I like you.  I like you a lot.  I mean it… and I don’t think I’ve told you in a while.  Sweet.  I’m glad you’re here.

Would now be a good time to tell you that I have a serious, though not lasting, aversion to my kitchen these days?   I have an even more serious aversion to my oven.  For reals.

It’s just that… well, it’s summer!  There seems to be so many museums to visit, brunches to have, friends to laugh with, wine to drink… and somehow none of this fun takes place in my kitchen.

Amazingly, and through the miracle that is my freezer, I’ve managed to throw together a lovely and waaaay super easy summer recipe.  It’s apple pie meets snow cone, minus the cone, plus a hint of awesome.

If it’s summer in your part of the globe… please please please make this.  Remember when you were a kid and used to freeze juice in the ice cube tray?  Dangit!  Why were those cubes always so rock solid!?  This Apple Pie Granita is the adult version of such childhood endeavours.  Super sweet!

Apple Pie Granita

recipe from um… Emeril Lagasse

Print this recipe!

3 cups natural, unfiltered apple juice

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

big pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

pinch of ground allspice

Combine all of the ingredients in a saucepan over medium high heat.  Heat and stir until all of the sugar has dissolved, about 3 minutes.  Pour into an 8-inch square glass baking dish.  Place in the freezer until icy around the edges, about 1 hour.  Using a fork, scrape the icy shards towards the center of the dish.  Freeze again for another hour and again scrape the icy shards.  Continue freezing and scraping until slushy throughout.  Eat standing at the open freezer door, or place in small dishes and serve immediately.

Honey Roasted Plums with Fresh Thyme and Greek Yogurt

This weekend I want out!  Out of the kitchen and into a pool.  Out of these clothes and into a bathing suit.  Out of this computer and into a poolside book and cocktail situation.

I want you out too.  I don’t want you in the kitchen all weekend.  Don’t you think your time would be much better spent in sunglasses and a big floppy hat with your feet up by the pool!?  Good.  I’m glad we agree.

If you’re celebrating the 4th of July this weekend, be sure to say things like “Go America!” and watch colors explode in the sky if you can.  It’s fun.

If you’re not celebrating America’s independence… well heck… I think a weekend by the pool is still in order.  You just don’t have to scream things like “Go America!” unless you really want to.

Here are the recipes that will keep you out of all day kitchen adventures and magically keep your bellies satisfied.

Let us explore.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

S’mores Brownies. Heck yes!

Dutch Baby with Orange Sugar. Easiest breakfast ever.

Crunchy Oven Baked Fries with Herbes de Provence

Spicy and Sweet Cabbage Slaw

Proscuitto Dijon and Gruyere Puffs

Summer Sweet Raspberry Lemonade. You know you’re thirsty.

Homemade Kettle Corn. Because I’ve eaten it everyday since I posted the recipe.  Seriously.

When it comes time for a little human to call me Mom, there are several things I hope for.  Here are a few of those hopes:

I hope that I’ll no longer run screaming from the room at the sight of a spider.  Mom has to take care of the spider… that’s sort of part of the deal as Mom, right?  Maybe can I always get away with saying, “Let’s go get Daddy to take care of that spider.”  I hope that works.

I hope that a deep affection for pickles and pancakes, though not necessarily on the same plate, is hereditary.

I hope that I have as good a pair of Mom Hands as my mom.

Most importantly, I hope that I create as patient and loving, supportive and hilarious a family as was provided for me.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who have the patience and care to raise new, happy, and lovely people in the world.

Here’s some dreamy Raspberry Lemonade, and all sort sof recipes that you might consider making for your mom and family this weekend.

This gorgeous Raspberry Lemonade is absolutely the perfect drink to have chilled in the refrigerator all summer long.  Consider it The Real Deal Pink Lemonade.  An absolute dream, and worth the two easy steps it takes to make.  You’ll have enough raspberry sauce to add to the lemonade, swirl into ice cream, and  drizzle on top of Milk Chocolate Pudding.  Super yum!

Summer Sweet Raspberry Lemonade

adapted from Simply Recipes

Print this recipe!

1 cup sugar, for a less sweet lemonade, take the sugar down to 3/4 cup

1 cup water to make the simple syrup

1 cup fresh lemon juice

4 cups cold water

2 Tablespoons to 1/4 cup raspberry sauce, depending on how much raspberry you like

Adaption:

Prosecco Raspberry Lemonade: Fill a glass with ice cubes.  Fill the glass half full with raspberry lemonade and top with Prosecco or Champagne.  Garnish with fresh basil or mint leaves.  Hey! Hey! Cocktail!

Fun and Festive Mother’s Day recipes.  Just click on the picture or the link to find the recipe!

Cinnamon Raisin Pull Apart Muffins

Pink Grapefruit Yogurt Cake

Lemon Souffle Pudding

Amazing Apple Crisp

Mocha Rum Cake

My favorite tea cup doesn’t even belong to me.  Sounds crazy, right?  My favorite tea cup belongs to my favorite cafe in Los Angeles.  My favorite cafe in Los Angeles is home to perfect sidewalk tables, breezes, shaded sunshine, loads of people watching, and some seriously good sandwiches and coleslaw.

Now… let’s play a game!

You want an awesome glass tea pot with five fantastic teas from Rishi Tea.

I want to know you more.  Is that creepy?   I just think you all are so dang cool, that I thought a giveaway involving awesome tea, a super sweet tea pot, and your smiling face might be just what we all need.

Here’s the deal:

Bust out your digital camera and send me a picture of you with your favorite tea cup.  I know… I’m totally making your work for this giveaway.  Can you handle it?  Come on… this is totally fun!

