Look, Ma! I made dessert!

This one is an oldie but a goodie—it dates from Christmas 2010, back when the kitchen was my oyster, work wasn't requiring every second of my days, and my checking account still had no idea how hard it was about to be hit by overzealous trips to the grocery store.

As a rule I'm not much of a sweets person, and particularly not a dessert-for-breakfast sort of girl. (I will spare you my diatribe on the evils of "doughnuts," which is apparently Latin for "stale bread covered in snot." That counts as sort of sparing you, right?)

But as on most occasions, that sensibility was set to rights by Ina Garten, once upon a time many years ago when I first made her Sour Cream Coffee Cake. (Please click on that link and tell me that Sandra Lee's cracked-out Cocktail Time ad is popping up in the right-hand sidebar. It's completely worth the visit to foodnetwork.com, one of the worst Web sites on the Internets. I heart you, Food Network, but your carrier pigeon-style search engine and resulting desperate error messages do you no favors.)

Where was I? Ah, yes. Sour cream coffee cake, with a sweet, nutty streusel (yes, it's still nutty if you omit the nuts) and a decadent glaze. It was my first foray into the world of the bundt pan, too, which was nonstick and worked beautifully, contrary to my every expectation. JBSH and TFin subsequently gifted it to me (their bundt cake-making days being few and far between), and it is now one of my most treasured kitchen implements. Despite all its nooks and crannies it's infinitely forgiving—no matter my lazy buttering/flouring attempts, each cake I've made in it slides out placatingly every time.

But Ina, as we all know, is a girl who loves her ingredients, and even without the walnuts I'm counting 16 different pieces to her puzzle. There were already a lot of dishes planned for that Christmas morning, with LSis's breakfast casseroles and my Easy Cheese Danish (also courtesy la Contessa), so I was craving something simpler.

As you may have guessed from my ongoing obsession with sriracha, I am a lady who loves her spice, so I was instantly sold on Sing for Your Supper's Cinnamon Pound Cake. Only seven ingredients and a procedure that is 80% "stir it together and pour into pan"—even a notorious baking disaster such as myself can manage to pull that off.

I've made this now a few times, and that sweet-hot cinnamon-sugar crust is perfection, like a snickerdoodle pound cake. (HA! Remember these? Good times.) I have tweaked the recipe a bit—my current favorite approach is to stir in semisweet chocolate chips (they MUST be semisweet or darker; milk chocolate would be too cloying here) and to add, sinfully I admit, the glaze from Ina's coffee cake. It does skew things even sweeter, but I just can't resist the combination of maple syrup and cinnamon.

Remember, because we're making this cake in place of coffee cake, that makes it breakfast, and therefore above dietary reproach. So have three slices.



Cinnamon-Chocolate Pound Cake with Maple Glaze
4 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
2 tablespoons cinnamon, divided
1 box butter cake mix (I used Duncan Hines's Butter Golden mix.)
1 (4-serving size) package instant vanilla pudding
½ cup canola oil
8 ounces sour cream
4 eggs
8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, optional
½ cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a bundt pan.

2. Stir together 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon cinnamon; sprinkle mixture into buttered bundt pan, tilting pan to coat bottom and sides evenly. Combine remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, remaining 1 tablespoon cinnamon, cake mix, pudding, canola oil, sour cream, eggs, and chocolate chips, if desired. Pour into prepared bundt pan, and bake 45 to 50 minutes or until cake is springy. Let cool in pan 20 minutes.

3. Remove from pan to wire rack, and let cool completely. Meanwhile, whisk together confectioners' sugar and maple syrup, adding a few drops of water, if necessary, to reach the desired consistency. Drizzle over cooled cake. Makes 8 to 10 servings.

I don't necessarily buy the notion that some people are cooks and some are bakers, full stop. Though the vast majority of chefs I see on TV go big-eyed and sputtering whenever someone says the word "dessert" at them, I've just never been able to accept that it's as black and white as all that.

