fruit pie filling in my pantry. I'm not sure why. It's not the sort of thing I generally buy, and I have only the vaguest of memories of discussing having some for camping to go with this cast iron "hobo pie maker" thing that Otto owns and loves (even before I could no longer eat wheat, the idea of sticking some Wonder bread and pie filling into a campfire was not all that appealing to me, but whatever). Anyway, after a multi-week hiatus from Nerd Night, I opened the pantry yesterday and decided I need to use up some of that canned fruit. But a pie...
I must confess: We didn't actually have Nerd Night this week. School finished up on Friday and people were already scattering for winter break, so we're on hiatus for a few weeks, which sent my youngest into something akin to the Nerdling DTs. (I got a serious of texts from him last week during AP Physics---good to know he's paying such great attention during class---breathlessly informing me that the Pathfinder Society website indicated there was a game night at a restaurant downtown that night and he didn't have any homework and could he please go even though it was a school night because...
