Pumpkin Tahini Waffles (featuring my baby girl Elsa!)

All I can think to do this week, all of my wandering thoughts, all of my lazy moments, they center around the bed. It's cold here (finally). Usually in the thirties when I wake up in the night looking for a blanket. Instead, I find an arm to hold me. A dog to cuddle with. A light that pulses through the branches of the trees when a car comes down the hill that our window overlooks.

It's usually grey from 6 until about 9 here. Foggy, sometimes so dense I don't even see the trees. Sometimes the water in the creek is so silent you can hear the squirrels padding along its bank. Sometimes Nolan's smoke and my breath and the coffee's steam all meanders above our heads like thought bubbles in old comics.

And so I think of relaxing in bed, even though we've been too busy to lately. I think of lounging. I think of the ten minutes it takes to put this recipe together and the half hour of waking up, bleary-eyed, while the coffee gets cold. It's my favorite time of day, I think. 

Pumpkin Tahini Waffles

Ingredients:

• 2 cup flour
• 3 teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 TB white vinegar
• 1/2 TB pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup tahini
• 1 TB orange zest
• 1 TB molasses
• 2 TB honey

Directions:

1. Prep and grease your waffle iron
2. While iron heats, sift together all dry ingredients
3. In a measuring cup, whisk together all wet ingredients and orange zest until frothy
4. Create a well in the center of the flour mixture
5. Slowly pour in your wet mixture, while stirring in the contents (I found that a rubber spatula actually worked great here)
6. Using a ladle, pour batter into iron
7. Bake waffles to waffle maker's directions
8. Repeat with remaining batter

And here you can see that Elsa enjoyed the waffles, too! (Plus, I threw in a cute one of her because ISN'T SHE BEAUTIFUL!)

A Muffin for this In-Between Month

Decidedly, increasingly, it's getting colder around here. The dogs sleep on the bed with us, Murphy and Milo in the middle, sandwiched by my body and Nolan's. The window stays open and sometimes a stray moth floats in. If we bat it down with a tissue box or sock, it turns to dust and tumbles down.

I can't seem to stay awake. I can't seem to do much of anything, but everything is getting done. That's why I'm not a huge fan of September, because it's the in-between. It's the un-season. It's has the lazy transient waltz of earthworms and bumblebees. I want it to be over. I want it to be October. I want to celebrate my niece's birthday and wear layers and sit facing one of our pastures and dream of what comes next.

But in the meantime, we have our chores. I was cleaning out a cupboard when I found some muffin liners I thought were gone. I found some tahini, too, tucked behind a bottle of olive oil. And so I made muffins. Big, hearty ones. Ones that have a hint of molasses, a hint of fall on the tongue to keep us satiated and still waiting. 

Tahini Ginger Muffins

Ingredient:

• 1 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1/2 cup almond meal
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup tahini
• 4 TB unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs +1 yolk
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• 2 TB molasses
• 3 TB candied ginger, roughly chopped
• 2 teaspoon sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375*F and prepare your muffin tin (I used a large muffin tin, if you use smaller, baking time will be reduced by 10 min or so)
2. Sift together flour, almond meal, baking powder, and salt
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together tahini, butter, and sugar
4. Add eggs and mix to combine. It will look a little lumpy at this stage
5. In a measuring cup, whisk together milk, vanilla, and molasses
6. With mixer on low, alternate adding your milk mixture and flour mixture to your tahini mixture
7. Once a batter forms, fold in ginger
8. Evenly distribute between your muffin tins
9. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top
10. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
11. These muffins are good for up to 4 days in an airtight container

Tahini Buckeye Truffles

My sister and I are creating new traditions, facsimiles of who we were once. People used to think we were twins--same haircut, height, and mannerisms. We grew apart, became different people. Still are, but we found a way to communicate that is at once reminiscent and on another hand completely foreign to us both.

Two days ago, I was at her house and we baked dozens of cookies. The kind my father liked, the kind my mother liked. Last week, my parents went over to her house and my mother and sister made candies. I was not able to make it, prior commitments I sometimes force on myself to keep an arms length with my family. My mother brought me back cherry cordials and lemon-flavored hard candies. I snacked on one while she told me about her day and how beautiful my niece, Lana, was. 

It's one tradition that has lasted, making candies by hand as presents. I was in charge of buckeyes this year, the cyclopean truffle that is just peanut butter and chocolate. I morphed it to my tastes, to who I am these days. Added some tahini and a little flaked sea salt. I'll bring them to her house on Sunday. And I'll smile, knowing the centrifugal force of holidays, how it all comes full circle and then falls into place. 

