Spork or Foon?

Twix Brownies

If these don't want to make you nomnomnom all over the place, I don't know what will. 
When I was making these, I kept singing "Give me a break, give me a break, break me off a piece of that... DAMNIT" as I realized I kept singing the Kit Kat song (another equally delicious candy bar made up of rainbows and unicorn tears). I wracked my brain to try to remember what song Twix had and then I remembered.
Mmmmm BOW BOW. Chick, Chick-a Chick-a.
Oh yea, the Ferris Bueller theme song. 
I don't know which song is more annoying to sing on end, but I am sure that I annoyed Jack to no end singing these songs all morning as I made these brownies. 
I made up for the fact that I can be completely annoying when I get something stuck in my head by how awesome these bars are. 
Like, they are TWIX in a BROWNIE. Drizzled with CARAMEL. Do I need to sell you on anything else? Because I don't think I do.  Gooey chocolate brownies? Crisp cookie center topped with creamy caramel? Together in one mind explosion of a dessert. COME ON. I'd crash Cameron's dad's car for a plate of these (let my Cameron GO).
Let's just bring it back a little. 
 
A commenter on this said they didn't know it was the Ferris Buller song, they always thought it was the Twix song. I wish young people not knowing things didn't make me feel so OLD (like when 21 Jump Street came out in the movies and the young people just couldn't understand why Johnny Depp made a cameo in it. COME ON PEOPLE, LEARN YOUR HISTORY!)
This recipe is courtesy of My Baking Addiction, so head on over there and MAKE. 
Click Here for the Recipe

Incredibly Amazing Pumpkin Spice Donuts with Cinnamon Whipped Cream

So I'm going to try to be better at blogging. I know I won't be able to post every day for a plethora of reason - my wedding in Italy is 6 weeks away (WHAAAAAAAA?) and I have a ton of stuff to plan for it. My wedding in Italy is 6 weeks away and I'd like to keep the poundage off, so food is strictly healthy right now. But I will try my best to be the best blogger I can be in the limited time I have :)

So there is no better way than to start with these incredibly amazing pumpkin spice donuts. 

Listen. I'm obsessed with fall. OBSESSED. Like, when Starbucks brings back their pumpkin spice lattes, I pretty much do a happy dance right in front of the barista. There is something fundamentally wrong about drinking a pumpkin flavored iced coffee, but frankly, it's still hot in September (thanks Global Warming!) and I'm not ready for the switch from cold to hot, but you'd better believe I'm ready for some sweet, syrupy pumpkiny goodness. 

So Sunday night was my fantasy football draft and I wanted to bake something for it, since we do it live every year. My fantasy football nemesis is one of my closes friends in real life (but God do I hate him when it comes to fantasy). He, even moreso than me (or any other human on this planet), loves the fall. As in... he has already decorated his apartment for Halloween. And though I wanted nothing more to revel in his misery at his crappy fantasy drafting skills, I did want to surprise him with some fall treats. 

To say these donuts were delicious was an understatement. Listen. I'm used to dieting. I can't really eat what I make, because I don't have the metabolism for it. I get it. And I'm fine with it for the most part. I have a bite to taste it to make sure it is ok and then it stops there. It doesn't upset me.

There are few times in my life where I actually get MAD that I can't eat something ... and this one of those times. These donuts are RIDICULOUS. Like, AMAZING. I liked them best when they just cooled down from the frying pan. Roll them in a little cinnamon sugar, top them with whipped cream and BOOM. Amazingness. (The inspiration to top them with whipped cream is from Tabard Inn, a DC institution, that has the most ridiculous donuts ever and serves them with an amazing whipped cream. I thought those were my favorite donuts ever... until now).

Get ready for fall. It's coming. 

And get ready for Fantasy Football, because I am going to dominate, my friends! 

