whipped lemon shortbread cookies

Shortbread has to be one of the most perplexing cookie recipes I've ever come across. It's so simple with the fancy butter, good flour and sugar. So complicated once you change up the sugar, add cornstarch and other garbage. Also, given that in the end there's only a small handful of ingredients it's also so easily messed up. Too much flour (or even sugar) and things get crusty and crumbly and dry. Not enough and the dough won't do anything.

Once you do get the texture right, then you have to contend with the fact that shortbread has very little taste in and of itself and needs to have something added for flavour. I'm a little lazy with flavours today, to be honest, and just felt like going with something simple and bright: lemon. Granted, the lemon can be replaced with any citrus, really. I do a lot of lemon desserts, though, and maybe I should stop. They're just all so good.

This recipe for whipped shortbread, adapted from allrecipes.com is one of the dead simplest I've ever come across. As long as the butter's nice and soft when you start this is all easily done in a mixer and the hardest bit is portioning out the cookies. It's not quite my family recipe but it's a pretty damned good one.

Whipped Lemon Shortbread

Ingredients (for the cookies)

• 1 cupbutter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• zest of 1 lemon

Ingredients (for the glaze)

• juice & zest of 1 lemon
• 1/4 cup icing sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, combine butter, flour, lemon zest and confectioners' sugar. With an electric mixer, beat for 10 minutes, occasionally scraping the bowl down until the dough comes together in a clumpy ball.
3. Spoon onto cookie sheets, spacing cookies 2 inches apart.
4. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the bottoms of the cookies are lightly browned.
5. While the first tray bakes, put together your glaze. Mix the lemon juice, zest and the icing sugar together until the sugar fully dissolves in the liquid. If the consistency is too thick for your tastes, add a little more lemon juice or water. If it's too thin just add more icing sugar a spoonful or so at a time.
6. Remove from oven, and let cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer cookies on to wire rack.
7. Drizzle the lemon glaze overtop the cookies and allow to cool and set for about 10 minutes before transferring to storage or serving trays.

why Christmas is my favourite holiday

Four years ago today I walked into my next door neighbour's home and met the rest of my life. Since then, Christmas has become my favourite holiday of all.

I don't know if I've ever revealed here the fact that meeting Bunny was love at first sight for me. Although I'd known of him for fifteen years (being that I knew his family well), he'd only actually lived next door for about eight months when I was eight years old, and we'd never had an actual conversation. I probably hadn't seen him at all in the ten years before he became my everything.

In the years since the only way I can describe meeting Bunny is this: pure magic. There was a literal shift that I felt inside myself, there were stars in my vision and a knowledge with absolute certainty that this man was the person I would spend the rest of my life with. The axis that my universe was on reoriented itself to accomodate him. I still can't entirely accurately explain that evening.

The next day I remember talking to a friend in utter disbelief and telling her that I had just met the man I would marry. I went back to school and had the same conversation with other close friends and was met with the response of: who are you and what have you done with the Sheryl we know? Treating a relationship, or a potential relationship, with any sense of seriousness was out of character for me.

Before Bunny I never believed in love at first sight. I didn't even particularly believe in romantic love in general. That moment changed everything.

I'll be taking the next few days off to spend time with family and cherish the time we have together. Hopefully your holidays are as wonderful as I anticpate mine being.

review: The Magician King

After reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians I was left feeling just a tiny bit underwhelmed. Shouldn't a book that has a more adult take on the subject matter of Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia be a little more amazing? I mean, adult there was in the characters and the emotional tones of the book and even the sex scenes, but it didn't spark me like I'd hoped it would. Still, I was pretty sure I would pick up the sequel.

I'm glad I did. The second novel in the trilogy seemed somehow more involved, had more depth and complexity. Maybe it was the fact that the magical world had already been introduced and didn't need to be built? But oh, this book was much better by far.

At first I found the main storyline, Quentin's story, which alternately took place in Fillory and our wold to be somewhat underwhelming compared to the flash backward plotline of Julia, Quentin's pre-Brakebills friend. Watching her story unfold - how she became a magician through back channels and fought and fought for her powers and existence was much more compelling than Quentin's education had been, or what felt like meandering with no direction in the main plotline. Julia's story, start to end, is probably the single most compelling plotline in the book.