Email me a picture of your smiling, cheesy, or coy face with your favorite tea cup.  I’ll randomly pick a winner and send off a lovely Rishi Tea pot with five teas.

Emails and attached pictures should be sent to joy (at) joythebaker (dot) com, by the end of Friday March 20th.

But how will you know if you’ve won?  Well, I’ll post the picture of the wining reader and mug on Saturday morning.

But what if you don’t like my mug?  This isn’t a beauty contest friends.  I’m not judging on photo quality or hair stylings.  Just be the awesome Joy the Baker reader that you are!

You’ve got until the end of Friday to play along, so bust out those cameras and get shootin’.  Thanks to you and Rishi Tea for playing along!

I come to you with these pictures and recipes not knowing whether this combination of treats is awesome or terrifying.  Blood and Bones.

Before we get down to the treats, can I share something with you?  I’m not a big fan of Halloween.  Honestly,  it scares me a bit.  The whole night seems unpredictable and slightly unstable to me, even as an adult.  It’s the costumes.  See, there are two categories of Halloween costumes that just chill me to the bone.

One one hand, there are the girls that use Halloween as an excuse to wear as little clothes as possible.  Are you one of these girls?  Are you dressing up as a ’sexy boy scout’ this Halloween?  What on earth is a sexy boy scout??  I’m scared.  I also don’t like the medical and other uniformed professions you make sexy for Halloween.  I don’t agree, and frankly, I’m frightened.

There’s also the teenage boys that dress up as murderers with bloody plastic knives and masks.  Teenage boys dressed as murders in the darkness of a Halloween night?  Is it just me being old, or do these kids seem totally out of control?  They seem waaaay too old to be dressing up and run the neighborhood with a pillow case scooping up candy from everyone they can.  Not ok.  Just not ok.

Wow!   Halloween makes me sound like a grumpy old lady.

To celebrate my inner old lady and to embrace any hidden desires to be a hussy for Halloween, I’m going to be Blanche from the Golden Girls.  It’s going to be a perfectly ridiculous Halloween getup.

What are you going to be for Halloween?

With all that costume talk out of the way, we need to talk Halloween treats.  For the holiday I made Martha Stewart inspired bone shaped meringues and deep red hot chocolate.  Blood and bones!

The meringues are perfectly light-  like eating lightly crisped clouds.  The hot chocolate, while mildly disturbing, if beautifully warm and smooth drinkable chocolate.  Nothing beats it.

Sweet Bones

Martha Stewart

Print this recipe!

• 6 large egg whites
• 1 1/2 cups sugar

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Put egg whites and sugar in the heatproof bowl of an electric mixer. Set bowl over a pan of simmering water; whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved and mixture feels warm to the touch, about 5 minutes.
2. Return bowl to mixer, and fit mixer with the whisk attachment.Beat on high speed until very stiff peaks form, about 8 minutes.
3. Transfer meringue to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain round tip, such as a Wilton #1A. Pipe bone shapes, each 5 to 6 inches long, onto two baking sheets lined with parchment paper.  Pipe by making one long (not as curvy) S shape, followed by another mirrored S shape atop the first.  The pictures below should help. Bake until crisp throughout, about 1 hour. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Blood Red Hot Chocolate

Martha Stewart

• 5 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 4 cups whole milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons red gel-paste food coloring

Bring milk and sugar to a simmer in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves, about 7 minutes. Pour over chocolate, and let stand. When chocolate begins to melt, stir until combined. Whisk in food coloring. Serve immediately with marshmallow bones.

I went into this post practically kicking and screaming today.  Let’s be honest-  sometimes the words flow, other times it’s a task just to get myself to sit in the chair long enough to post a few words and photos.

This whiny, kicking and screaming, can’t-even-stand-myself feeling seems to be a Labor Day holiday signature of mine.  See, the holiday represents the end of summer.  I’ve always had enormous jubilation for Memorial Day, the unofficial kick off of summer, and great disdain for it’s holiday evil doppelganger- Labor Day.  When I was a kid, we would always have to return to school the Tuesday after Labor Day.  The end of summer and the return to school always seemed like a great tragedy to me.  I’m talking Hamlet level tragedy.

It would seem that the feelings of that 9 year old, who can’t come to terms with her new backpack and Trapper Keeper have followed me to adulthood.  I still don’t like Labor Day.  I still have a hard time coming to terms with the end of summer.  But now I get to add alcohol to the mix.

My Oh My.  Cucumber Raspberry Vodka Sparklers.

I hope you all have a lovely Labor Day weekend.  Be safe.  Be sound.  Don’t kick or scream.  That doesn’t help anything.  Trust me, I’ve tried that approach for the last 27 years.

Cucumber Raspberry Vodka Sparklers

makes 4 cocktails.  do share.

inspired by Martha Stewart

Print this recipe!

• 2 English cucumbers
• Small ice cubes
• 1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
• 12 fresh raspberries, rinsed
• 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice (from 2 to 3 limes)
• 4 ounces (1/2 cup) vodka
• 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) Cointreau
• 1 large bottled sparkling water (this recipe is not terribly sweet, so you can use lemon lime soda if you’d like more sweetness)

1. Cut 4 thin spears from 1 cucumber, and reserve for garnish. Peel remaining cucumbers, and quarter them lengthwise. Scrape out seeds with a spoon, and discard. Coarsely chop cucumbers, then puree in a food processor until smooth. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing on solids to extract as much liquid as possible.
2. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add mint, sugar, raspberries and lime juice, and shake. Add 3/4 cup cucumber juice, the vodka, and Cointreau, and shake. Strain into 4 glasses filled with ice.  Finish with a splash of sparkling water in each glass and stir. Garnish each cocktail with a cucumber spear.