The most wonderful time of the year!

Greetings, gentle readers!

I hope the day finds you well, wherever you are. As for me, I am finding myself in anxious anticipation of autumn. Now, depending on where you are geographically, autumn may well have already come to you, and if that is the case, I hope that you count yourself lucky. As for me, I am in the flatlands of North Carolina and as such am currently looking out the window at the yellowing leaves of the oak tree in my back yard whilst sitting in the air conditioned comfort of my bedroom. You see, the trees have figured out what time of year it is, but they have yet to share that information with the weather. It's nearly 90 degrees outside and muggy as all get-out. I keep finding myself staring wistfully at those trees and longing for the first sharp, crisp intake of true fall air.

I love the fall. I love its holidays, its weather, its colors, the crunch of fallen leaves beneath your feet. I love the way the air feels in your lungs. And of course, I LOVE the baked goods: apple pie, oatmeal cookies, coffee cake, and anything and everything containing pumpkin. Of course, in our modern world of 24 hour convenience, these goodies are by no means restricted to this time of year, but you have to admit that taking a bite of soft, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth pumpkin pie never feels quite so right as it does on a cool, fresh day in mid-October. Yes, folks, fall is my favorite time of year.

So, in the coming months, I promise you many autumn-tastic goodies. I've already been plowing through my books trying to pick the perfect pastries for the autumn-loving diabetic. Contenders so far are: orange-date pumpkin bread, apricot-ginger pinwheels, raisin-pumpkin tart, no-bake pumpkin swirl cheesecake, apple-mango crisp, citrus sweet potato pie, and butter-rum oatmeal cookies just to name a few.

Now, how many of these I'll actually get to this year is anybody's guess, but I'm certainly going to do my best. Additionally, suggestions are (as always) welcome and encouraged.

The one definite plan I DO have for fall this year, though, is that I am participating in the American Diabetes Association's annual Step Out: Walk to Fight Diabetes! Our team, the Sugar Free Fairies, will join many other teams in the Charlotte area on October 31st to get out and walk in support of diabetes support, education, and research! If you'd like to walk with us and/or make a donation on our behalf, you can do so by clicking here.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that October 31st this year is going to be exactly the kind of autumn day I've been craving, complete with blue skies, bright leaves, and crisp air. But even if it's 20 below and raining cats and dogs, I will be out there walking through it because that's how much I believe in this cause. I hope that you'll lend your support as well however you can.

Thanks, everyone. Happy autumn!

Perfection

OK, folks, confession time:

Hi. My name's Joey, and I'm a perfectionist.

Of course, you'd never know that to look at my house, or my car, or my purse; I'm not that kind of perfectionist. But just ask anyone who's ever seen me try to write a paper, knit bedroom slippers, or decorate a cake, and they'll tell you that I have the potential to go from a sane, rational human to an anal, type-A lunatic faster than you can say "Clarissa Dalloway." Of course, my poor wife has seen me do all of these things. In fact, for the past 6 years, she has borne sole witness to my anxious fits of perfectionist madness. She has watched as I frantically scoured databases for minute scraps of information and listened patiently as I cried about painstakingly knitted slippers (intended as a gift) being two different sizes. Fortunately for me, Mrs. Dalloway is her favorite novel. Therefore, the literary context, coupled with her infinite patience for my madness, has thus far prevented her from responding to one of my episodes by tossing me out a window. And for that, I am grateful.

However, if ever her resolve to refrain from defenestrating me were tested, it had to have been this weekend. You see, this weekend was my dad's 56th birthday. As he is, like me, a Type II diabetic, the baking of his cake (naturally) fell to me. But see, Dad's birthday celebration this year was not to be the small, immediate-family-only gathering of years past. Oh no. No, this year was to be special. The entire extended family had been invited out to a local restaurant to celebrate. And when I say "extended family," please understand: my father is one of eight children. All of his siblings (6 brothers and 1 sister) either are or have been married, and all of them have children. Most of their children are now married, and many of them have children of their own. They were all invited, in addition to several family friends, a few close acquaintances, some not-so-close acquaintances, a complete stranger or two, and probably at least one family pet. In other words, this was to be a to-do.

Now, in addition to the sheer number and scope of the crowd about to be assembled, bear in mind that among them were my mother and aunts; women known for their southern hospitality, their ability to throw wonderful parties, and their acute attention to detail. And it was before these women (and a crowd of seemingly thousands) that I was to present this cake.

