This sugary guilty pleasure comes once a year for me at Halloween. I pay no attention to all the other candy that floods the shelves at supermarkets. I only have eyes for Brach’s Autumn Mix! It only comes out during this season and, frankly, I think I’m one of a handful of people who actually likes this. It tastes like compressed plastic sugar, to be honest! When I picked a small bag of the treats from the drugstore shelf today, one of my friends said, “HOW can you EAT that stuff?” I guess it’s more a tradition for me—eating this means it’s definitely Halloween, and we’ll soon be on our way to Christmas. I don’t eat candy corn any other time of the year, for the same reason.

I remember how Halloween was such an alien concept to me growing up in the Philippines. Our “Halloween” traditions fell on All Saint’s Day (November 1) and All Soul’s Day (November 2). This meant gathering as a family in cemeteries, cleaning the family plots, picnicking among the tombstones and several rounds of mah-jong and poker well into the night. The cemetery would be full of people; I remember bumping into friends from school throughout the day as my cousins and I played all over the graveyard (kind of morbidly awesome, now that I think about it). There were food vendors who hawked their wares, selling everything from freshly made sugar-coated peanuts to sticky-sweet cotton candy that melted in the wind and on your tongue.

I guess all traditions, be they old or new, are always sweet.

Hope you have a happy Halloween!

Fabric makes me happy! Especially when they’re as cute as these…

…and even more so when they’re from home. I actually bought the one with the graphic trees printed on it several years ago from one of the stalls in Market! Market! at Fort Bonifacio in Manila. I’ve kept it for years and finally had the chance to make a tote out of it and some complementing fabric for a friend’s birthday.

I would’ve never picked the two other solids to go with it but my brother, with his artist’s all-seeing eye, suggested them. He also showed me an exercise of testing out different ratios of each to see what I liked best. (The very straightforward crafter in me would have just done all even stripes!)

Sewing this was very matter of fact, just straight lines to join, using muslin to line and including a gusset. Simple sewing doesn’t mean it’s any less fun, though!

A final touch were these stitched broken lines done in embroidery floss. I really like how there’s a handstitched addition to it.

Another experiment in color and combining different sewing techniques that brought a smile to a friend’s face. Isn’t handcraftedness just awesome? Like, tote-ally!

These cookies were a star in my (extensive) childhood snacking repertoire, except the ones I remember came in a plastic package that we used to buy on Sundays after church in the grocery store. They were manufactured (and maybe still are) by a food company called Fibisco (which, come to think of it was the Filipino version of Nabisco!).

One other memorable thing about them: They were hard as rocks! I used to take some out of the package and leave them out to soften. They were my favorite things to take on fishing trips with Papa. I kept them wrapped in tissue in a fanny pack (it was the 80s, get over it!) and munched on them as I explored tide pools on whatever island we docked on for lunch.

That memory prompted a baking fit last weekend. I wanted to see if I could make soft versions of one of my favorite cookies, and this recipe didn’t disappoint. It’s earned a spot in my cookie file!

It’s chock-full of delicious things in it, like fall-favorite spices and molasses. Surprisingly, a couple of teaspoons of orange juice, too!

I did test runs on baking times at 9 minutes per batch were perfect. I even did three test versions: no sugar coating, half sugar coating and full sugar coating. E. and I decided the third one was the best of the bunch.

These cookies came out with crisp edges but soft, chewy centers. So good!

And since these were cookies from my childhood, I decided to store them in a retro Tupperware canister, too. I love the classic ridges on the cover, and that button you push down for sealing. I love these things! There’s something truly comforting about reaching for your favorite cookie in a cookie “jar” from when you were a kid.

This little cooking project made me remember other goodies from my childhood, and I started a list to see if I can re-create them. Someday, I hope. I’ve seen a resurgence of homemade whoopie pies, Pop Tarts, Hostess Cupcakes, etc. on other blogs. Which means I can try my hand, too, at little baking gems from the sweet days of my childhood, yes? Homemade Choco Mallows, anyone?

Again, if you missed the link to the recipe for these Soft Gingersnaps above, HERE it is.

On the kitchen counter, she’d set out the ingredients: Flour bag, sugar box, two brown eggs nestled in the grooves between tiles. A yellow block of butter blurring at the edges. A shallow glass bowl of lemon peel. I toured the row. This was the week of my ninth birthday, and it had been a long day at school of cursive lessons, which I hated, and playground yelling about point scoring, and the sunlit kitchen and my warm-eyed mother were welcome arms, open. I dipped a finger into the wax baggie of brown- sugar crystals, murmured yes, please, yes.

— The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender

One of the most awesome things about having a brother in art school is gaining insight on something I used to be blind to: color. All these years, I’ve been ignorant to what color is capable of in the things I craft.

