Joy the Baker

My pumpkin adventures continue.  I think pumpkin is just something I have to get out of my system in order to move on to more enticing Fall foods.  With these cookies, a version of some other out of this world pumpkin cookies, I can fairly say that I’ve got pumpkin out of my system.  All is well.

Here’s what’s going on with Joy the Baker.  I’m gearing up for NaBloPoMo.  What’s that!?  It’s a full month of daily blog posts in November.  Joy the Baker will become a combination of amazing baked treats, holiday baking tips, and a fine cheese oasis.  Cheese?  Yes, I’ll explain more in November.

I’m going to San Francisco this weekend.  It’s sure to be a dangerous collision of food, drinks, Halloween costumes, and the madness of my little sister.  I’ll bring my camera and share the debauchery with you.

What are you doing this weekend?  Besides baking these (insanely easy) Pumpkin Butterscotch Cookies?

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I was trying to come up with some charming childhood anecdote to accompany these butterscotch puddings, when I came to the blunt realization that I didn’t like pudding as a child. In fact, I may have purely despised the stuff. My only exposure to pudding came in the occasional lunch time trade with a friend for her chocolate pudding cup. I seem to remember a goopy, brown, almost plastic flavored dessert. Even when I was eight I knew that there had to be a better way.

A mere twenty years later I’ve decided on the perfect pudding solution: mix together cream, brown sugar and bourbon whiskey (among a few other ingredients) and call it Butterscotch Pudding. Glorious! Top that pudding with Bourbon whipped cream and toffee and life just got that much sweeter.

If I could talk to eight year old Joy the Baker, I’d tell her not to trade her all natural fruit snacks for the chocolate pudding. There’s something much better lying ahead. I’d also tell her that she won’t have horribly frizzy hair forever, and it really is ok that precious, blonde, adorable Hayden likes Alison and not her. It really is ok.

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