Granted, cooking feels more like ... I dunno, behavioral psychology to me ("OOH! Let's throw this in there and see what happens!"), whereas baking is all physics ("GEEZ, there's math in these here hieroglyphics; what is wrong with you?").

OK, so I might be a little biased. But the anxiety gap between cooking and baking for me is somewhere between "oops!" and "G*DD*MM*T ALL TO H*LL," and I can't figure out why. All of that is belied by these pretty cookies, perfectly round and softly chocolatey and gooey with raspberry-cream cheese filling, but that has everything to do with Susan's recipe from Our Family Eats and absolutely nothing to do with me. I did everything in my power to screw these up.

Luckily, a plague of cabin fever had descended on LSis' house that required an immediate dose of park-going, so I was left unexpectedly alone during my tribulations. Which was serendipitous indeed, because there was so. much. swearing. I really don't want anyone to ever measure my blood pressure while I'm trying to bake.

My first problem tends to be anything in powder form—flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, various and sundry dried spices—which will inevitably end up all over the kitchen and my person. Outside of my propensity to chop onions into the floor, this messiness is rarely as much of a problem when I cook. And yet it is a guarantee that if I am using cocoa powder, 60% of it will end up in the bowl, 35% of it will find its way into the sink/counter/floor/pants/shoes, and I will manage to inhale the remaining 5%. (Does anyone else have this problem? No? Just me?)

It sounds nicer—chocolate-covered lungs—than it actually is.

I can't tell exactly where I went screechingly off track here, but somewhere around "mixture should be thick and slightly crumbly," mine just ... wasn't. The dough was shiny and sticky and (have I mentioned?) there was so. much. swearing.

Rolling the dough out and cutting circles just wasn't happening. The texture was all wrong and soaked with my salty tears. I finally decided to give the whole mess the finger and just plop tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheet, irregular and lumpy.

It was rather disastrous.

And then? Look how they baked up. Like the baking fairies smiled, patted me on my sad, inept little head, and formed perfectly round cookies in the oven. They baked for the full eight minutes, even though the recipe said they'd be done in five, because ... well, because in my world, baking, like physics, is a lot more Murphy's Law than anything else.

If you take a look at Susan's cookies, you'll see that they're much darker than mine (maybe a difference in cocoa powders?) and cut into sweet, perfect heart shapes. The Woodside version is slightly more homespun.

And in the end? They were delicious. I fully appreciated every speck of the filling's two cups of powdered sugar, which diminished its cream cheese factor beautifully. (I inexplicably hate cheesecake, cream cheese frosting, and pretty much anything else that is a sugar-cream cheese hybrid of any kind.) The cookies were only very slightly chocolatey, which gave them an elegant subtlety that someone like me can only stumble upon accidentally. And they were a HUGE mess to eat, which is always the hallmark of a fantastic dessert. Every one of these disappeared. There might have been bowl-licking.

So many thanks to the tears, or the fairies, or the idiot-proof recipe. Or the swearing.



Chocolate Raspberry Sandwich Cookies
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups granulated sugar
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
6 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon milk
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons seedless raspberry jelly

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside.

2. Stir together first 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Beat eggs and vegetable oil in a small bowl with a fork; add to flour mixture. Beat with an electric mixer until all ingredients are well combined. (The dough MIGHT BE be thick and slightly crumbly, but ... maybe not.)

3. Drop level spoonfuls of dough onto prepared baking sheets (about 12 cookies per baking sheet). Bake 7 to 8 minutes, remove from oven, and let cool.

4. Place cream cheese, butter, milk, and vanilla in a mixing bowl, and combine with an electric mixer mix. Add powdered sugar, ½ cup at a time, mixing between additions. Stir in jelly.

5. Divide raspberry filling evenly among 12 cookies, top with remaining 12 cookies, pressing down slightly. Makes 12 sandwiches.