A cooking crossover

I watch the butter melt into gold, three thin strips of the remaining bars bobbing in the saucepan. I'm careful to keep the temperature low per Stella's instructions. As an actual foodie, I have some comfort that, out of the two of us, someone knows what she's doing.

As the proprietor of the fun BraveTart (http://bravetart.com/), she runs her own blog as an actual chef...with a pro photographer friend who does the food shots. She's also a good friend of Kelly's. Hoping to make sure the recipes that she includes for each blog post are easy to use, Stella (via Kelly) asked if I would be interested in trying some out to help her troubleshoot the instructions.

After visiting her blog and returning to my own dog-and-pony show, I decided that the Port Brownies would be something close to my speed (I am a baker in my own right...ish). I run to the grocery and sigh at the darkened signs of the two liquor stores I pass along the way. Damn dry states shutting down alcohol sales on Sundays... I get the rest of the ingredients that I don't already own and resign myself to substituting coffee for the Port (a legal substitution in Stella's eyes). I hate to admit it, but I'm a little nervous.

I've been baking for decades now. I would cook with my mother and eventually became the go-to guy for desserts. Tiramisu, cakes, brownies, cookies (a specialty of mine, if I can brag a little) all became standard on my weekends. I eventually graduated in High School to side dishes on Thanksgiving and the odd dinner when Mom couldn't step out of her office. In college, I did everything but the Turkey at Thanksgiving and several desserts for the holidays. "You should really sell these," my cousin Andy said one Christmas as he swallowed another one of my Mexican Wedding Cakes.

But Stella's recipes are well beyond me. "12 ounces butter, clarified" Stella tells me after her charming introduction. Well [expletive deleted]... I see that all the "normal" ingredients in the usual list have been replaced by their scientific cousins. For every teaspoon, there is an ounce of this or that. I wipe the dew from my forehead, grateful that I don't have to weigh my eggs. I take a deep breath and read through the entire list again. In one moment, I turn from Julia Child into Betty Crocker. I search the Internet and stumble into "Convertme.com" and cross my fingers. I copy the conversions into cups and tablespoons, scribbling everything down and praying that everything comes out right. A full cup of cocoa powder seems like a lot (esp. since there already is 12oz of unsweetened chocolate already in the recipe), but there are six eggs so I make a small prayer and follow my new E-Z Bake Oven instructions.

The brownie batter becomes fudgy and thick, an oily slick of brown that tastes delicious as I lick a few stray blobs off of my knuckles. I smear a streak along my jaw and spill flour onto the counter top. I regress back to being six and making chocolate chip cookies under Mom's ever-vigilant attention. I manage to get the batter out of the mixer and into the prepared pan. I follow Stella's tip to line it with tinfoil for easy clean-up, but panic and smear a little grease along the exposed sides to keep them from sticking. I stick it into the pre-heated oven, letting go and letting God.

I wipe down the counter tops and wash my hands for the fiftieth time. Checking the brownies in the oven, they look like every other batch that I have ever made. I laugh at myself and look at the clock on the microwave. Kelly will be getting out of work soon and heading over here. A willing test subject.

The smell of baking spices in the air

It's raining and gray. The slightly humid air has the effect of a drunk's breath blowing against the back of your neck while you're wedging yourself up to the bar. But in all of this blandness, the oak tree outside my kitchen window has started turning school bus yellow.

Although autumn and spring are transition seasons that my body hates (spring pollen = sinus headaches; autumn mold = sexy phlegm), they're both seasons that I love. Spring is visually stunning with the new red growth on the trees and the first flowers pushing through the crusting ice. Autumn, however, has the best foods. Growing up in New England, autumn meant apples, cinnamon, ginger, cranberries, pumpkin, allspice, molasses..."Baking spices," Kelly says when I enthuse at the dropping temperature. "Cinnamon, ginger, they're a part of the so-called baking spices." I call them wonderful.

My love for autumn flavors expands from the normal (apple pie) to offensively fake (pumpkin spice latte) to the strange. Virginia, one of the few people I actually like at work, gushed with me during a necessary break from our respective computer screens. Together, we break down the logistics of making an unholy abomination of deliciousness...apple pie sushi. "You could use the pie dough as a nori roll," she says with her eyes alight, "and shred some apple for the rice. Ooh! You should wedge in raisins or walnuts in place of the veggie pieces...make one of those rolls where they make flower shapes when it's cut!" I don't know where the idea came from or how we got side tracked onto it--I just know that there are several golden delicious in my fruit bowl and a pre-made pie crust de-thawing on my counter.

Top 5 Autumn flavors that I will overdose on for the next three months:
5. Maple (I did go to college in Vermont, after all...)
4. Molasses (Boston Molasses Flood or no)
3. Pumpkin
2. Apple (Pink ladies being my favorite for snacking; Macintosh, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith for baking)
1. Cinnamon