I love cooking. I love pulling different ingredients together and blending them into (hopefully) tasty dish. It's an activity that, even though I don't do it as much as I'd like, I really enjoy.

But that's cooking, not baking. Baking is a totally different animal that I usually stay away from. You have to measure things and pay attention and stuff. When I cook, even off a recipe, I'm always improvising (and drinking whatever booze is going into the food). So when I bake, it's usually to "impress" someone. I have three recipes I use for this: Brownies, Apple Pie, and Cupcakes.

Last week I took a twitter poll to see what popular opinion was on these items. It was a very close vote: 6 votes for pie, with brownies and cupcakes tied at 5. Anyways, the poll stirred up a load of discussion (mainly aimed at berating Paul for not liking pie) and I thought, "this is a Murmur article waiting to happen". So I'm going to walk you through my process for making each one of these fine culinary treats as a make them (god help me).

Brownies

*Note: These are not actually my Brownies. Sorry, couldn't find a picture.

I'll start with "my oldest recipe" and I use that phrase very loosely. The brownies are a college recipe (get all your giggling and jokes about pot brownies out of the way now... ok? done? good). I started making these brownies with my very good friend, Mari. Baking brownies was a comfort thing for us - we'd usually make them when we were upset or stressed out or 4 hours before we had to move out. We would make them from a mix and add chocolate chips.

The secret I've learned is, no matter what the package says, always use 1 egg, 1/3 cup of water, 1/3 cup of vegetable oil, and a liberal squirt of chocolate syrup. The other trick is to beat the egg and the oil together first, then mix in the water. This way you get a good emulsification before you start adding the brownie mix. Then you add in the chocolate syrup (sometimes syrup comes with the brownie mix) and chocolate chips if you want. I have no measurements for this. I use an 8x8 baking pan so the brownies are nice and thick and fudgey. Unfortunately, I'm not making the brownies tonight, so you'll have to take my word that they come out awesome every time.

Apple Pie

*Note: This is my apple pie, fresh from the oven.

A few years ago I went Upstate for a long weekend and picked a ton of apples. When I came home, I decided I was going to learn to make pie, and more importantly, make my own pie crust from scratch. I pulled a random apple pie recipe from foodnetwork.com - one that's not written by one their celebrity chefs. The recipe worked really well the first time around so I don't mess with it. Tonight I'm baking an apple pie to bring to my parents' for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

I start this recipe with the crust - which I make in the food processor. I follow this recipe to the letter because I'm so afraid of messing the dough up. Lucky for me, it came out great this time. So into the fridge with the dough and onto the filling. I have this apple peeler-corer-slicer thing, which makes slicing up the apples really easy... except when you miss the core, then it doesn't work at all. Luckily that only happened to one of the apples, so there was a quick recovery. I dump in the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and brown sugar - a big ball of brown sugar that will not break up. I decide to just leave it in the bowl with the pie filling and hope it dissolves a bit while I roll out the pie crust.

The bottom layer of pie crust goes great! It doesn't rip, doesn't get stuck, and there's plenty of it to cover the bottom of the pie pan. I throw an extra bit of regular sugar into the pie filling and pull out the gob of brown sugar before dumping it into the pie crust. I go grab the rest of the dough out of the fridge to make the top of the pie. I roll it out and things are looking good. I cut a little star in the middle for the steam hole. But when I got to gently lift the dough off the board, half of it sticks and the whole piece rips in half. I take this opportunity to smash the dough back into a submissive little ball, throw it back in the fridge and go watch Glee.

Tired and still a bit grumpy from the dough issue and the cupcake problem (more on that later). I went back into the kitchen to finish the pie top and get the freaking pie into the damn oven. I probably over-floured the board and dough because everything was a bit tough, but I managed to roll out a big enough piece, cut the cute little star into the middle, and place it on top of the pie filling without any major issues. I sealed the edges with a fork imprint, coated the top with egg wash, and put it into a piping hot oven. An hour and a half later, I got a pretty good-looking apple pie that will (hopefully) be devoured in less than 24 hours.

Cupcakes

*Note: These are my cupcakes, freshly iced.

I've got a thing for cookbooks. I love the glossy pages and big, gorgeous pictures of food. I could flip through them for hours. So when I found out Amy Sedaris had a cookbook, I had to pick it up. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence is half comedic memoir, half guide for entertaining, and half cookbook. But more importantly, it's got a killer recipe for cupcakes. Anyways, I've got a party on Friday and the host may or may not be someone I'd like to "impress", so I'm breaking out the cupcake recipe!

I started these before the pie so that they could cool and be ready for icing when the pie was ready to go in the oven. The cupcakes start in the fancy Kitchen-aid stand mixer (yes, I have one. it's red and awesome). You cream the butter with some sugar, add eggs, flour, baking powder, vanilla, salt and milk. I like to keep the mixer running while I'm doing all this - so I may have gotten a splash of milk in my face. Ms. Sedaris' directions are very specific, they say stuff like "beat until it looks like it's supposed to". I'm pretty sure I got it right.

I filled up the little cup-thingies but I must've short-changed 'em a bit because I ended up with 21 cupcakes instead of 18 like I usually do. No time to worry, into the oven they go. I currently have an electric oven - it sucks and I hate it. I moved the rack to the middle of the oven so everything would bake nice and even. Unfortunately, this didn't work so well. About half-way through I smelled something funny, the bottoms of the cupcakes were starting to burn. So moved the rack back up and let them finish. They don't look bad, but the bottoms are definitely "well done".

After I finally got the pie in the oven, I started on the icing. At this point in the evening, I'm starting to lose it a bit, so I'm not really confident. But Ms. Sedaris has a recipe for vanilla buttercream icing right under the recipe for the cupcakes. It seems pretty easy, just a box of confectioners sugar, a stick of butter and some cream. I'm thinking this is a bit too boring. So I decide to throw in a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and Bailey's Irish Cream instead of regular cream. And I have to say, I rocked the icing! High from the small victory, I sat down to ice these bad boys. They were still kinda warm so the icing was slipping off a bit at first, but I'm not looking to make pretty cupcakes, just tasty ones.

I am still concerned about the cupcakes though. Even as I type this, I'm debating throwing together a batch of brownies because I'm not thrilled with bringing kind of burnt cupcakes to a party, even if the icing is amazing. But right now it's well after midnight and tomorrow's Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll make the brownies in the morning...

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