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A couple weeks ago, I made the apple spice bundt cake off Martha Stewart’s website, and it was delicious. Spicy, fruity, tender and moist. It also fell apart the moment I took it out of the pan (I probably didn’t let it sit long enough, honestly), so this weekend I decided to modify it to something a bit more foolproof.

Also, I live alone and I don’t need to eat a 12 cup bundt pan’s worth of cake. I like my jeans to continue to fit, thanks.

Muffins were the natural vehicle – they’re portable, work for breakfast or dessert and can be shared more easily than a large cake, especially when you rely on public transit, as I do. However, a 12-cup bundt probably would make at least 24 muffins, far more than I needed, so I also halved the recipe and make one or two other changes – such as omitting the vanilla in order to keep it more muffin-like rather than cupcake-like, and leaving out the salt, which wasn’t really necessary.

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There are a lot of things that annoy me: train drivers who take corners about fifteen miles per hour faster than they should, neighbors who spend an hour yakking outside my apartment door, commuters who won’t move out of the way when people are getting off the subway. But one of the few things that annoys me to the point of putting me in a bad mood almost immediately are…tights that don’t quite fit.

I know, it seems like a little thing, but for me there’s nothing more uncomfortable than the Slowly Creeping Downward Feeling of tights that won’t go all the way up. I actually think it goes back to a solitary incident in junior high school choir when a pair of pantyhose slipped down to the point where someone pointed it out and said they were trying to find a replacement.

I, of course, was completely humiliated and immediately ran for the bathroom to try to yank them back up again. But I digress.

This happened this morning with a brand new pair of dark brown tights. At first, I thought it would be bearable, but slowly – as I stood in the overcrowded NJ lightrail, and then the overcrowded PATH train, and then the overcrowded number 4 subway – I began to feel the inevitable pull of gravity and the first thing I did when I got to work was run for the bathroom to strip them off.

The second thing I did was logon to We Love Colors and order four pair of thigh highs. (I got black, brown, charcoal, and rubine, which is kind of a dark purple color.)

I’ve never actually worn thigh highs before; they aren’t readily available at, like, Target, which is where I generally buy most of my socks and tights (although the creeping pair this morning was $10 and from Sock Dreams, so they don’t even have the excuse of being cheap), but I have been interested in them for a while for just this reason.  I held off because I was using the stomach-minimizing power of full tights, but if they aren’t staying up, it’s not like they’re working for that, are they?

So stockings it is. Fingers crossed that they don’t end up being a separate but equal pain in my ass.

I do actually eat things other than soup and various cake like items, honest. Just…not a whole lot.

Soup’s so easy, and hearty, and it’s getting to be that time of year when easy and hearty are pretty much how I eat. (In summer, it still has to be easy, which explains the many feta and mushroom pizzas and salad sandwiches that I consume from May to September) Anyway, I decided that I was in the mood for black bean soup this week. Given that I 1) get home at 7:30 and 2) am epically lazy, it was going to have to be in the crockpot. So I searched for crockpot specific recipes – there are a lot, but none of them were calling to me.

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My mother’s reaction to what I was making for dinner was the skeptical “…onion soup?” that a lot of my food experiments get. Not sure why, as onion soup (particularly the French variety) is a standby in every Applebees and TGI Friday’s across the country. I think she’d be pleasantly surprised by this one, as it’s reminiscent of potato soup except, you know, without the potatoes.

It’s based mostly on Kayotic’s recipe with a couple of modifications: I only used two onions because one of my Spanish onions was approximately the size of my cat’s head, dill rather than thyme because dill is the best thing ever, and a shot of light cream towards the end, because that’s never a bad thing. Top with crumbled herbed goat cheese and you’ve got a pretty awesome dinner.

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I had epic plans for Halloween this year (by which I mean that I had plans at all for Halloween), but the need to actual buy plane tickets to go home for Christmas has stymied them. Damn you, adulthood! Damn you!

Let’s all pause for a moment to mourn the Vaguely Gothic Fairy costume that I was going to march down Sixth Avenue in. On the plus side, the parade’s at 8:30 pm on the last day of October, and I probably would have frozen my ass off.

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The whole Roman Polanski bullshit is giving me a splitting headache, and it gets worse the more and more names of actors and writers and directors are added to the goddamned petition to leave poor Mr. Polanski alone. I mean, he totally couldn’t pick up his Oscar in person! Hasn’t he been punished enough?

What the hell-ass, people. Kate Harding says it more eloquently than I could, but let’s take a look at the facts:

1. Roman Polanski drugged and raped a thirteen year old child both vaginally and anally.
2. She testified that despite being drugged, she said no several times.
3. He pled guilty and then fled the country.
4. Roman Polanski drugged and raped a child. Oh, did I say that already?

Frankly, I don’t give a shit that the man is an acclaimed director. I thought The Pianist was good too, people. I think he’s done some good work artistically. I also think his crimes are inexcusable, and I’m disgusted by the tide of public opinion in his favor.

