There’s something strangely comforting about watching certain movies over and over again, even if they’re not particularly good or even one of your favorites. Even if it would shame you if everyone you know knew that you couldn’t turn away from “Notting Hill” or “Love Actually” or any romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and pre-collagen Meg Ryan. Because I can’t.

Sunday afternoon, I stayed home from Jeff’s soccer game to curl up on the couch with Dorie’s Arborio Rice Pudding and watch “You’ve Got Mail.” It was just so cold outside and soooooo warm inside.

The rice pudding was this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie group recipe. I changed it up a little. Even though I halved the rest of the recipe, I used the original amount of rice to thicken the pudding, and I added a handful of raisins and a little cinnamon. And I’ve never eaten cold rice pudding, so I ignored Dorie’s six hours of refrigeration and ate mine warm. It was everything rice pudding should be: thick and creamy, just like Mom’s. Read More…

Kugelhopf, this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie group recipe, takes time. Not just a few hours. Many, many, many hours of beating, mixing, rising, deflating, slapping, chilling, resting, covering, baking uncovered, baking covered, unmolding and soaking the cake in butter and sugar. You won’t find more action on Hollywood Boulevard, but it all takes time. Kugelhopf would give Rachael Ray an aneurysm.

The result is part bread, part cake. Delicious straight out of the oven or toasted the next day. Perfect with coffee. Even better when you draw a line through Dorie’s raisins and substitute twice as many chocolate chips.

And just wait until you see what I’m going to do with this thing tomorrow.

You’ll find Dorie’s recipe for kugelhopf with Yolanda of The All-purpose Girl.

So, for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie challenge, Clara of i heart food 4 thought threw down the gauntlet: make Dorie Greenspan’s Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes and decorate them for Halloween.

I thought about all the usual suspects: skulls, eyeballs, ghosts, witches, werewolves and mummies. And then the answer became frighteningly obvious: owls. Because nothing sends a shiver down my spine like the sound of a “HoooOOOOooooot.” Or the sight of that swivel-head. Bloodcurdling! I found this owl design in “Hello, Cupcake!,” and it’s as easy as a witch in a broom shop. DANGEROUSLY close to Sandra Lee territory. But it’s Halloween! Time to embrace the tacky!

Before we start, here’s what you’ll need for a dozen owls: 12 chocolate cupcakes, 1 can of chocolate frosting, 24 Oreos and a medium bag of M&M’s. Now, let’s get our hoot on. Read More…

You have no idea how close I was to digging out the Lenox Holiday china for this post. Blame Lowe’s. Last weekend, the gardening section had been overtaken by an army of inflatable tractor-riding Santas with plugs of mistletoe chaw in their cheeks, and after every “Ho! Ho! Ho!,” they’d belch glitter.

Kidding! I love tractors! And Christmas! I just wish we weren’t bombarded with carols and Kris Kringle until after the official start of the holidays: the “Oprah’s Favorite Things” show.

So, how did I end up with Lenox Holiday Biscotti for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie challenge? Read More…

This is Dorie Greenspan’s Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake, this week’s recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie. It should come with a warning. Something like, “WARNING: Eating caramel-peanut topping pulled from cake may result in muffin-top and/or spontaneous appearance of third buttock.”

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Creme Brulée, this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie pick, is the officially sanctioned birthday dessert of my grandmother (aka Mommaw). She discovered it when she was in her early 80s, along with Titans football, French bulldogs, William Shatner and profanity. Our portions come in dainty little ramekins; hers is served up in a large gratin dish. The morning after her birthday, she has Creme Brulée for breakfast. Probably with slab bacon.

If you’ve never tried Créme Brulée, literally “burnt cream,” it’s a very rich, cold vanilla custard topped with a layer of caramelized sugar. The entire experience of this dessert is all about the moment you break through that brittle shell and taste the first spoonful of creamy custard and crackly sugar crust. That experience also dupes people into thinking they couldn’t possibly make this dessert at home, but you probably have the ingredients: heavy cream, whole milk, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. For the restaurant price of this dessert, you could make many, many ramekins of Creme Brulée at home.

So, what scares people away from making their own? The tempering and the torch.

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See that gigantic cookie up there? That’s a Chocolate Whopper Malted Drop. Chocolate chips. Whoppers. Malted milk. The hardest thing about making these cookies is chopping the Whoppers before they roll onto the floor. Or you eat them. Or they roll onto the floor and Henry the dog eats them and pants Whopper breath the rest of the night.

