Babka, Bacon, and Blue hair.

I have held out for as long as I can and under fear of getting kicked out of my baking club I must give up on waiting for wailings and clamourings for my posts and resign myself to the fact that I have a very small fan club and post anyways.

So:
here are the peanut butter cookies from a few weeks ago. I cannot remember the last time I made plain peanut butter cookies and I really was not expecting much. However, I realized, after days and days, that these were pretty good. I made them on Wednesday and Saturday my tasting panel (aka Kristy) thought they were awesome (which is saying something as I generally only believe in cookies directly from the oven). I compared them to the Simply fridge break and bake cookies and.... these were better (crazily enough, I was not sure before I tried them). For the recipe look a few weeks back at this blog theonealadventurebake52.blogspot.com




Everyone was taking these great photos with stacks of 4 cookies. They looked delish and I thought "well, I can do better than that, I can stack way more than 4 cookies". It turns out, the level of appeal is not directly proportional to the number of cookies in the stack.



I also made this from Rachel Ray (I cook so infrequently these days that I can afford to blog about any real meal I make)

Follow your parent's advice, it turns out they do know what is best! A few weeks ago I finally took my mom's advice. Over a year ago, she had a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory that had 'the most beautiful blue hair' which led to the suggestion that I dye my hair blue. Well, I wanted to try out a certified curly hair expert (schooled in a method developed by my all time fav curly hair author!!) to see if there really were any tricks to the trade I did not already know of and while I was there, I decided I ought to appease my mother and go blue. That was hard. Hours and hours and several deep conditions later I looked like a fluffy Tibetan Mastiff with a tinge of purple hair. Another day and another dye left me with lovely navy locks. I was quite in love. The following three days saw me scared to death to handle my new high maintenance hair. When I finally unbundled it for a wash, I was aghast at the blue water running out and quickly pony-tailed it back up. I have washed it a few times more and am starting to believe it can be handled in a relatively standard way. I totally love the color (though it seems to be lightening up at an alarming rate) and would color my whole head if I thought it might stay. I think next time I am going to go for streaks instead of just the ends.





Next, O ran off to China and L and I were left to eat babka.
Babka is an Easter bread from Eastern Europe. I must say, it tastes just like a cinnamon roll without cream cheese frosting. If you like cinnamon rolls, this is great. If you like cream cheese frosting, this is a bad thing. I am in the cream cheese group. I did eat an entire roll however so they must not have been too bad :) However, once one roll was done, I had no desire to ever see another again.

Then, while I was hunting for cream cheese in the fridge (which I sadly did not have) I found some bacon. O and I never make real bacon, that is the ultimate cooking project in my mind. However, O likes BLTs and so he gets the bacon that comes in sealed plastic bag thing that you cook in the microwave for 2 minutes and I am starting to become accustomed to another part of a pig that is not ham (in general, I do not eat pork, only ham). So, in the end, I had Babka and Bacon. I thought it might be strange but L pointed out that people often eat both cinnamon rolls and bacon for breakfast. In the end, it was a good way to end the night. Babka recipe here: michellefavrecipes.blogspot.com

So, I am still baking for the club. Ask me if you want recipes.