Now, I have faith in my baking skills. I am experienced enough to be confident that whatever I bake will taste just fine. Hell, I used to head-up a cooking club comprised mainly of 5 and 6 year olds, and never once did we produce anything that was inedible. But when it comes to making things pretty, that's a whole other story. I'm not one of those women to whom artistic flare comes easily. I can never quite choose the right shades of paint for my house, I suck at arranging flowers, and I can't paint my fingernails for all the tea in China without it looking like I'm bleeding to death from the cuticles. I have very little patience for acute attention to ultimately inconsequential details, and I'm generally fine with that. After all, I'm a feminist. But my desire to make my mother and aunts proud goes beyond feminism. It springs from an innate psychological need to connect with the women who raised me; those upon whom I based my first understandings of what it means to be a woman. And don't get me wrong; they are old-school southern women, yes; the kind who truly embody the adage that being dead is no excuse not to graciously hostess a funeral. But they are also strong, compassionate, self-determined women whose strength and wisdom have guided and shaped me every bit as much as their ability to throw a lovely wedding shower. If I'm being honest, their approval means far more to me than I'm usually willing to admit; certainly, it means more than I can articulate here. And so it was with all this deeply-rooted yearning for matriarchal approval simmering just below the surface of my subconscious that I set out to bake--and, more importantly, decorate-- a cake.
---------

"Laura understands: There are two choices only. You can be capable or uncaring. You can produce a masterful cake by your own hand or, barring that, light a cigarette, declare yourself hopeless at such projects, pour yourself another cup of coffee, and order a cake from the bakery. Laura is an artisan who has tried, and failed, publicly. She has produced something cute, when she had hoped (it's embarrassing, but true) to produce something of beauty."

"At home, the new cake waits under an aluminum cake-saver with a wooden knob shaped like an acorn. It is an improvement over the first cake [...] It's a fine cake, perfect in its way, and yet Laura is still disappointed in it. It still feels amateurish, homemade; it still seems somehow wrong. The 'y' in 'Happy' isn't what she'd hoped it would be, and two of the roses are lopsided."

-The Hours, Michael Cunningham

OK, so maybe the references to Mrs. Brown's cake in The Hours are a little heavy-handed. I certainly didn't allow my entire concept of self to hinge on the success or failure of this one cake. But in a way, I wasn't far off. While the way I view myself was not at stake, the way others view me was. Namely, in this instance, the women in my family. I am so unlike them in so many ways. I am a lesbian; I am a feminist; I am an uncouth, bawdy, opinionated liberal who lets dishes pile in the sink, carries a tote bag instead of a purse, and doesn't shave her legs in the winter time. And while I make no apologies for who I am or how I live, I have nonetheless internalized the southern woman's near-religious dedication to hospitality: to showing those dearest to you that you cared enough to try, that they are worth your effort and sweat (excuse me...glow), and that their comfort and happiness matter. While such values have long been attributed to the female sex and as such are considered restrictive tools of the patriarchy, it is my contention that hospitality, in its various forms, is a value well-adopted by everyone, male, female, or otherwise. But I digress. The point here, folks, is that I am occasionally overcome by the desire to show the women in my family that I am, in some way, like them. That despite my generally alien lifestyle, their lessons have not been lost on me and we still share some common ground.

So I made the cake. For two days, I mixed, measured, baked, shopped, whipped, chilled, and pretty much any other baking verb you can think of. I bought pastry-decorating bags and a variety of differently sized and shaped tips. I painstakingly researched recipes and decorating techniques. I used nearly every mixing bowl, wooden spoon, and spatula in my kitchen, plowed through nearly a full-dozen eggs, and I have yet to successfully remove all the flour from the various nooks and crannies into which it drifted. I lost count of how many times I ran out to the grocery store for this or that supplemental ingredient. But in the end, I had successfully produced a low-sugar, triple layer, mocha fudge chocolate cake with mocha coffee cream cheese icing, decorative piping, and the words "Happy 56th Joe" piped legibly on top, in addition to a dozen piped-icing-topped mocha fudge cupcakes. I finished with just enough time to pile the dishes in the sink, make myself reasonably presentable, pack a bag for the weekend, and drive down to South Carolina in time to beat my parents to the restaurant. My beloved wife held the cake plate in her lap as I drove us down the highway.

We were 5 minutes from the restaurant when I noticed. Having stopped briefly at a red light, I happened to glance over to the passenger seat where my wife sat, innocently holding the cake plate in her lap...slanted. She'd set the cake plate on her thighs, and evidently not noticed that in doing so, had tipped the cake plate towards herself so that the cake had slid forward into the side of the plate's cover, thereby smooshing one side against the plastic, while the other side of the cake had slipped away from the piping at the base. In short, my life was ruined.

