ADVENTURES IN BAKING FOR MENZ OR OTHER FOLKS
So, listen. Anyone knows that if you want to get a manz, you have to know how to bake him a pie. And it can't be a pie that will murder him because then you'll have no manz. So, with that in mind—and also mainly because I got invited to a dinner party and was asked to bring dessert and I yearn to impress people who probably couldn't care less—I decided to bake something this week! Something that didn't involve dumping a can of Diet Pepsi into a bowl of chocolate-flavored powder or reading instructions off a Manischewitz box. It wasn't pie, though, it was those crumb bars up there, so I have no idea why I brought up pie.
This recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, and the author of the blog claims that it's incredibly easy to do. But she is not me, so what does she know. Also, it involves making dough from SCRATCH, and how easy can that be? But I was lured in by the beauty of that photo above. "Look how pretty!" I said. And I was filled with an ill-advised desire to be the girl who makes pies for her manz even though it's not a pie and I have no manz.
Anyway, I had to buy most of the ingredients for this not-pie because I never bake, so I didn't own things like baking powder and cornstarch. (Now I do, though. Help?) What I didn't buy was flour because I already owned flour, for some reason. But I didn't realize that it was kind of, uh, old. Not until I dumped it in the bowl, that is. But it had been sitting in tupperware, so I figured it was probably okay? I weighed the possible outcomes:
1) This shit will taste musty but because people don't want to hurt my feelings, they won't say anything about it. Lose for them, win for me. 2) Everyone will get food poisoning and probably blame it on something that I didn't make. Again, lose for them, win for me.
So in went the stank flour. Along with two sticks of butter (gross), which I had to mash in with a FORK? Do you know how hard that is to do? People who bake must be strong as hell. That shit took years.
Then I had to ZEST A LEMON which is something that no sane person should do. I made some goop with the lemon's juice and gave all these berries a goop bath. I ended up buying twice as many blueberries as I actually needed, so now I can chuck the extras at local children. Look how blue they are! Those are some fucking blue-ass blueberries. It was a shame to cover them with more of the stank dough.
See, not as pretty.
So then this shit went into the oven for 45 minutes. By this point, I had spilled flour all over everything I own, so cleanup took a little while. I spent the rest of the time watching old Bloodhound Gang videos on YouTube. (When I was 18, I thought the line "Like a scrotum, here it is in a nutshell" was very funny. Admitting this sort of thing will also not help to get you a manz. Or maybe it will?)
SO THEN IT WAS DONE. And it actually looked good! Pleased with my accomplishment and amazed that I hadn't burned down my new apartment, I threw that shit in the fridge and went out for beer and liquor. When I got home, I had plans to cut the things into squares for the party, but before I made it into my apartment, I ran into my new cute upstairs neighbor who expressed interest in a) my name, b) how long I had been in the building, and 3) where I lived before. Then he told me to "have a beautiful night" and, being somewhere between flustered, amused, and horrified, I missed my golden opportunity to show a manz my wondrous crumb bars.
("Crumb bars" is now a metaphor for "sweaty underthings," btdubs.)
Anyway, it was all good because cutting these things and extracting them from the pan turned out to be even more of a pain in the ass than making them in the first place.
All that shit was left over at the end. But have no fear—I scraped it up and ate it all. Because if hunching over a pan to chow down on dough leavings after midnight isn't sexy, then I don't know what is. The world owes me a debt.
Anyway, ta-da: not-pie, aka blueberry crumb bars. They don't look nearly as pretty as they do in the Smitten Kitchen photo, so clearly I need to work on my pastry cutting and also get some mood lighting for my kitchen. If they go over well and no one dies of food poisoning, maybe I'll make them again, now that I own baking powder and cornstarch and 18 lbs. of additional blueberries. Or maybe I'll punch myself in the head! STAY TUNED.