The real time storyline, following Quentin, did not engage me much at first.
About halfway through the book it started to really strengthen and built up a lot of momentum. Fillory is just, well, boring. Intentionally so, I think, and the way this plot point makes you think of things is quite well thought out. The grass is always greener, right?  There's a beautiful tension here, illustrated in the character of Quentin himself about what we should want in life, what magic means, and how the world can fulfill our needs. Just because we chase or yearn after something with the thought that it will fulfill us doesn't mean that attainment fulfills us. Lifestyle inflation, magic form right there.

New and old characters are introduced here, with great and ill effect. The characters in the Julia storyline all exist for no other reason than to propel her character forward. Perhaps the best character in the book though was a new one: Poppy. Throughout the book I liked her more and more, though at the end of the book she makes a decision that is just so completely out of character that I don't know what to make of it.

The storyline with Penny and the Neitherlands, which really doesn't start to come into play until later in the book is perhaps the most intriguing. I don't want to go too into detail because I think you should read the book, but it really gets into the magic system of Grossman's world and in some ways I find the Neitherlands to be more "magical" than Fillory itself. Or at least more interesting.

This is apparently book two in a three book trilogy and it's very clearly set up that way. Even the ending isn't really an ending, which is fine by my reckoning because I'm genuinely interested in what comes next.

quilting: the quilt top

Finally (finally!) I have a finished quilt top. Last night I put in the last seam, took out a couple of pins and breathed in a big sigh of relief. Then I fluffed it over Bunny (who had already crawled into bed to watch tv) to show off. The quilt top is done.

I've got this huge feeling of accomplishment in my heart. This is a project I've been dreaming about for years and just getting to this stage has been almost three months in the making.

I made it a somewhat awkward size. It just barely covers a double bed, with no extra width to hang over the edges. That's ok though, because this one was just for the pure joy of learning to quilt. Seeing how things have turned out, there are some parts of the design I'd do differently next time, like putting in square corners if I did sashing again. I'd also make the sashing narrower in comparison to the quilt blocks (the pink is kind of taking over the quilt, and I'd really been aiming for more of an even split of pink/black/silver). I'd also make an effort to work out at least a rough outline of pattern and size before hand, so I know exactly how big I'm planning on making, how much work it is to get it that big, and so I can buy all my fabric for the top at once. The dye lot difference I ran into with one of my patterns rather sucked.

It feels crazy to be done this bit. There's still tons to do to finish the quilt, but with the top pieced I feel like the biggest bit of the project is done. All the fussing over seam allowances and super straight lines. No more pinning tiny squares and cramped fingers.

Today I'm taking a break from quilting. Taking a day or two to just bask in the fact that this part is done and do a little prep work for the next step (ironing, measuring, all that lovely stuff).

lemon pound cake

This lemon cake has been months in the making. It's a recipe I've used before, adapted from the Smitten Kitchen recipe (in turn taken from Ina Garten) and it may be one of the best pound cakes I've ever had. It's a dense crumb with just the right hint of moistness to the whole thing and has a more intense lemony taste than almost any lemon cake I've ever had, barring those filled with lemon curd.

As it happens, lemon pound cake is actually Bunny's favourite, so I'd been fielding requests for this cake for ages. I'd tried to sneak in lemon cupcakes, but apparently they did not count. So the other week when his birthday rolled around I dragged my tired bum home from work and whipped out the KitchenAid, because clearly this was the only cake that would do. While it doesn't scream "birthday" it does scream "Bunny" and the fact is he's not a huge fan of layer cakes and frosting of any sort.

My alterations on this recipe are fairly simple, and the result of two factors I'm a little embarrassed about. First there's the change from buttermilk to regular milk combined with lemon juice which is sheerly a matter of my being unwilling to buy buttermilk. (I mean it's not even a byproduct of making butter anymore, it's all cultured. I just can't get behind that.) Second there's the fact that every time I've made this recipe I have misread the directions involving sugar, which has necessitated both a change in how I've listed the ingredients, and an adjustment of some amounts. Even with the extra sugar in my version, this recipe is by no means sweet.

