When In Doubt, Add Cheese

 
Apple pie is a beautiful thing.  It's simple, delicious, and comforting.  I had thought nothing could improve upon it until a few months ago when a friend asked me if I'd ever put a, get this, slice of cheddar cheese on a piece of warm apple pie.

Suddenly my whole life was thrown into question. Why had I not thought of this?  Had my then 26 years of life without cheese on my pie meant that those years had no meaning?  The answer was yes and I intended to change that.  To do this, I took a few simple, important steps;

1. Buy a shitload of apples
2. Buy a brick of cheese
3. Invite that creepy friend over to eat the scraps
4. Make
5. Nosh

Steps one and two were easy enough.  Who doesn't love to buy copious amounts of fruit and cheese?  No really, who?

My boyfriend and I then took on step three, which was harder than you'd think.  The poor guy was in the middle of writing his dissertation and it took substantial effort to tear him away from it.  Baked goods are usually what persuades him in the end.  

Look at how happy he is by all those apple peels.  I find his love of them to be amusing and very peculiar.  At least it means I don't have to waste them!

Step four sucked.  It really did and here's why.  I followed a recipe that involved me grating the cheese and working it into the dough.  This seemed logically sound at first, but when it came to rolling it out, I broke into a sweat in the middle of March trying to get this stuff flat.  It was rubbery and would pull back after lifting the pin.  In the future, I'll sprinkle cheese on the bottom inside of the crust and on the top of the outside.

 I was really pissed when I took this picture.  The rolling was really difficult, but also the dough was so thick that actually making the cute little apple pies proved to be far too much of a challenge.  With muffin cups being the size that they are and the cheese making this dough very thick, I was left omitting the top crust on a few of them during some flirtations with rage quit.  Here is a picture of what those looked like:

That's also my hand.  Now you know what that looks like.

All in all this was a yummy recipe, but in the future I'll sprinkle the pies with cheese when they're about half way done.  I might just do that with apple pie in general because after all, everything is better with cheese.

Would you like some freaky ass muffins?

In the past few months, everyone and their mother has gotten pregnant.  Two friends in Minnesota and now a third one here in Michigan.  Seeing as I can't really fatten up my MN buddies, I've chosen to add to the body mass of the with-child lady here in MI.  

Despite being a freakishly adorable pregnant woman, something I am sure others resent her for, she's had some very real difficulties keeping food down.  Any food.  All food.  Yet I am to bake for this woman, no I must bake for this woman.  I am a masochist and will take on the challenge with such brazen arrogance that I might begin to bake blindly.  My example of this is my voyage into the realm of Olive Oil Muffins.

When I read the recipe for this, I made two very serious mistakes.  First, I assumed that the delicate flavor of olive oil with the zest of citrus fruits would ease her stomach.  Second, I failed to see that there was balsamic vinegar in the recipe and a lot of it.  Shit.

So I start making it...

Look at all that pretty, cheerful zest and sugar.  It says to you, "I'm going to be sweet and light and yummy and you'll go weeeeeeeeeee."  Little do you know you are a naive fool destined for peculiar disappointment.  

Lost in my delusion, I bake on.

Still looking like normal muffin batter and then...

Balsami-what?!  Ah shit!

I promised baked goods.  She wanted muffins.  She's expecting them.  

There is no turning back.

With some pretty intense trepidation, I put them in the oven.  Now my boyfriend will be the first to tell you that I always doubt my baking.  It never fails.   I will get to a point with a recipe and I will say something to the effect of "I don't know about this."  99% of the time I am wrong and what comes out is a delicious treat that rarely lasts the night.  This time I was right.

 I will go on record as saying that these are better at room temperature than warm, though not by much.  The heat makes the balsamic vinegar really intense and overpowering.  The citrus comes out more at room temperature.  Sadly though, they still taste weird.  I wouldn't say bad, but just strange.  They weren't light, like I'd hoped, and the flavor was too rich.  Basically they turned into the exact opposite of what I'd hoped they would be and I was left with no choice but to wrap them up and send them to my pregnant friend who'd been suffering from extreme morning sickness, my friend who just wanted some god damn muffins.

She still hasn't said whether or not she liked them and I must admit, her silence is deafening.