To my credit, my melodramatic overreaction stopped short of actually yelling at Rebecca or blaming her out loud, but I certainly spared neither of us an ounce of my own self-pity. The cake I'd worked on so hard for two days, the cake of which I'd been so very proud and which was to be my crowning glory, was ruined. I didn't need to remind her that it was all her fault. We both knew it was.

My righteous anger and self-pity lasted all of about 6 minutes, which is how long it took us to get to the restaurant (to which my parents had already arrived). I dropped her off at the front to carry in the cake while I parked the car. My infinitely patient, gentle, librarian wife slammed the door so hard the car shook. By the time I got inside, she was in the bathroom. When I knocked and she opened the door, her face took all the fight out of me. I was an asshole. And what's worse is that she wasn't mad, but was genuinely sorry she'd "ruined" my cake (which, upon closer examination, was barely scathed, once set flat on a table and allowed to slide back into place). I hugged her then, and we spent the first 20 minutes of my dad's birthday party locked in the single-occupancy bathroom explaining and apologizing and blowing our noses on brown paper towels. My family was gracious enough not to comment on our red-rimmed eyes when we finally joined them at the table. We wished my dad a happy birthday, and for the first time in two days, I stopped thinking about the damn cake and remembered what we were celebrating.

Gradually, everyone trickled onto the patio of the Mexican restaurant where the party was being held. The Coronas and margaritas flowed as, little by little, the patio filled up to the point that there were not enough chairs to seat everyone and many folks simply leaned against the railings or sat on the laps of whomever they were speaking to at the time. We all ate our weight in the bottomless tortilla chips on the tables before continuing to stuff ourselves with the burritos, fajitas, and enchiladas that were eventually brought out on piping hot plates. At some point, the karaoke equipment was set up at the far end of the patio, and dad subsequently ushered the entire party to the mic for a rousing (and half-drunken) chorus of what's fondly known as "The Fort Mill National Anthem," as well as by its less inspiring title, "You Don't Have to Call Me Darlin', Darlin'." Later on, my sister and her husband performed an adorable duet of the Randy Travis classic, "Forever and Ever, Amen," and I even got up and belted out a rendition of "Cabaret" to the drunken and gracious hooting of a crowd unaccustomed to show tunes.

It was well past dark by the time we sang happy birthday, and my dad was presented with a gold-tasseled sombrero and complimentary shot of tequila. I brought out the unilluminated cake (because after everything, I'd forgotten to bring candles), and most everyone was paying such rapt attention to that moment's performers (two little girls rocking out to Taylor Swift) that they barely noticed if they noticed at all. Even if they had been paying attention, it was too dark to make out much of anything beyond the basic shape and maybe a glint of piping here and there. I did manage to take one hasty picture with a borrowed camera before we cut into it, but even that was half-hearted, with the flash reflecting off the icing as a bright glare smack in the middle. In short, no one other than me and Rebecca even saw the thing in full light.

But it was delicious. It was moist and dense, with the cool cream cheese frosting offering the perfect creamy counterbalance to the heavy mocha flavor. Dad loved it, and was still going on about it the next day as the uneaten portion sat waiting in his fridge. It was still pretty, with the now-visible layers revealed to be evenly spaced, the light-brown frosting contrasting beautifully with the dark chocolate cake layers, and the word "Happy" still in tact on the top. But I barely even thought about it. Instead, I spent all day thinking about how happy my dad had been, how much fun it had been to sing with my family, to watch my dad down a shot of tequila while trying to balance the ill-fitting sombrero on his ample head, to listen to my sister and her husband sing country love songs together. It was truly a wonderful night. On my way back to my parents' house after the party, I was literally so overcome with love and happiness that it was almost painful to think about too long. In fact, through no doing of my own, the night was pretty damn close to perfect.

Just evolve, already!

Hello, gentle readers!

Long time, no blog.

And there's a reason for that. I have been baking as usual, it's true. I've even gone so far as to take photographs of some of my goodies. But I haven't been able to motivate myself to do a blog post in a while, mainly because the feminism-via-diabetic-baked-goods premise just isn't resonating for me anymore. I find myself going about my life, coming up with ideas and thinking, "That would make a great blog post! Alas, it has nothing to do with baking..."

So, in the spirit of evolution, I'm broadening the scope of this blog to include a variety of interesting topics--some related to baking, some not--and we'll just see where this takes us.

