I'm Still Living, I'm Still Baking

Sometimes life is real hard.  Butter, at least, softens with time. This is, in part, the mentality behind bake it til you make it - just keep moving, keep baking, until you move through the difficult times.  Feeling useless or helpless?  Make something beautiful with your own damn hands.  Feeling lonely?  Bake something to share with others.  Feeling stressed?  Make an old favourite, and find comfort and distraction in the rhythms of the familiar.  The last two years had a lot of challenge in them, and it's actually kind of nice to look back at all the goods that I baked - the good that I made of it.

There were Springsteen cookies from a custom-made cookie cutter (praise be 3D printers):

There were Bad Feminist cookies - given to Roxane Gay in person!  (Shout to my friend Julia for being my back-up in going through with actually giving Roxane the cookies)

A little Oscar baking:

 So, so, so many pressed cookies:

Cupcakes with Amy Sedaris sprinkles (high on my to-do list during a visit to NYC):

Mixed tapes for the wedding of a friend I was in a university mixed tape club with:

And, and, and:

Chalk it Up to Friendship: Palentine's 2017

Palentine's turns 7!  I'm pretty sure that the 7th anniversary gift is traditionally sugar.

A minimalist approach in 2017 meant a few less desserts and a few less decorations.  With the added challenge of a guest who can't eat gluten or eggs.

These guys are boiled cider bars. Every since I bought boiled cider in Vermont last year, I am obsessed with it. When I found some at Murray's Cheese Shop in New York, I hauled it back home, despite its weight.  These may be ugly, but they were SO TASTY.

 These are sugar cookie bars. They were a disaster. Oh well.

 Um. Brown butter cookie dough truffles. Half with bacon salt. So. Good.

 Mint sugar cookies. Yum.

Gluten-free goodness - chocolate pretzel oat clusters.

 Cupcakes, of course.

 Bourbon pecan fudge brownies.  These kept falling apart, but OH MAH GOD, SO TASTY. I made a second batch after Palentine's.

 Meringues, also of course.  With lace print.  Genius.

 Maybe my favourite thing I made - dulche de leche thumbprint cookies.  Spending three hours terrified the can of condensed milk was going to explode while I boiled it into dulche de leche was 100% worth it.

 Chocolates:

 Not pictured: ice cream, with pretzels and chocolate.  Take my word, it was good.