The thing is, I wasn’t excited about this Tuesdays with Dorie pick until four days after I’d made them. Straight out of the oven, I thought they were OK. I was ready for crispy and crunchy; I got cakey and chewy. Jeff LOVED them. So, I boxed them up for him to take to the office, with the exception of one lone cookie for today’s photograph.

Four days later, I remembered the photo. And the cookie.

STILL MOIST!

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When we were kids, the summer didn’t end without me and my sister spending an afternoon watching some terrible movie or marathon. The Legend of Billie Jean. Meatballs. Fifteen and Pregnant. An all-day Facts of Life marathon. Something we could talk through. And snack through. One particularly inspired afternoon, Mom made us eggrolls to peck while we watched The Birds.

Now that summer is winding down, I find myself gravitating toward bad movies. Really bad movies. Movies starring people like Nicolas Cage. One afternoon, surrounded by moving boxes and things to do, Jeff and I halted all progress for Con-Air. It was no Fifteen and Pregnant, but few things are.

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Last week, the kitchen sink stopped draining. The first plumber asked if I’d used Drano and then said we’d have to hire a crew to break through the brick outside and replace our pipes. We got a second opinion. The second plumber had a brain aneurysm.

In the meantime, I took the dishes outside to hose them off and wound up with a shoe full of field peas.

So, I called my momma, who asked why I wasn’t washing them in the bathtub, and I’m like, BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE WE KEEP THE GIN. But really, it’s because we just moved here, and I’m not at a Place of Trust with the bathtub yet. I’m not going to scrub our utensils where strangers have warrrshed theirs, if you know what I mean.

I loaded the dishes into two laundry baskets and a very large Rubbermaid and drove them the 45 minutes to Mom’s house, where I tapped my toes to the rhythmic whoosh of the dishwasher and talked celebrity news with my grandmother. (Once we were watching an entertainment roundup, and my mom asked, “Who’s 50 Cent?” Mommaw looks over and says, “It’s ‘Fiddy,’ Sherry. Fiddy.”)

This morning, I’m waiting for Plumber No. 3. Thankfully, this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie challenge – the Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte – didn’t require many pots, pans … or utensils. Basically, you layer ganache and store-bought ice cream in a springform pan and freeze it. I didn’t alter Dorie’s recipe much, except for making the ganache with semisweet chocolate (instead of bittersweet) and mixing strawberry ice cream in the food processor instead of raspberry. The resulting torte tastes like Neapolitan ice cream for grown-ups. A nice way to end the summer. Not indoor plumbing-nice, but nice.

For the recipe, visit Amy at Food, Family, and Fun.

I’ve never been accused of being particularly domestic.

When I was in college, I moved into my first apartment with my friend Amy. One night, I saw her hurl a piece of bad fruit out the back door onto the gravel alley. A few weeks later, I burned a pan of lasagna. What do you think I did with it?

Oh, yes.

As if I thought some great claw would drop down from the sky and sift away the trash. Like our alley was a gigantic, motorized litter box.

I’ve come a long way since then.

But then there are weeks like this one, when you feed the dog scraps and have to Google “brisket barf AND bamboo.” When you have smoke detectors installed, and the next day, when you slip out of bed to make breakfast and get an A+ in being the Best Wife Ever!, the delicious bacon sets them all off, and THEY ALL SOUND DIFFERENT. And you can’t reach them! Because you just moved in, and you CAN’T FIND A CHAIR!

It’s been one of those weeks when you’re out with your husband and realize you’re wearing a black bra under a very light, white shirt, and you remember the girl who used to come into your philosophy class wearing a bright teal bra under an eyelet lace blouse, talking about how the ham sandwiches her husband made her were an aphrodisiac, because they were “made with the hands of love.” And when you ask your husband why he didn’t say anything, he acts like he was butting out of your fashion statement.

He was probably just thankful I wasn’t wearing the Rocky T-shirt.

But things are looking up. I’ve got chairs posted near the smoke detectors. Henry is under a strict no-brisket policy. I’ve got the bra situation in headlock. And I upped my domestic mojo by MAKING the granola that went into this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: Granola Grabbers, chosen by Michelle of Bad Girl Baking. Extra credit!

The nice thing about these granola cookies is that they’re easy to customize. Simply take out the offending ingredient (aka “raisins”) and replace it with something delicious (i.e. dried cherries, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, dried apricots). Trade the peanuts for cashews. Trade the wheat germ for anything but wheat germ. Or add more of an ingredient you really love, like coconut. Or pepperoni.

The resulting cookie is a crazy mix of granola, fruits, and nuts–just like a party at Elton John’s!

Enjoy the recipe after the jump. And if you’re domestically-challenged, please stand up in the Comments section, and TESTIFY!

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