As always, your comments, feedback, and suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

Be sure to stay tuned for the upcoming post, "Fall: Why my favorite time of year makes me want to be Martha Stewart, and the feminist implications of my subsequent shame."

5th of July Papple Pie!

Did you ever have one of those moments where you just took a look around and were overwhelmed by the beauty and abundance of your life? I certainly hope that you have; I do often. But this past weekend I felt like I got way more than my fair share of those moments. I spent an amazing weekend with awesome people, including my wife and best friend, hanging out on the sunny banks of Lake Murray in my home state of South Carolina, which is always lush, verdant, and comforting this time of year (serial killers and adulterous governors notwithstanding). The entire weekend was honestly too fabulous to put into words, but allow me to recap for you a few of my favorite memories from the trip:

* Basically living in my bathing suit for three days straight.

* Floating, drink in hand, just off the dock with a crowd of people who could, without pausing for breath, discuss national politics, classic films, and zombies all in one conversation.

* Making way-too-potent Jello shots in the kitchen while the whole house joined together in an impromptu chorus of Tiny Dancer

* Being towed behind a boat in an inner-tube while trying desperately to hang on long enough not to shame myself (I was successful, by the way, though when I finally did fall off, the force with which I hit the water was such that I pulled a muscle. Whatevs. Totally worth it).

* Taking a moonlit boat ride back to the house after watching fireworks.

* Napping in a hammock with the wife, like we didn't have a care in the world. Because at that moment, kids, we really didn't.

And amid all that swimming and sunning and napping and talking and drinking and singing and laughing, I simply did not take time to bake a single blessed thing...and I have no regrets.

BUT! Somewhere amid all that fun I was having, it did occur to me that returning home from such a great time might be a little depressing if I didn't have a plan for something fun to do once I got here. And thus the idea for 5th of July Pie was born. See, I had no time nor desire to break from the revelry to bake a pie on the 4th of July, but the 5th of July was a day that needed some cheering up and was therefore a perfect day for baking. Of course, I had no idea what kind of pie that was going to be, but I figured it would come to me. And then, as if by fate, shortly after beginning the drive home to Charlotte, we passed one of those amazing roadside fruit stands that are only found on the best of South Carolina backroads, and this one was selling half-bushels of beautiful, ripe South Carolina peaches (trust me, kids, Georgia is the "Peach State" in name only). So we bought a half-bushel and brought it home. The thing was, though, I didn't want to use all of my beautiful peaches in a pie, which I would have had to do if I were going to make straight up peach pie, so instead I decided to get inventive. There was a full bag of Granny Smith baking apples sitting right on the table, so I figured I like peaches...I like apples...put 'em together and you get....PAPPLES! And so, without further adieu, I give you:

5TH OF JULY PAPPLE PIE!

I started out with this basic apple pie recipe from Splenda.com, and modified it as follows:

Peel, core, and slice approximately 6 green baking apples (I was using a deep-dish pie pan, so you may need to modify your fruit amounts based on your pie plate).

Then peel, pit, and slice 4-5 ripe peaches.

Keep apples and peaches separate.

Add 1/2 c. Splenda Brown Sugar Blend to the peaches

Add 1/4 c. regular granulated Splenda to the apples

Follow the rest of the recipe as instructed, dividing each ingredient quantity in half to distribute evenly among peaches and apples (although you should probably add an extra tablespoon of corn starch; I only used the three tablespoons called for in the original recipe and the pie came out a bit runny because of the excess juices from the peaches).

Roll out refrigerated pie crust into pie pan, then layer the fruit as follows: half of apple mixture, all of peach mixture, remaining half of apple mixture.

Cover with remaining pie crust, seal edges, and cut slits in the top.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 425 degrees. Pie plate should be cool enough to touch before cutting.

The end result was pretty delicious. The warm, gooey-sweetness of the peaches and brown sugar was an excellent undertone to the crisp tangy bite of the green apples. The softness of the peaches and firmness of the apples also mixed nicely with the flakey crust and juicy filling to make for an overall wonderful pie experience. Not sure if I can wait until next July 5th to do this one again.

So that's Papple Pie, folks. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes, and, as always, happy baking.

And now, I leave you with gratuitous vacation photos! Because I can...

Because I can't NOT talk about it...

Disclaimer: There are no baked goods in this article. I have a recipe all lined up, and you will have it soon, but sometimes there are current events too big to ignore just because they don't have anything to do with baking.

