you'd better not pout

IMG_7574, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Cookies I baked for a my Secret Pal in the holiday gift exchange at school. More of these cookies, but with white chocolate chips inside instead of semisweet – I think I may need to take a break on them for a while, or I’m going to start to get sick of eating them!

Song of the Entry: The Beach Boys – Santa Claus is Coming to Town

. . .all the way home, i'll be warm

IMG_7553, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Every so often, I go to the store and buy pears – which are rock hard and unripe, as food in the store tends to be. And I put them in a bag and leave them on top of the fridge or in the cupboard to ripen, and they get perfectly ripe riight about the time I forget that I bought pears a few days ago, and then I’m left with more pears than I could reasonably eat in a single sitting, all just on the cusp of going bad

The solution, obviously, is “bake them into something.” Because everyone knows, cooking food that’s almost over-the-hill is like hitting the reset button on its expiry date. (I. . .am kidding. Mostly.)

Anyway, I made mine into a half-recipe of this pear cobbler. It is delicious – a lot like apple crisp, but a little bit sweeter because of the different fruit. But then again, the recipe also calls for maple syrup. What doesn’t become delicious when you add that?

Song of the Entry: Dean Martin – Let It Snow!

sooner or later

IMG_7428, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

One thing I forgot to mention about the first batch of chocolate-espresso cookies was that they were for a charity function, so I didn’t actually get to eat that many of them. Over the weekend, I cooked up a second batch – these ones were all baked in muffin tins, and they are much prettier than their cookie-sheet cousins. Also, did you know that 24 cookies makes a perfect circular pyramid? (I know, math geeks, a circular pyramid is a cone, shut up.) Now you do.

Song of the Entry: Michael Tolcher – Sooner or Later