Pumpkin Donuts - Adapted from Annie's Eats

Pumpkin Doughnuts

Yield: about 16 donuts and donut holes
Ingredients:
For the donuts:
3½ cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
½ tsp. ground nutmeg
¼ tsp. ground cloves

¼ tsp. all spice
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk
1 cup pumpkin puree

Canola oil or peanut oil, for frying

For the cinnamon-sugar:
½ cup sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon

For the cinnamon whipped cream:
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 pint whipped cream
1 tsp vanilla

Directions: 
To make the dough, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices in a medium bowl.  Whisk to blend, and set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the sugar and butter and beat until well blended.  Stir in the egg, then the egg yolks, and then the vanilla until incorporated.  Combine the buttermilk and pumpkin in a liquid measuring cup and whisk together.  With the mixer on low speed, add in the dry ingredients in three additions alternating with the pumpkin mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.  Once the dough is mixed, cover and chill for at least 3 hours or until firm.  (The dough still seemed quite soft so we did an additional 30 minute chill in the freezer.)  

On a well-floured work surface, roll or pat out the dough to a ½-inch thick round.  Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour.  Using a 2½ to 3-inch round biscuit cutter, cut out rounds of dough.  Use a smaller cutter (or a wide pastry tip) to cut a hole out of the center.  Reroll and cut the dough scraps as necessary.

Add oil to a large saucepan or Dutch oven to a depth of about 2-3 inches.  Attach a thermometer to the side of the pan and heat the oil to 365-370˚ F.  Add the rings of dough to the hot oil so that they are in a single layer and not touching.  Fry, turning once, until both sides are golden brown and doughnuts are cooked through, about 1 1/2-2 1/2 minutes total.  Use a skimmer/strainer to remove from the oil and transfer to a paper towel-lined rack.  Bring the oil temperature back up to the target range before repeating with the next batch of doughnuts.  Use the same process for the doughnut holes, frying for a shorter time.

To make the cinnamon-sugar, combine the sugar and cinnamon in a shallow dish and whisk to blend.  When the doughnuts are just cool enough to handle, dip them in the cinnamon-sugar to coat completely, shaking off the excess.

For the whipped cream, pour the chilled heavy cream into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (or you could use a hand mixer and a regular bowl). Whip the cream on medium high speed until the cream reaches soft peaks. Add sugar, cinnamon and vanilla and whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve. 

 

In honor of my Dad...