Well friends, for those of you who haven't yet heard, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Michael Jackson has died. I know, I know, it comes as a shock, especially since the event has received very little press and one is extremely hard pressed to find mention of it anywhere on the internet. But it's true.

I have mixed feelings. A very close friend of mine was damn near inconsolable yesterday. She has been a devoted MJ fan for decades, and his death hit her hard, as I know it did many others across the country and around the world. I do not wish to belittle or undermine their very genuine grief in any way...but I just don't feel it myself.

Like every child of my generation, I spent many an evening practicing my moonwalk across the kitchen floor, watching the reflection of my feet in the oven (never did I advance far beyond walking backwards, though, despite my best efforts); I can still tell you the exact circumstances under which I first saw the Thriller video; and I still know all the words to You Are Not Alone from the mid-nineties resurgence of Jackson popularity in the wake of the HIStory album. But that's about where it ends. I was never a die-hard Michael Jackson fan. If anything, Janet was my Jackson of choice. I don't even think I ever owned one of Michael's albums, and, even as a young child, I found all the crotch-grabbing vulgar and disconcerting (what can I say? I was born a bit of a prude...but in a 3rd wave-feminist kind of way (i.e. rock on if it works for you; I just choose to keep my hands away from my crotch in public, thanks)).

And then there were the allegations of molestation. I'm a social worker, folks, and I have been an elementary teacher and a rape crisis counselor. Rule 1 of all three of those professions is that children don't lie about molestation. Now, is it conceivable that parents may wish to exploit the wealth of someone like Jackson by making false allegations? Of course. But, in the words of my friend Jill, "While it was never proven in court that he actually molested anyone, even from his own testimony it was clear that his relationships with children were inappropriate at best."

Now, I've seen Jacksons: An American Dream like everyone else who's ever spent more than five minutes watching VH1, and I can appreciate both the cultural impact and the personal hardship and tragedy that made Jackson who he was, but I do not believe that any amount of personal struggle EVER excuses harming a child. Nor does any amount of fame or fortune negate the commission of such a crime. Try as I might, I cannot separate my appreciation for Jackson's talent from my suspicion of his guilt.

And yet, when a celebrity as iconic as Michael Jackson dies, it tends to make people mourn, not so much for the individual who has passed, but more for what the death represents in terms of one's own lost youth, imminent mortality, bygone eras, etc. In the southern humor classic, Elvis is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself, author and comedic genius Lewis Grizzard recounts his experience of Presley's death, noting that he was shocked to realize that the women who mourned the King's passing were not young teeny boppers, but middle aged women, who were not mourning Elvis nearly so much as they were mourning the loss of the bygone days of rolled-down bobby socks, saddle shoes, and poodle skirts. And in making this realization, Grizzard himself came to understand that if the great Elvis were so mortal as to die of a heart attack, then he too would someday die, and the carefree glory of immortal youth was, in fact, gone forever.

I think it is fair to say that Jackson's passing has had a very similar effect on our culture, and especially on people like me who have never known a world in which Jackson was not the King of Pop, in which Thriller was not the best-selling album of all time, in which Billie Jean is not our lover. For all the weirdness, the scandal, the suspicion, and the tragedy, Jackson defined a decade, a generation, an era, and with his passing comes an uninvited reminder of the impermanence of everything we know, including ourselves.

And yet, I've had a medley of Michael Jackson songs stuck in my head all day. The tide of YouTube tribute videos has not yet stemmed, and I would venture to guess that iTunes is ablaze with Jackson downloads as I type. Suddenly, it's like 1984 all over again. And it gives me great pleasure to think that, even with all the sadness and musings on death and mortality that Jackson's passing has brought, somewhere, right now, a new generation of children are practicing their moonwalk in front of the oven.

Cookie Therapy

It's been a rough week, folks. Ahmadenijad seems likely to win re-election in Iran, thereby furthering his tyranny over the women of that country; the Letterman/Palin feud drags on, with insults to women and basic intelligence flying on both sides; more and more abortion clinics are receiving threats in the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder; and some 80-year-old anti-semitic nut job decided to shoot up the National Holocaust Museum in DC, resulting in the death of security guard, Steven Tyrone Johns.

It's somewhat tempting to turn this post into a "but forget your worries and indulge in these cookies!" piece of drivel, but you're smarter than that, and so am I. This is serious shit, here, folks. So don't think that by giving you a cookie recipe I'm trying to sugar coat anything (pun intended). Oppression, tyranny, misogyny, violence, anti-semitism, and murder. Really, no amount of baked goods can make me feel better about any of this. But, this week has also not been without its good points: Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono has decided to transition from female to male and so far the media's being relatively cool about it; Tel Aviv hosted Israel's Gay Pride Parade ; and, evidently, today is National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. So life ain't all bad.