The caveat mentioned in the Smitten Kitchen introduction still stands, however. The lemon syrup simply does not absorb easily, and it is necessary. Dribbling the syrup over the cake was one of the most labour intensive parts of this recipe as I had to keep it to a barely-there trickle to allow it to absorb.

If you're more fancy than me, you might make a lemon glaze to drizzle over top, or serve this with some sweet jam (I think raspberry would be lovely). If you're feeding a Bunny though, you'll leave this right as is. It's pretty darn amazing that way.

Intense Lemon Pound Cake

Ingredients:
For the cake:

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• zest of 6-8 large lemons (as it happened, I only had four lemons on hand this time and the cake still turned out beautifully, but I do like the more intense lemon of the 6-8)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the syrup:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350*F. Grease two loaf pans and set aside.
2. In a small bowl, add the lemon juice to the milk and set aside. The combination together is remarkably like "buttermilk" as sold nowadays. When you're ready to use the milk mixture it may be a little bit, uh, chunky, but don't worry too much about that. As long as the milk was fresh to begin with you are golden.
3. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes in the mixer.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing between each addition. Add the vanilla and lemon zest, and mix until the yellow bits are evenly distributed. If you're using a mixer you will want to stop and scrape down the bowl once or twice at this point.
5. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
6. Add about 1/4 of your flour mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mix and stir to incorporate. Next add 1/3 of the milk and lemon juice mixture, stirring to incorporate. Continue alternating the flour and the milk mixes until everything is combined.
7. Divide batter evenly among cake pans and bake for 55-65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the top comes out clean.
8. While cakes are baking, combine the sugar and lemon juice for the syrup in a small saucepan. Over low heat let the sugar dissolve into the juice. Once the sugar is completely dissolved, remove from the heat.
9. When cakes are done, let cool for about 5 minutes.
10. Slowly drizzle the lemon syrup over the cakes. You'll want to have either a very slow drizzle to allow things to absorb. If any extra syrup pools in the corners don't worry too much; it will absorb into the sides of the cake.
11. Eat, enjoy. (Possibly after a disgustingly large "dirty burger" or pulled pork sandwich)

wanting the babies, now

I talk less about the fact that I want to have a baby than I do about the fact that I had a miscarriage. The miscarriage is a done deal, now it's just dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath. For me that's a million times easier than thinking about getting pregnant, and waiting to get pregnant, and trying to get pregnant. There's nothing I can do about that process (beyond what I'm already doing), so I've just got to let go and let life happen.

There are a lot of reasons why we want to have the babies now rather than later. But the fact is that while the chance to be a young mom has passed me by, I don't want to be an older mom having babies. I want to be done with making the babies in my early thirties. More than that, I want Bunny to be around for all the big milestones of their lives, if possible.

In some ways part of what hurt so much about the miscarriage was the fear that it took the possibility of being a young-ish mother away from me.

This article from a couple weeks back on Slate gets to a lot of what my fears are. Of course, if it took my seven years to have a baby I'd still want one (I think) and what's right for me and my family isn't what's right for anyone else.

hurting

I cannot remember the last time turning on the news on my tv made me cry. This weekend, every time I have even thought about what's on the news I have been in tears.

An elementary school. Children. An adult went out of his way to kill other people's babies and my heart is breaking for it.

I'm not very articulate on my feelings of the whole matter, other than the fact that this pains me more than I can say.

There are issues that I wanted to talk about, regarding guns, gun safety, and gun control but I don't have the ability to calmly make my case right now. What I will say is this: all the gun safety education in the world doesn't stop someone who has the intent of going on a shooting spree; the only thing that effects that is controlling the access to guns.

Today my heart hurts. Today I'm sad that access to a deadly weapon is so easily obtained. Today I'm hurt that people in the world have so little respect for human life that they could destroy families and futures and take away the innocence and lives of children.