Cookies to Share

 Baking has always been a social hobby for me.  Granted, most of the whisking, sifting, and stirring is done alone, but once the hard work is done and I'm left with a perfectly frosted cake or several dozen golden brown cookies cooling on the rack, it seems almost criminal not to share.  For me, the last step in practically every recipe is dividing the goods into tupperware or plastic bags, and bringing with me to on visits to friends and family.  This week I had a lot of people I wanted to share something sweet with, so I pulled out my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe from my favorite recipe site, allrecipes.com.  My slightly altered recipe follows:

Fresh Berry Pie

Fresh berries are one of the best parts of summer.  During their peak season I wind up eating them practically every day, throwing a handful into my cereal, making smoothies, or simply eating them plain.  Last weekend I came home from the supermarket with a ton of fresh blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, and decided to put them to very good use in a mixed berry pie!  Berry pies are great treats for this time of year.  Not only do they showcase the flavor of the berries when they are at their best, but they are remarkably simple to prepare, requiring only a few common ingredients.

For my pie I chose to mix blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries in equal amounts, but you can easily change the recipe to suit your taste.  Just keep the volume of the berries the same, and you can mix and match them as you please!

Space Honey Custard

To celebrate the season premiere of one of our favorite shows - Futurama - Chip and I decided to make a show themed feast!  I knew that I had to make something with honey;  The Sting is one of my favorite episodes and it heavily features the (not-so) ordinary honey the Planet Express crew gathers from deadly, deadly space bees.  From Bender's buzzing buttocks to Leela's slow descent into madness, this episode demonstrates the wonderful weirdness that is Futurama - part ridiculous absurdity and part sweetness.

I decided that we needed a dessert we could eat by the spoonful; something to mimic eating honey straight from the jar, just like they do in the show.  Since the day was so hot, I settled on making a creamy, cool custard with some Earl Grey shortbread cookies on the side.  To make the custard I slightly modified a basic baked custard recipe from the excellent blog Baking Bites; I'll post my version below.  For the cookies I followed Martha Stewart's recipe to the letter.

The custard was out of this world, and a perfect light ending to a heavy fried meal.  The honey flavor shone through without the cloying sweetness that honey based desserts sometimes have, and the vanilla bean just made everything that much better.  As for the cookies - I'd call them a mixed success.  The flavor of the tea and the orange peels added complexity to an otherwise simple dish, but their texture left something to be desired because I didn't grind the leaves down to a fine enough powder.  Live and learn - next time (and oh, will there be a next time!) I think they'll rock.