I bring all of this up because these are the things that have been weighing heavily on my mind all week. When I came home this evening and read the news about the election in Iran, it was the proverbial straw, and I was the brokeback camel. So, in an effort to refocus myself and feel a little less horrible about the world, I baked cookies. Some people write, others paint or write music; I bake. And, silly as it sounds, it helped. So, no more politics (at least, not in this post ;); from here on, I will only talk about cookies. But as you read, I hope you'll seriously consider doing whatever it is you do to rejuvenate yourself and those around you; on news weeks like this, it's crucial.

And now, without further doldrums or ado:

FLOURLESS PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES!

[Again, taken from The Big Book of Diabetic Desserts, page 193]

Back before I was diabetic, one of my all-time favorite rainy-day recipes was an incredibly simple one: 1 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 egg. Mix together, spoon onto baking sheet, bake at 350 for 10 minutes. And that was it. No fuss, you generally had all of the ingredients right in the kitchen, and the cookies came out delicious every time.

Well, this recipe is remarkably similar, and every bit as easy. It's also extremely low-sugar as written, and you can even reduce the sugar amounts further by using reduced-sugar peanut butter and cutting the brown-sugar with half Splenda Brown Sugar Blend.

Now, of course, I never have brown sugar in my kitchen, so I used ALL Splenda Brown Sugar Blend, which probably wasn't the best idea. The cookies are VERY sweet. Really tasty, but, seriously y'all, crazy sweet. I had to use the whole amount of SBSB in order to get the right consistency in the batter, but next time, I'll definitely use at least half regular brown sugar.

I tried baking them two different ways: one batch was just rolled up and plopped onto the baking sheet while the second batch was smooshed with a fork before baking. Personally, I vastly prefer the latter method, but you can do it whichever way you prefer.

Either way, really great recipe: simple, classic, low-sugar, and delicious. Just what I needed to end this crappy week on a sweet note. If you give 'em a try, let me know how they turn out.

Happy baking, y'all!

"Oops" doesn't hold up in court

Quick note, fellow diabetic-baked goods lovers: It has recently come to my attention that the recipes I have been publishing from The Big Book of Diabetic Desserts are copyright protected and should therefore NOT be reproduced, even on my teensy little blog. So I've taken them all down. Sorry.

I will continue to use and cite recipes from the book, but now the burden of hunting down said recipes will be on you. To help out, I will always provide the name and page number of each recipe, both from this cookbook and any others I use in the future. Also, if the recipe is available online, I promise to link to it.

Sorry for any inconvenience, folks. When I'm cool enough to make up my own recipes, I will publish them with abandon. For now, though, student loans are starting to come due, so I really can't afford a lawsuit.

That's all for now. Happy litigation-free baking, y'all!

* Upon suggestion from one of my beloved library friends, here is a link to the cookbook at the public library for those of you living in the Charlotte/Mecklenburg area.

Goodbyes...and mocha fudge cake

Nothing hurts quite like saying goodbye to good friends. But at least there's always chocolate to help soften the blow.



Tonight we threw a going-away dinner party for a couple of awesome ladies who are leaving the area to go be badass social workers elsewhere. In their honor, I decided to experiment with a new and exciting chocolate cake recipe, as well as fun new decorating tools.

Turning once again to my beloved Big Book of Diabetic Desserts, I decided on the "Mocha Fudge Sheet Cake," except I don't like sheet cakes, so mine was a layer cake. Six in one, cake batter in the other...

Having chosen the cake recipe, I decided to experiment with another frosting. My dream is to one day find a diabetic-friendly frosting that is as pretty and functional as regular buttercream frosting, so that I may make lavishly beautiful cakes, like this one from Bakerella:



Alas, however, such a recipe has not yet been found. Of course, my decorating skills aren't anywhere near there yet anyway, so I guess it's a waiting game all around. Nonetheless, this recipe from Splenda.com seemed to have some promise, so I gave it a whirly-do.

Whirly-don't.

Granted, my thermometer was off, so that may have had something to do with the final product. Ultimately, though, it was a thin, runny, way-too-sweet mess. To top it off, the recipe only made enough icing to barely coat the top of one cake layer. But it served it's purpose well enough as the layer-glue. I just wouldn't recommend it for any more than that.

