lotta jansdotter – AT-AT Everywhere

Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake Bars

Each year at work, we have a Thanksgiving potluck the Thursday prior to Thanksgiving. Over the four years I’ve been at my job, I’ve contributed an array of different things – from bottled water to ice to a side dish of some sort. This year, I decided to go with dessert. I’m keeping up the promise I made a few posts ago and am bringing the pumpkin back into the spotlight – this time with cheesecake in these pumpkin swirl cheesecake bars.

Pecans went on sale at Target last weekend, so I picked up a couple bags. My dad (perpetually teeming with random facts) told me that the state of Texas (a pecan crop leader) is looking at a 15-year drought, so the price of pecans are expected to skyrocket in the near future. I was sure to pick up a couple bags. Thanks, dad. I beat the pecans in their bag with a rolling pin a bunch of times to make sure they were in small pieces before measuring them out for the crust.

Crust (Dry Ingredients) - Flour, Brown Sugar, Salt, Cinnamon, Chopped Pecans

I doubled the recipe with the intent of making two 9″x9″ pans worth. However, I started the baking process late on a weeknight and by the time I realized I didn’t own a second 9″x9″ pan, it was already almost 1am. I wasn’t about to wait to use the same pan twice nor run out to buy another. So, I threw everything in a 9″x13″ pan and crossed my fingers. The crusted ended up being close to half an inch thick, and the cheesecake portion didn’t set with the 30 minutes it was in the oven. I left it in for a bit more and tried to eyeball it, but about 15 minutes later, it sadly cracked a bit across the top in a few places. Luckily, the cheesecake was still really creamy, so other than the appearance, it turned out fine.

I bought a box from a baking supply store and added a cute Lotta Jansdotter sticker label so that people in the buffet line would know what they were getting. I definitely didn’t use a sharp enough knife to cut these because the edges didn’t come out so clean in square form. Oopsies!

I’ll be making this again on Thursday for my family’s Thanksgiving dinner potluck. The cheesecake part is soft enough for my grandpa to eat. NOM!

P.S. This is the first project I’ve used Lightroom with. Thoughts? I’m still figuring out how to use it, but I think I figured out the very basics!

Peaches and Cream Ice Cream Cake

Doing something to celebrate your significant other’s birthday is a bit like taking your car to the carwash. The basic bronze package (e.g., birthday dinner and maybe dessert) is what you opt for most of time, while you “level-up” once in a while and get them the silver package (e.g., everything from the bronze package plus a gift and/or planning a get-together with their friends, etc.). But on “milestone” birthdays, you splurge and treat your car (or boyfriend) to the platinum package, which is includes all of the above in addition to a surprise party and an exterior carnauba wax and polish.

In planning the birthday basketball tournament, I had to spin an intricate web of lies and to keep KJ from getting suspicious since I wanted it to be a surprise. However, this meant pretending he was just getting the bronze package to deflect any suspicions while actually procuring the platinum in secrecy.

In the middle of the week, he gave me the Puss in Boots eyes and told me that the ONE thing he wanted for his birthday this year was a half-batch of the peanut butter cookies I had made a few weeks ago for a coworker’s birthday. Obviously, I couldn’t A) say no to those eyes and B) tell him I was too busy making a surprise birthday cake and planning a surprise party. So, on his actual birthday, I frantically cranked a full batch out in between work and servicing a bronze package a la dinner at Rustic Canyon to sample the “Best Gourmet Burger in LA”. I put chocolate chips in the other half-batch for him to bring to his fantasy football draft, where the birthday cake would also be served.

Since he loves ice cream cake, I decided to try my hand at making the frozen treat. I didn’t want to make any ordinary ice cream cake that one could buy from Baskin Robbins (i.e., Mint Chip Ice Cream with Chocolate Cake, etc.). So, I thought I would take advantage of it being peach season and whip up a peaches and cream ice cream cake.

Chopped Fresh Peaches and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

I made it upside down and in a 9” springform pan so I wouldn’t have to worry about prying the frozen concoction out of a normal pan. The first layer was vanilla bean ice cream with chopped fresh peaches mixed in, and the middle layer was peach sorbet.

The final layer was a white cake. The recipe I had made enough to fill a 13”x9” pan at about two inches thick. I anticipated needing to cut it down to be 9″ round, and then cut it shorter to about an inch or so. However, the cake ended up being a little on the dryer side when it came out of the oven, so it crumbled when I tried to put it on top of the sorbet layer. It didn’t taste dry, but it just wasn’t moist enough to stay together.

Since it was already late on a work night and I couldn’t pick out all of the pieces from the softened sorbet, I instead ended up piecing everything together and pushing it down in hopes that it wouldn’t fall apart once it came out of the fridge. Thankfully, it ended up working out because if the cake had actually been very moist, it would have gotten soggy and icy once frozen. I wish the peach sorbet had been a bit brighter in color so that the layers would really pop when looking at the cake as a whole.

