My Instagram feed seems to be full, lately, of people using these fancy glass air fryers to make their meals. I fully realize that the air fryer doesn’t make the meal, the chef does. But, what can I say, I fall under the spell of beautifully filmed meals with soothing voiceovers. The other reason I am susceptible to the siren song of a new air fryer is that I haaaaaaate using the oven when it’s hot out. Did I hate it this much in our old house? I’m not sure. But I get so sweaty and uncomfortable, and it seems like the heat lingers forever, and our ovens have internal fans that kick in automatically and shut off automatically and they take FOREVER to turn off, so it’s always loud in my kitchen when I cook something in the oven.
Of course, we already HAVE an air fryer. It’s perfectly good, although it’s a little on the small side for cooking entire meals. If we got a new one, we’d need to make sure it fits. This house has a lot of storage, which I love, so most of my small appliances are tucked nicely away. Which appliances would I get rid of to make room for a new air fryer? (Especially a nice extra big one, with dual drawers?)
This got me thinking about which small appliances I use and which ones are expendable. I feel like I have a pretty typical array of small appliances: blender, food processor, toaster, mixer, crockpot. Some of them, like the food processor, I use only rarely. But it’s handy enough that I want to keep it. I think I would jettison the wok. The wok used to be my most-used small appliance, but I haven’t used it even once since we moved into this house. It doesn’t fit into the dishwasher (grumble grumble) and I am very opposed to hand-washing things, so I typically make stir fries and curries in a big pot on the stove. Which works just fine. I have mentioned many times before that I am scared of our Instant Pot. It has lived in our basement for several years now, and I should probably just get rid of it. The only reason I keep it around is that once in a while we make these very tasty burgers. Is that reason enough to keep a rather unwieldly appliance around? I don’t know.
On the flip side, some of my small appliances are used so frequently I could NEVER get rid of them.
My electric kettle.I use this every single day to heat up water for my tea. In the dark old days before I had an electric kettle, I had a kettle I heated on the stove. It took too long to boil and the water was always too hot and I didn’t really like having a kettle constantly on the stove, but it was not easy to stow elsewhere. And then I went through a spate of heating my tea water in the microwave, which was fine, although the mug always got too hot. An electric kettle seems like one of those frivolous single-use items but it is NOT, it is magical. I don’t quite know why it’s better than the other methods, but it IS. My only wish is that it could be programmed to make my tea at a specific time, like my husband’s coffee maker.
My slow cooker. This is one of those things that, if it were to break, I would order a replacement immediately. (I know this from experience; once I dropped the ceramic insert and it cracked in half and I placed an order for a new one so fast.)
My stick blender. As you know, I love a good smoothie and I eat one almost every day. I used to make them in my blender, which came with a smoothie cup attachment. But the stick blender is smaller and lighter and just as easy to throw in the dishwasher. Plus, I can use it for making dressings and sauces and soups and all sorts of other things. I love it so much, I have two.
My toaster.My kiddo has been on a dual Eggo waffle and sourdough toast spate, so the toaster is called into service most mornings. I like this one because of its extra long slots, which can fit a lot of sourdough. It does seem to need to “warm up” a bit though; the first batch of toast takes forever, the second batch burns if you don’t turn it way down.
My mixer. You know I am a huge fan of making ridiculous cakes and cupcakes. How could I do either without my stand mixer?! I’ve had this workhorse since 2008, when we got it as a wedding gift. It’s a little more wobbly than it used to be, but still works great.
I probably don’t need a new air fryer. Clearly, I am already swimming in small appliances. But I would be interested in your most- and least- used small appliances. And in your favorite air fryer, if you have one.
Here is a gratuitous kitten photo, for those readers who enjoy such things.
I’ve been seeing signs of spring for weeks now, but it seems like over the weekend everything decided simultaneously to bloom. Flowering trees everywhere! I love it.
Saturday was my Day of Cupcakes. I made two batches of cupcakes at the same time, which seemed like it was just asking for disaster – like carrots in the vanilla cupcakes or lemon in the carrot cake cupcakes. But I persevered and wound up with two batches of cupcakes: vanilla cupcakes filled with lemon curd and topped with lemon cream cheese buttercream, and carrot cake cupcakes topped with cream cheese buttercream. My family has eaten some of each, and no one made any weird faces, so I am going to call it a win.
Carla was a huge help with the cupcakes. She’s pretty hit-or-miss with wanting to help me bake, and that’s fine. But she was very interested in helping to decorate. I put her in charge of the carrot cake cupcakes, which were adorned with toasted coconut and Cadbury mini-eggs. She did a great job – they are adorable.
They may be cute, but they are FULL of golden raisins. Hork.
