This week was about cultivating an attitude of abundance around creativity. It was also about baking. For some reason that I don’t fully understand: one of the tasks was to “bake something.”
I cook all the time—mainly soup—but I’m not such a fan of baking. For one, there’s the whole “cream butter and sugar together” instruction, inherent in basically any baked dessert, that seems designed to drive one slowly mad . Patiently creaming butter and sugar together with a fork is just about as much fun as poking one’s eyeball out with a stick. It’s almost as horrible as making whipped cream with a whisk. Which we did, in the 70s, all the time.
Luckily, last year I happen to have compulsively splurged on the one kitchen gadget everyone should own in this lifetime: an immersion blender. Immersion blenders cost under $50 and you can use them for pretty much anything you need blended or creamed (in the kitchen, people).
So, that went smoothly. Really bad pun intended.
I made sweet potato and maple syrup muffins. I used a recipe out of The New Basics (my favorite non-vegan cookbook), but I did alter it so that I could potentially include it in my forthcoming Maple Syrup Cookbook without fear of copyright infringement.
(Incidentally, my friend Jesse was over this week and asked me why I have three gallons of maple syrup in my fridge. Really, Jesse? I have to explain that to you? Doesn’t everybody?)
I’m a fear-based control-freak Virgo 6, so I didn’t alter the recipe that much. I substituted garam masala for allspice. Namaste, Indian sweet potato and maple muffins!
So the muffins —I’d tell you how they came out, but they aren’t done yet. I guess there is something creative about baking after all, because here I am, inspired to write about it, and they’re not even out of the oven.
Email me if you to sign up for an advanced copy of my award-winning maple syrup cookbook! And I’ll be sure to let you know when I actually start writing it.
UPDATE: Indeed, really yummy. And even better when re-grilled in butter the next day. Brings me back to my diner waitress days.
Which reminds of my all time favorite food ever, circa Cosmo’s Diner, Syracuse, 1992: THB Sundaes. Anyone remember those?
- Take a toasted honey bun (a million calories)
- Grill it with butter (a bunch more calories)
- Build a hot fudge sunday on top of that (and a bzillion more calories!)
What I wouldn’t do for one of those right about now!