Ultimately, I was pressed for time, so I cheated and bought Pillsbury reduced-sugar chocolate icing, and used a regular french vanilla icing with food coloring for the garnish. The look of it didn't turn out too bad, if I do say so myself (though my hand-lettering clearly needs a lot of work):




As for taste, it was pretty darn good. Next time, I think I'll use more canola oil as the final product was a little dry and crumbly. But overall, a pretty decent cake, and an excellent party.

Happy baking, y'all!

...Aaaaaannnnnd we're back!

OK, well, where to begin?! A little over 2 months since my last post, and a lot has happened. Here's the short version:

Easter happened. I baked a cake:



It was OK. Not great. The cake recipe was too spongy for something this structured, and the icing was not unlike sweetened Elmer's glue. I'm still on the hunt for a suitable diabetic-friendly frosting recipe; suggestions are welcome and encouraged. If anybody's dying for the bunny cake recipe, let me know, and I'll dig it out. Otherwise, moving on.

So, after Easter, grad school EXPLODED! There was no time for baking, friends, eating, talking, or breathing. We did, however, manage to squeeze in a trip to Chicago to visit the new nephew...and he helped me write my masters paper:



Finally, I finished the masters paper and went out for celebratory hashbrowns at Waffle House:



Then I graduated:



And somewhere along the way, I made these awesome (if slightly too sweet) brownies:



(Recipe provided upon request)

And that's pretty much been the past two months. And now, on to the present! Coming up next I bring you: MOCHA FUDGE CAKE! Stay tuned.

Baking fail

Hey folks-

My apologies that there are no delectable baked goods for your viewing and reading pleasure this week. I had so wanted to have tried out the diabetic friendly sugar cookies by now, but alas. For anyone who's unaware, in addition to being a diabetic and a feminist, I am also a grad student in her final month of the program, so my weekends may occassionally be occupied by sugar-free endeavors of the non-baking varieties (there is certainly NOTHING sweet about all the work I have on my plate right now).

Anywhoodle, my apologies. Sugar cookies will have to wait. In the meantime, though, I'm open to suggestions for how to go about decorating the 3-D Easter bunny cake for which my mother has supplied the pan. Now, there are children in my family, so I don't want to make the bunny bleed or anything...but something other than white fur with pink ears would certainly liven things up a bit.

So, suggest away, and there will be pictures and a detailed account of the Bunny Cake Adventure next week.

Happy Easter, y'all.

"B" is for Banana Bread!

As y'all may or may not have heard, this week marked the end of yet another Bush Administration error. On Monday, a federal judge ordered the FDA to lift the Bush Administration-imposed ban on women under 18 procurring Plan B emergency contraception ("the morning after pill") without a prescription. The judge also urged the FDA to lift all restrictions on access to Plan B. We are now one step closer to ensuring that all women can avail themselves of safe and accessible contraception. So, in honor of the enhanced accessibility of Plan B, I bring you...banana bread!



This banana bread was sort of my own "plan B," as it were. I recently bought a bunch of bananas from Food Lion with the intention of eating them with my breakfast. They were Dole bananas, rather than my regular Chiquita bananas, but hey, a banana is a banana, right? Wrong! Oh, so very wrong. As it turns out, Dole bananas are incredibly sweet. As a matter of fact, in my opinion, they are disgustingly sweet. There is so much sweet, in fact, one can barely taste the banana. To say the least, I was displeased. So, I ran out and bought some of my beloved Chiquitas, but the conservationist in me just couldn't heave perfectly decent, if inedible, bananas into the compost. Finally, I decided that, in terms of bananas, what's bad for breakfast can be great for bread! And, as it turns out, I was right.





This bread tastes amazing! The walnuts were a great substitution, though I'd certainly be open to trying the chocolate chips next time. The bread was crispy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside, and was particularly great with a little butter. The only trick seemed to be getting it to bake all the way through. This seems to be a recurring issue with banana bread; it can look quite done on the outside, but still be a goopy mess on the inside, especially near the bottom of the loaf, so make sure you always use a knife or skewer to stick down all the way to bottom of the bread pan when checking for doneness.

Overall, though, this is a tasty, healthy, low-sugar bread. In fact, I think it'll be perfect for breakfast :)

That's all for now, folks. Be sure to tune in next week when I start experimenting with decorating low-sugar sugar-cookies; this could seriously get ugly. Happy baking, y'all!

Oatmeal Cookie Update!