I made the chicks for the vanilla cupcakes; Carla provided supportive commentary and added the eyes. I think they turned out to be full of personality.
They all look either stunned or slightly alarmed to have found themselves on top of cupcakes.
Now we’re back to normal, so I need to come up with some dinners for the week ahead.
Hmm. I have been staring blankly at this document for some long minutes now and I still can’t come up with a single dinner idea.
Okay, this is the exact reason I created a “database” of reliably delicious dinners. I will just visit that post and pull out a few options, plus tacos, which just now occurred to me.
Dinners for the Week of April 21-28
Tacos: We haven’t had tacos in a while. Let’s do it.
Big Salad with Chicken: Okay this isn’t a recipe per se, it’s just a bunch of veggies and lettuce and roasted chicken topped with balsamic dressing.
(Not) Skillet Enchiladas: We still have sauce in the freezer from my adventure with beef birria, and I think it would be fantastic as an enchilada sauce.
Okay! That’s a decent starting off point! We also have begun The End of School Year Madness already, so there’s an evening school event one night which will necessitate some sort of grab-bag style dinner. I’ll deal with that at the time.
Hello my dear internet! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and/or start to Hanukkah and/or that you Made It Through. (I have been thinking about those of my friends who have lost spouses or parents this year, those who may be struggling with complicated family or health issues, and those who are still grieving many-years-ago losses, and how grief at the holidays feels particularly bleak and awful. I know you are making it through the best way you can and I hope there are brighter days ahead.)
Drastic tone switch.
I am just stuffed-enough full of holiday food that I think it’s the perfect timing for my much-delayed Cookie Swap post. I am able to admire and appreciate all the cookies, and bookmark all the posts and recipes, without feeling the need to IMMEDIATELY LEAP TO THE KITCHEN. Although I do still have a significant amount of butter leftover… Hmm….
Thank you to everyone who sent me scrumptious photos. Let me know if I have misattributed anything or linked to something incorrectly and I will fix it tout de suite.
Cookie Plates
For a variety of Reasons, I ended up making my cookie plates in the wee hours of the morning this past Monday. Carla and I delivered them later that afternoon. Five cookie varieties made it onto the plates:
Chai Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Glaze: I have made these before and the cookies are wonderfully soft and pleasingly spiced. In years past, the eggnog glaze has been more like an eggnog clump, so I added more eggnog this year until it was truly glazy. But, in True Glaze Form, it then leaked off the cookies, so it’s not a cookie you can glaze at the last minute; you need ample time for the glaze to dry/harden. Delicious, though.
Chocolate Snickerdoodles: This is an old favorite, and Carla requests these often. I love them, too. But my husband thinks they are kind of a niche cookie. He took a big plate of assorted cookies to work and the chocolate snickerdoodles were the last cookies standing. I think they are chewy and delicious, with a wonderful mix of chocolate and that little bitter bite of cream of tartar that makes snickerdoodles so surprising and different.
Basque Cheesecake Bars: This was a new-to-me recipe, and the bars turned out to be delicious. You should know right away that I used gingersnaps as the base instead of graham crackers. (Actually, I didn’t have enough gingersnaps, so I added in a sleeve of graham crackers, too – about a 2-to-1 gingersnap-to-graham cracker ratio, which was delicious.) This recipe was simple but also a little scary to execute, because you have to let the cheesecake develop this richly caramelized top and it looks (and smells) burnt. The end product was so yummy. The recipe produced a staggering amount of cheesecake; we have so much left. (FYI, a cheesecake bar or two makes for a very festive breakfast.)
Cranberry Lemon Bars: This was a new-to-me recipe and I would like to try it again, but it wasn’t my favorite. I loved the twin bright flavors of lemon and cranberry, and I loved how easy it was to “make” the lemon “curd.” But the cookie layer seemed a little greasy to me and I felt like it was too tender and not cookie-y enough. These are also difficult to cut in a way that makes them look nice on a cookie plate. EDITED TO ADD: After a couple of days in the fridge, these are much better than I originally thought.
Mint Swirl Sugar Cookies: This was a new-to-me recipe and it worked, I think, but was also VERY LABOR INTENSIVE. Rolling all the little balls and shaping the cookies was very time consuming and I don’t know that they were pretty and swirly enough to make it worth the effort. Nice peppermint flavor, though. I didn’t have any red food coloring so I used green. I also found that the cookies as directed were much too large for my cookie plates, so I halved all the little balls. This means I have approximately ten thousand remaining cookie balls, un-swirled, that I will probably end up tossing.
