Greatest hits.

I'm missing my good baking pans, Penzeys spices and weather cool enough to make baking tolerable. I've been nostalgically browsing my Photobucket account, drooling over things I made in yesteryear.

Spooky Halloween "rainbow" cupcake. Rainbow cupcakes are super easy to do. Just make a box white cake mix, separate the batter evenly into different bowls, add food coloring to desired intensity and then layer the batter into the pan. Buttercream recipe.

Sugar and spice! Sugar cookie recipe. Icing recipe. Spice crackles recipe.

Chocolate angel food cake. Recipe via "The Cake Bible."

Mandarin orange cupcakes with vanilla pineapple whipped cream topping and toasted coconut. Sorry, ya'll aren't getting this recipe. Family secret passed down from my grandma. ;)

Chocolate Guinness stout cupcakes with Irish cream and peppermint frosting. Recipe via smittenkitchen. Only change I made was to add Rumple Minze to the frosting as well as the Bailey's.

Persimmon cheesecake. Changes: Omitted the sour cream topping and ginger. Added 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp nutmeg to the filling and did a crushed gingersnap crust. This was so incredibly delicious. This was all that remained after a weekend in Chicago with friends.

Lemon cake with lemon curd filling (Trader Joe's) and raspberry buttercream icing (same buttercream recipe as the Halloween cupcake, plus raspberry fruit spread) for my mother's 49th birthday. Yeah, the top is domed and the piping on the bottom is amateurish. I finished this at like 11:30pm when I had to be at work at 6am the next day, so I couldn't be arsed to level it or get fancy with my decorating. It tasted amazing and my mom loved it, and that's all that matters.

The way to a person's heart is through their truffles

Warning: This recipe may cause spontaneous declarations of love and ardent offers of sexual favors.* Do not make these without proper safety procedures in place.

Right, so a lot of people I know love chocolate chip cookies and their dough; me, not so much. I mean, they're okay. But I've been making chocolate chip cookies since I was about seven; they just don't hold much interest for me anymore. I know I'm in the minority here, and realizing this I decided to try out this recipe for all the people in my family who lick the spoon after mixing up some cookie dough.

The Turduckening

I'd like to pretend that I'm such an awesome cook that this meal was simple as making toast. But in reality, this meal was as simple as making toast because this particular bird is literally idiot-proof. If you can make nasty frozen pizza, you can make this turducken.

Thanksgiving, a bit late.

Buckle in, kiddies, it's gonna be a long one!

This Thanksgiving the husband and I ate at his mother's house. Now, I have nothing against the woman personally, but it has to be said that she can't cook meat. Side dishes, veggies, cold items, all good. But I can't tell you how many classic meat dishes - meatloaf, pork chops, pot roast - my husband hated when we first began dating because he thought that they were "too dry." So yeah, the bird was dry, but otherwise we had a good time and plenty of good food. We were also sent home with a huge bag full of dry, flaky turkey.

Next weekend the two co-authors of this blog, moi and the fabulous Dez, are getting together for an event we have dubbed "The Turduckening." Neither Dez nor I have ever tried turducken, and we are very eager to. As I will be leaving for St. Kitts to begin vet school soon, this seemed like a good time to have a get together with our close friends and say to hell with the expense and just do the damn thing. So Dez is preparing the birds and gravy (side note: this quote from Dez exemplifies why she and I are such good friends. "Hell if I'm NOT making gravy out of the pan drippings of three different poultry."), and I am contributing cranberry sauce and stuffing.

Wherein our illustrious guest blogger makes an appearance

A little about me: I'm frequently broke, especially around the holidays, and I have a large family and a huge pool of friends. All of this breaks down into one thing: I don't give presents, I give baskets and bags of baked goods and candies for the holidays. Some recipes are a given for certain groups: I can be pretty sure most of my presents for my friends will involve alcohol, I have to find a tasty diabetic-friendly recipe for my live-in's grandmother, I have to find something that ships well for his father, and I have to figure out something interesting that can be made in advance for the voracious and superlatively picky bunch that are related to me.

As a result my "holiday baking" starts early with new recipe testing. And as with all recipe testing, things go wrong. For today, I'm trying out Chocolate & Peanut Butter Meringues.

I was specifically thinking of my brother and mom for this one as they both adore meringues and macaroon-type cookies. Myself, I am not a fan. But these were pretty tasty. Also, the only thing that might go wrong if you let the batter sit for a while (as I did) is that the second batch that's been sitting doesn't poof up as much. They still taste good, they're just a little flat.

I should place here a disclaimer: I am not a photographer and my food frequently turns out delicious but homely. If other food bloggers have pictures that are considered food porn, mine's food amateur porn: lots of enthusiasm, but messier than a professional job.