Vanilla bean biscotti

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty pumped for November. Sure, soccer season (the best season of the year) may be over, and the days may be getting darker and colder and drearier as we speak, and it may start getting snowy here and there (never mind that last week it snowed for like 5 minutes in the middle of the day—now that was weird as hell)—but we’re New Englanders. We’re used to those annual tragedies.

Zucchini peanut butter chocolate chip mini cakes with vanilla glaze

For this post, I considered writing a long, highly emotional screed about all of the baking failures I’ve experienced in the past month.

But then I thought, screw that, and so you have been spared. It would have been mostly the product of my own depressive delusions anyway.  

Basically, I just want you to know I don’t know what I’m doing.

Neapolitan celebration cakes part III - vanilla layer cake

When you do a lot of baking, you pick up odd tidbits of information that are hard to explain to someone who isn’t as familiar with this form of culinary creation. You learn when you should substitute whole grain flours and when you shouldn’t; you know what ingredients to replace in a pinch; you know if it’s okay to skip a step, if it’s just an unnecessary complication. And most importantly, you learn how to spot a shitty recipe.

I’m still working on that last one.

Vanilla overnight oats with strawberry rhubarb chia jam and peanut butter quinoa granola

Contrary to what the proliferation of butter-‘n’-sugar-filled cakes and cookies on this blog may lead you to believe, I don’t spend my days feasting upon buttercream and carby carbs. Much as I would like to. In fact, I do try a little bit to eat healthily. A little. For example, as I write this I am filled with salad. What was in that salad is between me, myself, and I.

But healthy eating and using moderation is only one part of the equation. You have to exercise, too. Fucking evolution, you know?

Big blue minivan cake

Who wants to make a cake for their minivan?

Wow. Sexy. source

Okay, let me rephrase that question. Who wants to make a cake? A big one? With lots of frosting?

When cake is the question, yes is always the answer. Obviously.

But my family does indeed have an emotional connection to our minivan. The minivan is a symbol of suburban life, of gas-guzzling trips across town lines in search of groceries and movie theaters, of mothers carting their children to soccer practice and violin lessons, of the frantic, scattered lifestyles we have in this weird western world. We have traveled many miles in this van—from Cape Cod to, well, Cape Cod again (forgive our lack of creativity in family vacations).

Two hundred thousand miles, in fact.