I feel like this post has been such a long time coming. It has been months since I have blogged and years (holy crap) since I have blogged on a consistent basis.  I have been feeling an urge to start blogging again over the past few months, and have been baking and cooking and photographing but not posting. I think it's time to come back to posting :) But first, I want to explain where I've been.  Life, needless to say, over the past few years has been crazy. I had a job working for a professional sports team in marketing that took up all of my time. Worked 6, 7 days a week, 15 hours a day. It was the most fun I have ever had at a job... but also the most stress. I needed a change. I got a new position at a fantastic advertising firm. I had my life back. I could see friends and family again. I could finally start planning my wedding. And then my life changed. On February 7, 2012, I lost the most important person in my life - my dad. Two days after his annual Super Bowl party, where he watched his beloved Giants (G-men!) win the big game, I got a phone call from my brother saying my dad had died. It was so sudden... I talked to him the night before and he sounded fine. To say I was shattered would be the biggest understatement in the world. There are no words for the pain, confusion, sadness and anger I went through after losing my father. 8 months before my wedding, where I was so excited to have him walk me down the aisle, where I was so excited to take him to Italy, the country of his heritage of which he was so proud, and I lost it all in an instant. He was my best friend. I talked to him four, five times A DAY. No joke. I would call him on my walk to the subway to chat for a few minutes. At work to say whats up and ask what his dogs were doing. When I read an article and I wanted to get his opinion on it (people loved hearing my dad's take on things - me included). When I wanted to talk about Mob Wives or American Idol. And he LOVED Behind the music: Notorious BIG and Tupac.  And my father was loved by everyone around him. He was the person who MADE every party a party. He had a "chair" in everyone's house where he would sit with a glass of Dewar's in hand, and he would sit back and watch the party and people would flock to him. Everyone called him "Uncle Bob", whether he was your uncle or not, because if he wasn't, he may as well have been, because he made everyone feel like family. Not only was he nice, but he was hysterically funny. He loved fart jokes, cursing, and telling stories from his days as a New York City police officer in the tumultous times of the city during the 70s and 80s.  When I had to complete the horrific task of passing on the shocking news to people, most people said "but he was my best friend." And he was. He was everyone's best friend. He was the epitome of a "shirt off my back" type of person, who would give and give even if he didn't have. He made everyone feel like his entire world, because we all were his entire world. Friends. Family. Strangers. It didn't matter if he knew you for 50 years or 5 minutes, he always wanted to make everyone feel like family.  I found a lot of beauty within all of the sadness of the days surrounding his wake and funeral. I was floored by the outpouring of love and support from friends and family. At his wake, literally hundreds of people come to pay their respects, with a line going out of the funeral parlor. We laughed and cried and told stories of the wonderful man he was. The day of the funeral was an oddly serene day as the snow fell ever so lightly and the bells of the church tolled while the NYPD color guard walked my father's casket, adorned in a green US flag (the green flag is a sentimental colored flag used by the NYPD) slowly up the steps of the church.  The driver commented that he had never seen such a large funeral processional in his life (again, another showing of just how loved my dad was) and to commemorate him together, we all took a shot of Dewars at his gravesite. Although he was Italian, whenever he toasted, he said "Nasdrovya" (the Russian word for cheers), and the word Nasdrovya chimed from over 100 lips and rang out throughout the cool, open air of the expansive cemetary.  I was, and forever will be, so honored to have a man who was so loved, and showed so much love, as my father. He was a rare person that doesn't come along often.  I still get so angry and wish I could have had more time with him... I felt like I have been robbed of another 15, 20, 25 years of good times and sharing special moments - my wedding, my first child, holidays, etc. and I don't understand it. I feel as if I am missing years of wonderful moments, not just because I am missing my dad, but because I am missing Bobby, this man who just made everything so much better just by being around. I miss him cracking himself up, where he would laugh so hard he would cry and his shoulders would shake. I miss his stories. I miss his insights. I miss the sound of his voice and his hugs. I miss the way he would look at me when I was being a bratty girl. I miss him making fun of me when I messed up cooking or baking something. I miss him cursing about how much the Mets suck. I miss his warm eyes and big smile. I miss listening to him sing oldies. I miss punching him in the arm and telling him how annoying he is. I know I'll miss holidays with him... he lived for holidays, Christmas especially. I miss his michevious smile. I miss every. single. thing. about him.  I miss my dad.  But I am blessed to have had 30 wonderful years and memories with him. I could go on for days about the man he was and how much he meant to everyone in his life, and I do not doubt for a second that everyone that knew him feels a little emptier without my dad in their life, because he was so full of life and love and happiness that everyone around him felt it. I would give anything to be able to hug him one last time and tell him just how much I love him. I do sometimes in my dreams. And sometimes that makes me feel better.  The night before he died, I talked to him on the phone. He told me about a dream that he had (he always had very vivid dreams and always asked me what they meant): There were two women dressed in white pouring water over his stomach and telling him that everything was going to be ok. "What do you think that means?" he asked me. "I'm not sure," I said, "But it sounds peaceful." The next morning he died, and that night I looked up that dream. Water means peace and your stomach means new beginnings. I hope wherever he is, those women are taking care of him. If there is a heaven, I picture him up there with a crowd of people gathered up around him, as he is sitting in a chair making everyone laugh, and welcoming each new person to heaven like he's known them forever.  RIP  Robert Anthony DiMicco July 2, 1947 - February 7, 2012