Tahini Buckeye Truffles

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup tahini (or 1 1/2 cup tahini, as a substitute of the TB)
• 3/4 cup peanut butter (or 1 1/2 cup PB, as a substitute of the tahini)
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 4 1/2 - 5 cups confectioner's sugar
• 8 oz milk chocolate, chopped
• 6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 TB sesame seed
• 1 teaspoon flaked sea salt

Directions:

1. First, prepare two pans with cooling racks for your truffles to rest on
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together your tahini, peanut butter, butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until well blended
3. One cup at a time, slowly pour in your confectioner's sugar with the mixer on its lowest setting. Add just enough sugar so that a crumbly dough forms
4. Roll out onto a work surface that is dusted with confectioner's sugar and knead a couple times to form a disc
5. Wrap disc in plastic wrap and allow to rest in the fridge for 15 minutes
6. When 10 minutes have elapsed, melt your chocolate either in a microwave or a double broiler (see author's note below)
7. Take disc out of the fridge and unwrap back on your sugar-dusted work surface
8. Pinch off about a 1/2 TB of the tahini mixture and roll in your hands to form a ball
9. Roll in your chocolate with a fork and allow to harden on the cooling rack
10. Sprinkle with a little sesame seed and salt
11. Repeat with remaining filling
12. Can be stored in a container for up to a week

Note: I gave two methods for melting chocolate here because I know people have their preferences (and their qualms). If using a double broiler, you're golden, but it may take a bit of time for the chocolate to melt, which is fine as the longer the dough stays in the fridge the better anyway. For the microwave option, only add 2/3 of the chocolate you are melting in the bowl and heat at 30-second increments, stirring between rounds. When that chocolate is melted, add your remaining 1/3 and stir vigorously to melt fully. This is a ghetto tempering trick I learned from Ina Garten.

Home + Cake

I live just west of two creeks now, just shy of the intersection between Dunnings Creek and Bob’s Creek. In a house too big for us. In a town I used to think was too small for me. There’s a store here run by a Mennonite family. They’ll sing to you if you buy bread in the morning. Hymns about salvation, the ascension, peace on earth. I just wanted a loaf of rye.

I’m tempted to start smoking again, to fiddle with a cigarette between my lips. Breaking promises I never thought I could keep. I’m busy now, watching the houses turn from wood to vinyl to brick on my drive to the gas station. I see a horse swat aimlessly at flies with its long, shaggy tail. I look a little closer and see it’s matted in horse shit. I get angry and then get over it. I keep driving, still craving a cigarette.

I don’t buy a pack, though. Not yet at least. I think of an uncle my mother had. She called him Old Relic. He was ancient and his nails were bitten to the quick; he left small drops of blood on napkins when he’d twist them too tight in his hands. His voice wheezed and grated, his windpipe as fragile as china. At night I’d hear him snoring from the hallway, his breathing a constant moan, a motel air conditioner that’s only half-assing it.

I didn’t buy a pack and I turned around. The filthy horse didn’t even move an inch. I go back to a home that I craved for years while I lived in California. A home where the chipped paint of the back deck breaks off in large strips. The paint was called terra cotta when my mom bought it. It’s hardly blushing anymore.

It’s a home where six cats live and two dogs. Three Midwesterners still sometimes feel out of place in rural Pennsylvania, too. Cats that step in my mother’s Gold Bond powder dusting the bathroom floor. Small footprints and nothing but whispered running on the floorboards while I’m upstairs working. Cats with sleepy, glaucoma eyes that stare and blink and still trust me in their fog. A bucket of screws fell when the wind swung the door open too fast. The bath sometimes takes a half hour to drain completely.

This is the world I live in now, not the one of wanting and remembering. I see it for its beauty now, the uneasiness and the imperfections that lie just beyond the quick when I bite the nail too low, when I drive too fast on the windy roads. When I think of Old Relic and the cats that can’t see and the horse that seems to have given up on life. It’s all beautiful in its own way, because I’m letting life happen around me these days.

Orange Marmalade Cake with Tahini Frosting

Makes two 6-inch cakes

Ingredients for the cake:

• 2 cups AP flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• ½ tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 cup whole milk
• ½ cup orange marmalade
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Zest of half an orange
• 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 3 tablespoons shortening, room temperature
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs

Directions for cake:

1. Prep two six-inch pans with butter and parchment paper
2. Preheat oven to 350*F
3. In a medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside
4. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together vinegar, milk, marmalade, vanilla, and orange zest. Set aside.
5. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat fats and sugar on medium-high until light and ribbons form
6. Add eggs, one at a time
7. With mixer on low, alternate between adding the flour mixture and the milk mixture in thirds. When both are mixed in, turn mixer off and scrape bowl with rubber spatula to ensure batter is fully incorporated
8. Divide batter between prepared pans
9. Bake for 34-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Check at 30 minutes for excessive browning on top, due to the sugar content in this recipe (with the marmalade). If so, tent foil on tops of cakes
10. Allow to cool before icing cake

Ingredients for Tahini frosting:

• ½ cup tahini
• 2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2-4 tablespoons whole milk

Directions for tahini frosting:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, beat tahini and sugar together. If dry and crumbly, add a thin stream of milk until you yield your desired consistency