I picked up a cake box and the gold cake round at a specialty cooking store in Culver City, along with a couple of smaller baker’s boxes for the PB cookies and maybe a future project. Despite the sorbet layer being a bit light in color, I did really like the way the cake looked when sliced.

Here’s the gallery!

Chopped Fresh Peaches and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream – Day 1

Peanut Butter Cookies – Some with Chocolate Chips!

Café Apron

As a follow-up to my last post, here is the final piece to the kitchen set – the Café Apron. But of course, some back story…

We have something called the “IMAX-10” at work. Similar to the Freshman-15, one almost always gains 10 pounds their first year at IMAX largely due to our most highly trafficked pit stop – the snack table. Much to my waistline’s dismay, I sit within an arm’s reach of aforesaid snack table, but this also means I get first dibs on whatever goods are put out, including my boss’s homemade baked delectables. Bernie is a baker extraordinaire, and I swear she puts a little bit of heaven (or quite possibly crack) in every one of her confections. My first attempt at the kitchen set (potholders, oven mitt, and café apron) was destined to belong to her last Christmas!

I pulled the idea for this project from Lotta Jansdotter Simple Sewing: Patterns and How-To for 24 Fresh and Easy Projects. The pattern for the oven mitt was used for the pocket of the apron.

To give you some context of how popular her desserts are, she’ll put an entire chocolate bundt cake on the snack table bright and early at 9am, and you’ll be lucky if you even see crumbs on the table by 10:30am. Keep in mind, we only have less than 25 people on our floor. The only way one would know she brought in her infamous eight-layer bars is by searching for flakes of coconut and bits of chocolate and toffee in the professional baker’s boxes she packed them in, while he sole remnants of the mini blueberry pies she brings in reside in the corner of a coworker’s mouth. Yes, we eat her desserts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when she brings them in. I will admit, I’ve been guilty of snarfing two servings of her treats – one for now, and one for later.

I hope the apron et al comes in handy for the indulgences that have been made and those that I have yet to enjoy (and those my waist detests me for eating!).

Potholders and Oven Mitt

Today’s post is inspired by my stop at a Crate and Barrel outlet on the way home from a bachelorette party weekend in Palm Springs. Needless to say, it was a very fun weekend with some of the most amazing women I’ve known for more than half of my life and love with all of my heart.

I always find myself wanting to buy everything at C&B, but to be able to do so at outlet prices is truly invigorating. I guess you know you’re beginning to get older when popping in to a specialty cookware store excites you more than perusing the designer clothing brand outlets. However, I can’t even give an honest comparison because we just went to Nike and the C&B outlet and decided that was enough hysteria for one day. I ended up coming home $2.50 poorer, but a green spoon rest richer! I was reminded while I was there of the cooking set I made last Christmas for my basketball team’s Secret Santa gift exchange. Kelli O, this one’s for you!

I was really glad that she had been my Secret Santa draw, because she loves all things pink and Hawaii and it just so happened that I had bought some pink Hawaiian print fabric from a trip I had taken to Oahu last summer. She’s also a girl after my own heart with her love of food and eating, so I thought these would make for a great gift.

I’m splitting my posts to cover the Potholders and Oven Mitt today, with the Cafe Apron coming next post. When I first embarked on my stitching adventures, the first sewing books I bought were One-Yard Wonders: 101 Fabulous Fabric Projects and Lotta Jansdotter Simple Sewing: Patterns and How-To for 24 Fresh and Easy Projects. I got the instructions for the potholders from One Yard Wonders, and I referenced elements from both books to create the oven mitt. I had also made a set for my boss for Christmas, so I’ll throw in photos of those as well but delve into detail next post with the Cafe Apron. I neglected to take pictures of the creation process, but here are the finished products!

I know that this is supposed to be a craft/food blog, but I must digress and relive one of the many stops from last night’s bachelorette party – the gay club. One patron scoffed at us as we made our our way inside and snootily asked why we were even there if our bride was “marrying straight”. It was then that I understood how a straight man must feel in a bar full of angry lesbians. I thought about apologizing for not being born with a sword to cross with the fellow, but refrained. We then met a straight male go-go dancer from the Czech Republic who began to chastise me for texting in the club instead of “enjoying myself”, but we were interrupted by another patron who did a hand-stand while the dancer grabbed money from the guy’s fly with his mouth. The go-go boy then proceeded to chat with my friends about the state of today’s economy so freely as if he were in a regular everyday situation, instead of wearing nothing more than a pair of boots and tiny bright red briefs surrounded by a hundred gay-and-gawking men.

At that point, I took a step back and thought to myself, “Only with Sho-Yu and Joyce could this be happening.”