The violent, edible alternative to fairy dust

This season you probably wished for a way you could capture the magic of the holidays without having to kill a fairy. We've all been there. But don't worry. Picture angel food cake coated with melted Ghirardelli chocolate and dusted with candy cane dust.

Look. That's what I made.

"How does one acquire candy cane dust?" I was asked. Well, that's an easy equation. Candy canes + hammer.

Butter, sweat and tears

I don't know if you missed this week's hot NYT's article on Butter. The gist of it is, "Your holiday baking turns out terrible every year because you're a moron. And you might as well kill yourself if you don't start using butter correctly." Unlike one source, I can't say my cookies have ever turned out so poorly it made me cry. Making cookies would only make me cry if they came to life and then fought a bloody civil war against each other until they were all dead. But I did learn from the Times that butter is full of "secrets," not unlike a woman's heart. I also learned that once you melt it, you've basically rendered it worthless as an ingredient. This faux pas I've committed!

Today the food blog recommends...

eating five coconut popsicles in one sitting.  Not that I've done that. OK I have. And it was the right thing to do.

Speaking of nutbars!

In my hometown in Indiana there’s this place called The Frozen Custard. I think it’s historically significant and junk. And it serves frozen custard. And they have this signature thing called a nutbar and it’s vanilla frozen custard covered with nuts (secured with a very thin, virtually non-tasteable layer of chocolate) on a stick. And everyone in my family loves them. If you’re a guest at my home and you arrive not bearing nutbars, you get taken out to the wild boar pasture, tied to a tree and covered in boar hormone mating juice. Yeah, it’s a little backwater.

Yeah, you'd lick the bowl

Brownie: The bastard child of the baked goods world. No one will lay claim to our fine fudgie friend with a muddled history covered in chocolaty crumbs. Though presumably American-born, this innocuous potluck picnic standard is left to wander the streets asking, “Are you my daddy?” or perhaps more striking, “Who am I?”

Too dense to be a cake. Too cakey to be a cookie.

With this identity crisis in tow the brownie is easily seduced by you or me. We promise the moon, the stars… love. But we’re really just looking to sink our teeth into that delicious quadrilateral snack. It’s not a fair fight.

FOOD BLOG CONTEST TIME!!!

The food blog is hosting a contest to see who can bake the BEST cherry pie. The prize for the winner is a cherry pie. All contestants will receive a cherry pie.

Email: thisisacherrypiecontest@gmail.com for details.