Cookie Problems
The main issue I had this year (besides too much time making cookies that wouldn’t ever make it on the cookie plates) was that my cookies were all so flat. They tasted good, but I like a thick cookie. I did some googling and think that maybe my problem was overcreaming the butter and sugar. For some reason, I thought the more creaming the better… but apparently there’s a point at which you deplete the butter/sugar mixture of air and this can result in flat cookies.
But THEN Jen (HI JEN!), who bore the brunt of all my cookie woes via text, noted that she had also suffered from Flat Cookie Syndrome this year, and suggested it was an issue with the butter itself. Apparently butter manufacturers are increasing the ratio of water in their butter and that can result in flat cookies. Argh!
Cookie-Related Giveaway
Y’all, I took part in three major cookie operations this year. The first was at my house, with Carla, her friend, and my friend. The second was an impromptu get together at the neighbors’ house where a friend and I rolled, cut, and baked approximately nine billion sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies for eleven children to decorate. The third was my private middle-of-the-night cookie session during which I baked until the wee hours in blissful, uninterrupted silence while everyone was sleeping.
The first two cookie events were centered around cookie decorating, and required rolling pins. The rolling pin I used was a hand-me-down from my husband’s late grandmother, the kind with a big cylindrical barrel in the center and two handles on the sides. It’s fine, but pretty utilitarian. I don’t think I’ve ever considered that there might be rolling pin variations, or that a rolling pin could be aesthetically pleasing in addition to being a useful baking tool.
But then, my friend arrived at my house for the first cookie venture with an unexpected and delightful gift for me: a new rolling pin!
I had never once considered wanting a rolling pin, and I was nonetheless DELIGHTED by the rolling pin she brought me!!! It was so beautiful! And French. Oooh la la! So now I have MY OWN ROLLING PIN in addition to the inherited one!
This is all to say that I want to spread the rolling pin joy.
If you are interested in having your very own French rolling pin, tell me in the comments and I will randomly draw someone’s name at… some point. (Let’s be honest, I am not great at Making Firm Commitments these days, so it might be a while.) And then I will send the winner their very own French rolling pin!
You do not have to have participated in this cookie swap to participate. Nor do you have to like cookies or bake cookies. Rolling pins are good for many other baking projects besides cookies and I do not judge.
AT LONG LAST, THE COOKIE SWAP!!!!
It was so delightful to get photos of delicious-looking baked goods in my email! Here is everyone who participated (and if I didn’t include you, it is PURELY USER ERROR and has nothing to do with you or your cookies, so please resend and I will add to this post) and a couple who I forcibly included. Once again, if I have messed anything up, please do not hesitate to email me at lifeofadoctorswife (at) gmail and I will happily make any updates you desire.
Saltine Toffee – This was the one item my teenage daughter insisted I make this Christmas. You can make the recipe with or without the peanut butter! This year I made some with the peanut butter layer (my personal favourite) and added crushed Saltines on top to differentiate from the more traditional “Christmas Crack” that skips the peanut butter step.
Peanut Butter Balls. I never follow a recipe exactly – I just take tiny tastes along the way until it has the right texture. Mostly that’s because once I start eating the dough, I can’t stop. Instead of dunking them in chocolate, I flash freeze them for about half an hour and top with a little spoonful of melted chocolate. Much less work than dipping!
Brown Sugar Fudge. This is my 10-year-old’s favourite Christmas treat. It is SWEET, but very delicious and smooth, unlike some brown sugar fudge which tends to be grainy. This year, I spread the recipe into a 9×13 pan so it was relatively thin and cut the fudge into fun Christmas shapes before it had completely set. Any of the remaining scraps I rolled into little fudge balls since the fudge was still slightly warm and pliable.
Fall Chocolate Chip Spiced Cookie. These are the only actual “cookies” I have made this holiday season. I have frozen dough so I can pop a few in the oven on an as-needed basis. I think I’m going to be needing them a lot. Goodness, these are fast becoming my favourite cookies and it’s all thanks to you, Suzanne!
Ernie from No Small Feet produced Christmas Cookies and Rocky Road Fudge Bars.
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Gigi from Gigi Rambles whipped up some Peanut Butter Fudge, Almond Bark, Gingersnaps, Peanut Butter Cookies, and Chocolate Chip Cookies for her cookie plate.
Steph from All for the Love of You, her wife Beth, and their culinarily talented younger child North filled cookie plates with Buckeyes, Pizzelles, Pinwheels, and Gingerbread. (North also made almond butter chocolate chip cookies and an apple crumb cheesecake!)
Jen texted me photos of the beautiful sugar cookies she decorated with her kids.
It was SO MUCH FUN to see what everyone made, and to have the extra little joy of thinking about my blog friends while I was baking. Thank you so much for “swapping” cookies with me! And don’t forget to enter the rolling pin giveaway if it suits your fancy.
