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.

Sticky, delicious chicken.

Hello again from the Caribbean! Today marks the beginning of our "semester break", which means we get one day off next Monday for a three day weekend. It seems paltry, and it kind of is, but it when you're used to putting in 8-12 hour days on campus 5 days a week, plus TA sessions on weekends, a day off feels like an eternity. So I'm going to be having an extra meal at home this week and thought I'd do it up right. Lucky for me the decision about what to cook was pretty much made for me as yesterday, while I wandered around the grocery store looking for ideas, I spotted whole chickens on sale. Sticky chicken it is!

This recipe always gets praise from my husband and friends. It's a rotisserie-like chicken with crispy, sticky skin, tender, juicy meat and lots of flavor.

4 lb whole chicken, skin on and guts removed
2 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)

If you don't like your food spicy, I've substituted the 1/4 tsp each of black and cayenne pepper for 1/2 tsp of lemon pepper in the past when I knew I was feeding people with a milder palate.

Sprinkle evenly all over your chicken and then rub the spices into the skin to evenly distribute the flavor all over the bird. Don't forget to rub a little bit on the walls inside of the chicken as well. Sometimes I spray a little canola oil on the skin before adding the spices to make it really crispy. If you want to use 4 lbs of split chicken breasts or drumsticks you can just toss them in a big bag with the spice mix, but I'm not sure how that would effect the cooking time so that's on you to figure out. Preheat your oven to 300 degees. Grease your baking dish, otherwise the skin will stick horribly and you'll lose all of that delicious flavor on one side of your bird. Bake low and slow, uncovered, for 3 hours or until it reaches 170 degrees internal temperature. Pull it out and while it rests it will continue to cook until it reaches 180 for perfect doneness.

A very heart-y followup

The Peanutella project is a mixed bag. On one hand, the product itself is so very good. On the other hand, the Peanutella sandwich cookies were a colossal failure.

Some things I've tried, and some upcoming projects

I dunno about anyone else, but this time of year always gets me down. I'm laid off for a few months, it's cold, I'm bored and housebound, and I get sick of cooking the same thing in-and-out. My live-in is what some people would generously call, "a picky eater," and what I call (in my less-kindly moments), "A GIANT PAIN IN MY ASS!"

It's hard for me to find things he'll eat; given his druthers, his entire diet would be made up of Little Debbies, spaghetti marinara with garlic bread, steak, cake, and ice cream. I've tried over the years to expand his palate a little, but much of the time I'll just go, "Welp, I'm making this, so grab some ramen for yourself if you don't want to eat it."

So this time of year is my time for combining recipes, combing the web for new ideas, and raiding my local library for cookbooks.

Enchilada sauce.

So it's been awhile! Sorry for the absence, but I kind of moved to another country, so... y'know.

Last night was the first night myself and my new roommates threw together a joint-contribution meal where I made enchiladas and they made tacos. Living in a 3rd world country means adapting in oh-so-many ways, one of which is availability of ingredients. I can get many of the things I need for enchiladas here, but not enchilada sauce. An added complication is that one of my new roomies is gluten intolerant, so I had to do some searching until I found what looked like a decent recipe.

I ended up going with this one. We don't have any rice flour or other flour substitutes yet, so I just left out the roux formation and most of the water and oil. I added those in at the end until I got the right consistency. Amazingly, even without all that, it still tasted very good! Very flavorful and bakes up just like enchilada sauce should - not too gummy, not too runny, just right.

I don't have any pictures, sorry. I gobbled up the last of the leftovers for lunch today before thinking to grab my camera. You'll just have to take my word for it.

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.

Chicken and wild rice soup.

I was too exhausted after work last night to do a full write up of this recipe, but it's so good that it simply must be shared. I've made this three times now and I have to say, it's pretty idiot-proof. I've forgotten to add the rice in until the last minute, only had half of the flour the recipe calls for and didn't realize it, and once my mother added about three cups of water to a big batch coming right out of the fridge before it had reheated thoroughly on the stove because it was "too thick", not realizing that the fat would thin out as it warmed. The finished product is always yummy regardless.

Few changes:

- I always saute onion, celery, carrots and mushrooms separately and add them with the chicken.

- I also add about 1/2 cup of instant white rice to help thicken it up.

- I use half and half instead of heavy cream, and 6 full cups of chicken broth because why on earth would anyone add water to soup? The only time water should be added at any point of the soup-making process is during broth/stock preparation.

Best winter soup ever. Thick, hearty and filling and goes great with a crusty hunk of bread.