Last night's post was written immediately post-baking. The cookies were still warm, and as such, were perhaps not a great representation of the final, final product. So, a day and several cookies later, I've now drawn the hard-won conclusion that, in fact, after everything...the cookies are still awesome.

After cooling down and "settling," the cookies proved to be extremely moist and suprisingly light. They have a nice, warm brown-sugar smoothness to them with just a hint of a cinnamon kick. It occurs to me that it was technically incorrect of me to substitute the 1/2 c. dark brown sugar with the 1/2 c. Splenda Brown Sugar Blend (SBSB), only because the SBSB package instructs you to cut the amount by half when substituting for brown sugar; in other words, I should technically only have used 1/4 c. of the SBSB. But rules are for people who don't have a better idea, and I, for one, am quite pleased with the end result. (It is worth noting, though, that if you want a crispier cookie, reducing the SBSB wouldn't be a bad idea).

These cookies have passed two important tests today: 1) I've eaten several of them without going into a coma (or even significanly raising my glucose levels) and 2) They were a hit with the ladies in the Women's Group I facilitate out at the homeless outreach center where I work (and those ladies don't bullshit, believe me).

So, the oatmeal cookies were a hit. I think my next experiment from The Big Book of Diabetic Desserts will be the sugar cookies; I'm hoping to find a way to combine the diabetic sugar cookie recipe with the skills I pick up from Cookie Craft to make awesome Easter cookies for the fam (and a big thanks to my idol, Bakerella, for turning me on to the Cookie Craft book in the first place). But Easter's still a ways off, so I'm open to suggestions for what I should try out in the meantime. Pies, cakes, breads? Oh my!

"Crispy" Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

I just found this amazing cookbook, The Big Book of Diabetic Desserts: Decadent and Delicious Recipes Perfect for People with Diabetes, by Jackie Mills. Published by the American Diabetes Association, the book contains "over 150 recipes that meet the ADA nutrition guidelines for people with diabetes." From what I can tell, most of the recipes call for some amount of real sugar, sometimes combining the real thing with a sugar substitute. But the real sugar amounts are low, and complete nutritional information is provided for each recipe. I just checked this out from my local library, and I already realize I'm going to have to buy my own copy in order to have time to try everything I want. (Also, if I have my own copy, I can spill things on it to my heart's content; a clean cookbook is an unloved cookbook).

So for my first experiment, I tried the "Crispy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies." I love love looooove Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies, and this was the first low-sugar version I've found that wasn't absurdly complicated. And I have to say, they came out pretty darn good. They were definitely more chewy than "crispy," but that's how I like them, so I really didn't mind at all.




If anyone else gives this a try, let me know how it turns out for you.

That's all for now, y'all. Happy baking!

Hello and welcome!

Howdy! Welcome to Beyond Sugar and Spice, the diabetic baking blog with a feminist bent. Thanks for dropping in.

So, a little about me and my motivation for starting this blog:

I love to bake... a lot. I also love to eat what I bake. When I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes a little over a year ago, I thought my days of baking tasty treats that I could also enjoy were over. But not so! Since then, I've discovered a whole world of sugar free and low sugar baking recipes, many of which you'd never know weren't the "real" (i.e. sugar-riffic) thing. But all baking can be tricky, and diabetic baking can be a special challenge...particularly when you're working with sugar substitutes. And some "diabetic" baking recipes seem to make the assumption that having diabetes means you no longer have taste buds. Nothing is more frustrating than plugging away at a new recipe, only to find in the end that even the dog won't eat it. So my hope for this blog is that it will help other diabetic bakers, and bakers in general, weed out the bad recipes, get the most out of the good ones, and have a lot of fun along the way.

So, that's the "diabetic baker" part of this little enterprise, but I imagine you're wondering where feminism fits in? Well, for one thing, I am a feminist, and proud of it. In fact, feminism is at least partially responsible for my love of baking. I started baking in college to raise money for various women's rights organizations for which I volunteered, and realized in the process that I got a great deal of enjoyment out of both the baking itself and the watching people enjoy what I'd made. But more to the point, there's been some discussion lately about the rise of traditional "domesticity" among young women who call themselves feminists, with some folks arguing that you cannot be a feminist while partaking in such traditional "feminine" activities. So let's get something straight; I bake (and knit, for that matter) because I genuinely enjoy it, and not because I feel I "should," or because I'm being ironic. And what is the point of feminism, after all, if not to ensure that women, and all peoples for that matter, may do and be as they choose?

So, in the spirit of freedom of choice, I'm glad you've chosen to take a look at the blog, and I hope you enjoy what you find!