And so begins the Mayhem!

Last May, we had a wee bit o' the crazy going on. Taneasha was eating nothing but road food as she was being chased across the country by tornadoes, I was posting about ice cream and toads (and dumb fuck june bugs) and neighbours with guns and really, we barely made it out alive.

So, this year, we decided to do it all over again.

Of course the first thing that happens is I get locked out of the website while Taneasha is trapped in a car crossing 5 different state lines in 12 hours. And so, No Post For You! (today? yes, Tuesday? no)

We're pretty sure she's not going to be homeless in the middle of the month, but I'm evicting her from Fridays for a while.

Carrot Cake Cookies with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

(Yes, that whole thing is the name of the recipe. Yes, I'm a freaking genius to mix white chocolate and cream cheese)

What you need:

• 2-3 carrots (~1 1/2 c once grated)
• 1 c butter
• 1 1/2 csugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 2 1/2 c flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

not shown, but also worth adding

• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1 tbsp orange zest

What you gotta do:

Preheat your oven to 350.

Grate the carrots. If you do this by hand, you are insane and you probably have no skin left on your knuckles.

Since you've already got the food processor dirtied, may as well go all the way. Switch from the grater blade to the regular blade.

Dump in the butter and sugar and let the sharp things do all the work.

I was going to continue the whole recipe in the food processor, thinking I could save dishes that way, but I wasn't convinced that it would be able to hold the whole recipe's worth. Cut this recipe in half and do the whole thing in the food processor. It makes a lot of cookies anyway and you can save a few dishes.

If you're doing the full recipe, dump the sweet carrot butter into a bowl and add the egg, vanilla, and spices (and orange zest).

Mash this all together then start adding flour. I did a cup at a time and mixed well after each one.

This gradual-addition-and-lots-of-mixing method will result in a cookie with a cakier texture.

You should have a stiff, but sticky dough.

And you also should have added the baking powder with the flour... dammit.

I sprinkled about half a teaspoon of baking powder over the dough and mixed it for a couple more minutes. Seemed to work.

There are a couple ways you can make these cookies.

You can just drop spoonfuls of dough onto the cookie sheet and bake them, but they don't spread like most drop cookies. They hold their shape. So you'll probably end up patting the tops down a bit so they aren't so blobby.

You can also chill the dough for about half an hour and then roll it into balls and poke them until they're shaped like eythrocytes. (word of the day, bonus points if you know it, google it if you don't)

Bake them at 350 for about 14-16 minutes. They should be barely browning on the bottom and look dry on top.

This recipe makes 5 dozen cookies! I really recommend cutting it in half. Good luck with the egg.

Now, you could eat these as is. But no one eats carrot cake because they like it. They're all after the icing.

• 1 c cream cheese
• 1 c icing sugar
• 4 oz white chocolate

Cream the cream cheese and icing sugar together.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave on 50% power 30 seconds at a time until you can stir the last of the lumps out of it.

(yes there are only 3 oz in the bowl. I added the fourth after I decided I wanted it)

Pour the melted chocolate into the sugary cream cheese and mix well.

Making the icing is never the hard part. Icing 61 cookies with what I'm pretty sure is the world's stickiest icing is the hard part. It never really sets, and it stays sticky, even after an hour in the fridge.

But they taste damn good.

 Did you know what an erythrocyte was??

Not Cross Buns

I love hot cross buns, but I still haven't figured out how to keep yeast alive.

I am pretty good at making biscuits though. So, I'm sticking with my strength and messing with a traditional recipe.

If you're not familiar with Hot Cross Buns, they're a sweetened, spiced, fruited bread, usually served in the spring. The utilitarian version of the story is that they are made with the last of the dried fruit stores; winter is over, spring is making new fresh food, and yet you still have food in the pantry! Yay! We didn't starve to death over the winter!

Of course, like many other ancient traditions, they were appropriated by the newcomers, and added to that mythology.

They were always an Eoster breakfast thing at when I was a kid, and this time of year makes me crave them. And until the bakery starts making them, I'm going to have to come up with something of my own. 

Not Cross Buns

What you need:

• Biscuit dough
• 1/4 c dried cherries
• 1/4 c dried apricots
• 2 tbsp ginger sugar**
• any other dried fruit, candied peel, or spice you like

** I have ginger flavoured sugar leftover from making candied ginger, which would also work really well in these, but regular sugar will do fine, just add 1/4 tsp dried ginger with it.

What you gotta do:

Chop the apricots and cherries (and ginger, and orange peel, and whatever you want).

Roll out the biscuit dough into a rectangle, just like you would if you were making savoury cheese biscuits.

Put 1/4 of the fruits and sugar in a row in the middle of the rectangle.

Fold the part of the rectangle closest to you up and over the fruit, and put another 1/4 on top, then fold over the other half.

Roll this out and do it all over again.

Roll into your final rectangle and cut into 8.

If you want to have them look a little more like their inspiration, you can cut an X into the top of them. Or you can sprinkle some more sugar over top, or both, or neither. Whatever you have the patience for.

Bake them at 400 for about 20 minutes.

They'll be lovely and golden and glistening with the last of the winter's dried fruit.

I thought these needed a bit more spice to them, so I mixed some cinnamon into the butter. Cinnamon butter!

These taste like the end of winter and go perfectly with a lovely cuppa tea. Or coffee. 

What signals the end of winter to you?