use real butter

Recipe: baked chocolate doughnuts

There is a big bowl of chocolate candies sitting on our kitchen counter. We didn’t get a single trick-or-treater this year. I mean, we don’t typically get very many kids hoofing it up to our house, but we’ve had as many as a dozen on Halloweens past. It doesn’t help that it was cold and windy. I like Halloween so very much for a lot of reasons. First off, it’s a no guilt holiday (for me) that doesn’t involve obligation, travel, or cooking a massive meal. Secondly, it’s FUN and creative and also a little scary! But it’s not TOO scary because little kids are involved, and that’s good because I can pretty much handle “little kid” levels of scary. Thirdly – it is the anniversary of our first date, followed by November 1st, our smoochiversary.

20 years ago on the shores of the olympic peninsula

Jeremy and I have been together for 21 years, which is essentially half of my life… but all of my heart. He is the very best person I have ever known. And when the very best person you have ever known likes chocolate and cake and doughnuts, it’s absolutely appropriate to make chocolate cake doughnuts, don’t you think?

vanilla, brown sugar, cocoa, baking soda, salt, butter, eggs, flour, buttermilk

flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt

mix the dry ingredients together

Every time I’ve made doughnuts in the past, I have fried them. I think fried dough is one of the perks of being human. We have opposable thumbs, we can make doughnuts. But deep frying stuff is a pain in the ass unless you have a deep fryer, which I don’t want to own. A few weeks ago, I finally broke down and purchased doughnut pans. I usually cringe at the thought of acquiring such task-specific bakeware, but figured I could get some good mileage out of these pans if the baked doughnuts were a success.

adding buttermilk to the brown sugar, vanilla, eggs

whisk in melted butter

combine the wet and dry ingredients

the batter should be thick and smooth

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pumpkin crème brûlée

Pumpkin season is upon us and I’m not referring to pumpkin spice lattes, although they are certainly out there. I’m talking about cute chubby toddlers staggering around pumpkin patches like small drunk people. Or carving your Halloween pumpkin into The Death Star. Roasting pumpkin seeds to snack on later. I don’t overdo it in our house because I understand the dangers of pumpkin fatigue – it has to last through the holidays. But I do get excited about trying something new and pumpkiny every autumn. And don’t you think they should have been named plumpkins?

eggs, vanilla bean, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, pumpkin, cream

I know it is de rigueur to break down a whole pumpkin, but I have a lot of canned pumpkin in my pantry throughout the year because I make Kaweah’s dog treats from scratch every few weeks. It’s especially handy when you need just a little bit of pumpkin to make pumpkin crème brûlée, and Kaweah didn’t mind sharing because she’s sweet like that.

scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean

steep the vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg in the cream

whisk the yolks and sugar together

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chanterelle mushroom hand pies

Autumn is the fleetingest of fleeting seasons in the mountains, or so it seems. Sunday felt like real winter as we hiked snowy trails, falling snowflakes caught up in our hair and settling on our hats, gloves, and the tops of our packs. Our last trail run left my calves sore from all the slipping and sliding on ice. Not quite enough snow to ski, but enough to warrant wearing traction devices for running. Shoulder season puts me in a mindset for winter. I can’t wait!

high winds sculpt beautiful clouds

snowy stream crossings

Cold is relative. Two months ago, 40°F felt chilly to me. Now, it feels warm as we enjoy temperatures dipping below freezing. I know in a few months, 40°F will be a veritable heat wave. Jeremy is a little more sensitive to the cold than I am. It’s probably because I have plenty of personal warmth (read: body fat) and he doesn’t. His hands and feet are always cold. He turns on his seat heater in both cars starting in September all the way through June. I saw a box of hand warmers for sale at Costco last week – 40 pair for something like $15. Then I had a mental image of taping an entire suit of hand warmers to Jeremy’s body and chuckled to myself. Moving on to the refrigerated produce section, I got the vegetables I needed and proceeded to leave – until I spotted something magical. It was nearly the equivalent joy of finding a porcini in the mountains – except this was a whole pound of fresh chanterelle mushrooms for $9. I grabbed one. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I knew I was going to do something.

let’s make hand pies!

chanterelles, puff pastry, gruyère, egg, garlic, butter, salt, bacon, thyme, wine, cream, pepper

brush the mushrooms clean

**Jump for more butter**