Through many conversations with my Manong (big brother), I’ve come to realize that most of what I know about color relationships is based on memory: If I’ve seen a combination of colors used in a pleasing way, then I know those colors go together. Which is why, for many years, I knew pink and gray worked, but only because the curtains in my aunt’s office were a soft dove gray with a pink sash. My aunt was our guidance counselor in high school, and I would sit in her office to wait to walk home with her and my cousins, and stare at those curtains, loving the way they looked in the open window.

All I really knew were standard, utilitarian color combos. Like yellow and blue, because in grade school we wore navy blue culottes and schoolbus-yellow t-shirts in P.E. class, which I always thought looked kind of retro-athletic chic (except I was never athletic and always sat on the sidelines with the water jugs).

In the same token, if I’ve never seen a color combination in use before, it will never occur to me. A gifted eye, of course, will not just see color relationships, but will also understand them. How one hue makes the other either more stark or muted, how a palette’s visual weight lacks one color or two to make it truly appeal to the senses. My brother has this gift. I ask him his color opinions with almost every craft project I do. He’ll look at what I’m working with, do this squinty thing with his eyes, and tell me what he thinks. It’s never what I expect, and his suggestions always work.

I’m fascinated by the way Manong understands color, and after many questions about what works with what and arguments like my old dislike of the color purple (His words: “You should be color agnostic.”), I got this as a Christmas gift from him last year: a pocket color wheel.

He explained to me how it works, and I nodded along. I felt kind of silly about it at first, because the only time I ever studied a color wheel was in art class in grade school. So, honestly, that’s what I thought about this new toy—elementary. How could I need and use a thing I learned about in finger-painting class? In my arrogance, I didn’t use that thing for months.

But then one day a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to make some jewelry and was tired of all the usual things I put together. You know, like yellow and pink (from a copy of this Degas painting that hung—and is still there—in my bedroom when I was growing up)….

…red and black (from this snapshot in my head of Audrey Hepburn wearing a black dress and hat, holding a bunch of red balloons in the movie Funny Face)….

and green and pink (from some Amy Butler fabric I really liked).

I had suddenly run out of memories to get color ideas from. I needed inspiration, and I spied my color wheel tucked in between random stuff next to my sewing machine. I fished it out and decided I would see if the thing really worked. Manong had explained that the wheel can pick out triads of colors (among other combos) that worked pleasingly together. I decided to see if it would work on my gems.

The wheel said if I worked with purple, green and golden yellow that they would complement each other as they were split complimentary colors. Ew, I thought, that sounds wrong! Ignoring the haughty voice in my head, I scanned my gem trays, pulled together the three colors suggested by the color wheel and set to work.

After I tightened the last knot on the second piece and hung it with its pair, I was nothing short of amazed. Look how cute!

I mean, honestly, I would’ve NEVER used those colors together if not for the color wheel. Separately, they’re nothing to write home about, but together, they play off against each other and show each other up. They just WORK. I was floored. The color wheel does not lie!

Manong once told me that color is a language. And like any language, you have to learn enough words in to convey something understandable. The more you know about it, the better you’re able to express yourself with it. I know I don’t fully understand color, and I doubt I ever will to the level that he does, but now at least I’m curious and interested and excited about learning more. And I think for my brother, that’s all that really matters.

I sent him a picture of what I made and told him, “I wouldn’t have picked those three colors out! They don’t make sense!”

“What do you mean?” he said. “Violet and yellow and green? They make TOTAL sense.”

Right, Manong, and thank you.

By the way, a pocket color wheel only costs $3 bucks. Worth its weight in gold (and red, and blue, and pink….)

—————–

This post isn’t just about encouraging you to be open to new things, or to try truly exploring color in your crafting pursuits. It’s also a tribute to my brother, to congratulate him for his biggest art installation yet. Last week six of his large-scale pieces went up in the lobby of the Theater Arts building of Santa Monica College. He didn’t get enough (or at all?) sleep to do this, and I hear his girlfriend Anajay was right there in the trenches with him, with input of varying degrees from my mother on the virtues of fusible interfacing. Congratulations, Manong. You are awesome. Commence world domination!

…and it was fantastic.

My first introduction to Dorie Greenspan wasn’t through one of her many cookbooks. I actually got to know Dorie through her blog, which I tripped over on the world wide web when I was looking for information on French macarons. This invariably led me to Pierre Hermé, the famous French pastry chef considered to be the authority on the dessert. Dorie has written two cookbooks with Hermé, one with Julia Child, another with Daniel Boulud…plus several more of her own recipes. She’s worked with all these rockstars in the culinary world, and I’m in complete awe of her. Even more, I LOVE her blog! It feels very “in the world” to me, not just another cooking blog. Stories matter to me, I  figure, it much the same way as they do to her.