I have to wonder: how many of these artists would feel the same way if this had happened to their teenaged son or daughter? Would it be all good because the rapist was an artiste? Somehow I doubt that.

Crate & Barrel is having a sale on Wustof open stock knives at the moment, which normally wouldn’t actually have me spending my lunch hour trooping up to 59th and Madison, but my cheap as shit Henckels Eversharp chef’s knife is a pain in the ass to clean.

I spend way too much time getting food out of the little serrated teeth. Way too much time.

Naturally, I chose the BIG one.

Am gamely resisting the urge to brandish it menacingly at irritating consultants.

For somebody who bakes as much as I do – I made orange sour cream cupcakes last weekend, and should really post that – the fact that I don’t, or didn’t have a Reliable Brownie Recipe is downright weird. So I spent the last couple of days looking for one, and now I have a Reliable Brownie Recipe.

Score.

This is a slightly modified version of the King Arthur Flour fudge brownie recipe, and its rich, moist, chocolatey, and not too sweet. I didn’t add the chocolate chips they called for (used pecans instead) and I’m glad, because I think that would have been too much chocolate for me.  This makes a square pan, which is more than enough for me; the original makes a 9×13 pan’s worth.

1/2 C (1 stick) butter

1 1/4 C sugar

2 large eggs

3/4 C dutch process cocoa

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 T vanilla extract

3/4 C AP flour

1 C chopped pecans

In a medium-sized microwave-safe bowl, or in a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the heat (or microwave) briefly, just until it’s hot (about 110°F to 120°F), but not bubbling; it’ll become shiny looking as you stir it.

Crack eggs into a medium-sized bowl and beat with cocoa, salt, baking powder and vanilla until well combined. Remove sugar mixture for heat and add to cocoa mixture, beating again until the batter is smooth.

Add flour and nuts and combine, then spread into a square pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Highly recommended with vanilla ice cream or a tall glass of milk.

Today was a day of sitcomesque kitchen disasters. Let’s recap, shall we?

We began with the goal to bake Smitten Kitchen’s Pound Cake. As you can see, this is a cake with a hell of a lot of steps I’m normally not willing to make. From the outset, I’d already made adjustments – cake flour sifted once instead of AP flour sifted three freaking times, amaretto liqueur instead of cognac – but I fully intended to do everything else by the book.

Ahahaha. Yeah.

The first crisis came when I preheated the oven and discovered that oh, hey, it was smoking. So it went off, I put my sifted dry ingredients aside, took the racks out and scrubbed the bottom. Put the racks back in, went back to the recipe.

Break 8 eggs trying to separate four of them before finally decided to fuck this shit and just put the eggs in whole rather than beating the whites and adding them to the batter at the end.

Despite all this crap, the cake actually turned out really well – moist with a delicate crumb and a rich lemon-amaretto flavor. Definitely a keeper.

Fuck This Shit Cake (Or, Lemon-Amaretto Pound Cake, if you insist)

2 C cake flour, sifted
1/2 t baking powder
Sea salt
1/2 lb butter, softened (2 sticks)
3/4 C + 2 T sugar
4 eggs
1 T amaretto liqueur
zest of 1 lemon

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder and a generous pinch of salt. Set aside.
3. Cream butter, then add sugar and beat until blended. Add eggs and beat until smooth.
4. Add amaretto and lemon zest.
5. Beat in dry ingredients in batches. I did two batches, because I’m essentially lazy that way.
6. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake. The length of time will depend on your pan – the original recipe called for 35-45 minutes, but it took closer to 50-60 minutes in my silicone pan.

Later today I plan to make a raspberry-balsamic sauce to pour over the cake. I’m going to assume I’ll meet with less disaster this time.

Got up this morning and after paying the bills (always a grump-inducing activity, and I still have to mail the rent check, too), I click on my beloved Newsgator and finally notice that I’m being kicked off at the end of August – because I’m not an enterprise user. My options at this point for RSS readers seem to be going back to Bloglines, which I abandoned almost three years ago after months of it not working, and Google Reader, which I was singularly unimpressed with when I tried it.

Sigh.

I mean, I’ve already imported my crap into Google – it’s not like I had much choice in the matter – and I realize that Web 2.0 companies need to make money just like everyone else, but it’s a little wearying that every single web app I use and like is eventually either made enterprise-only or dies or is sold to Google, at which point it’s Google-ized. The first time I remember it happening was with Writely, now Google Docs, but in the intervening years it’s happened again and again, at least a dozen times. At this point I’m just wondering when Twitter is going to go enterprise-only, and what Google-owned microblogging service will be recommended to us poor schlubs who aren’t enterprises, just normal people.

(And before someone from Google comes over and perkily evangelizes Reader – I’m sure it’s better than it was. But I hate change, I’m stuck in an airless, humid, stuffy apartment and can’t open the windows lest the dumbass cat I live with decides to jump from the second floor, I just finished the temper-inducing endeavor of paying my bills, and – because it’s worth repeating – I hate change.)

On another note, WordPress. Please. Could you send me my fucking comment notifications. Jesus.