Which brings me to the story of this cake. Dorie calls this her All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake and I’ve been wanting to make it since last year. That’s a long time to wait for a baker like me! But certain flavors are exactly perfect for the seasons that inspired them. We had just gotten back from our leaf-peeping in the mountains and the weather had significantly cooled down in Los Angeles. I woke up to a slight nip in the air one day last week and realized that fall was finally in the city. This season is my favorite time for cooking, and all of a sudden, I wanted, no NEEDED to make a cake. It was I’ll-implode-if-I-don’t-cream-some-butter-and-sugar bad, so I plunged right in. Made a beautiful mess in the kitchen, just the kind of mess I like making.

I have to say one of the best kitchen doodads is this Adjust A Cup that I had gotten from kitchen supply outlet. It’s the perfect tool for the packed pumpkin puree used in the cake because you just push it through and it slides out cleanly. No more incessant spatula scraping. I imagine it would be just as awesome for stuff like applesauce, shortening and any semi-solid thingamaroos. Maybe even honey or molasses.

This cake has all the favorite flavors of fall: apples, pumpkin, cranberries, nutmeg, cinnamon, fresh ginger and pecans. It calls for fresh cranberries, but I jumped the gun on the season for those things and saw none at the market. Dried cranberries were just fine, though I had to cut the granulated sugar by about 1/4 cup to account for the sweetness of the dried fruit.

The recipe yielded a moist cake that was just right as a sweet thing to start off the morning with some coffee or tea. I just sprinkled some powdered  sugar on top; Dorie suggests a maple syrup glaze, but I didn’t want the folks at work to be jumping off the walls from all that sugar!

This cake can be made in advance, a good thing for the busy holidays when you’re preparing full meals and don’t have time to be worrying about brunch the following day. If you missed the link to the recipe above, HERE IT IS again.

So, yes, this cake has elevated a mere curiosity about Dorie Greenspan to a wide-eyed fascination of her recipes and the stories behind them. Which means it’s time to start my Christmas List!

#1

#2

Tee hee!

Looking forward to more Dorie-ness in the days ahead.

…this quilt for baby was sealed with a kiss!”

I made a quilt for my niece Thérèse when she turned two a little before I left for my vacation. I was sewing furiously to try and get it to her by her birthday party, crawling around on the floor of our apartment for most of the process because I simply don’t have a sewing table big enough to lay all the pieces out. My ankle, which I had sprained over a month ago, started to complain during my quilting/basting contortions and I pulled an inner thigh muscle smoothing out my quilt layers. What a workout!

But, like any crafter will tell you, it’s always worth it. I know there are lots of beautiful quilts out there that I can buy, but nothing beats handcrafted ones. And to be able to put pieces like these together, no matter how simple the assembly may be, and to step back in the end and say, “I made that for you!” is what the crafter in me lives for.

This quilt started with a printed Maisy panel that I found over at my new online love, The Fat Quarter Shop. They have an excellent collection of fabric that made my wallet cower in fear. Plus, they got my order to me in two shakes of a lamb’s tail (which, as far as tail shakes go, is pretty darn fast). Many of my online hours have been devoted to going through all their stuff, which is dangerous territory, really; I need more fabric like I need a whole in my head.

Thérèse is learning words and numbers, and I love how the panel has both, with bright colors and pictures.

And what’s not to love about a number-counting, word-saying, elephant-balancing mouse? Maisy is the beloved character from British illustrator Lucy Cousins. This intrepid mouse is also the star of her own animated series and a gabajillion (which, as far as jillions go, is a LOT!) books and DVDs.

When I packaged this up to send to the little girl, I included other Maisy things for her to enjoy. Something for Thérèse to read or watch as she snuggles up to her new quilt.

Like this! (Check at the furrowed brows. Reading is serious business!)

After finishing the quilt around 10 p.m. I thought I was done with it. But then again, I knew I wasn’t. I’ve always wanted to do a personal label on a quilt. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t at least try (crazy much?). So with needle and embroidery floss in hand, I sat down with some Friends reruns on TV and stitched the final touch.

The appliqued heart is blue because that’s Thérèse’s favorite color. (And “Tita,” to those who are wondering, is “Auntie” in Filipino.) The red letters are done in split stitches, so they would have a bit of weight to them. The next morning, I looked at the embroidery in the daylight and laughed. “Look,” I told E., “the kerning’s all off.” Haha. I was copyediting my own stitched words.

I went to work that day in a daze. I had finished stitching the whole thing around 1 a.m. and was still recovering from sewing every night after work to beat the birthday deadline. I was tired and my aching muscles reminded me I wasn’t as spring chicken-y as I remembered.

Was it worth it?

You can absolutely bet.