Is it a cookie? Is it a pie? It's both!

Last week, I made a pie with a hazelnut crumb topping, and it was so tasty that I was inspired to make some sort of Nutella-inspired pie.  But all the recipes I was finding were for icebox pies or cream pies (neither of which I especially like), or they called for lots of ingredients that I didn't feel like buying.  Then I ran across this recipe, which the blog author writes came from a baking experiment gone wrong.

One of my favorite recipes that I make in the fall is a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie that feels like a muffin--I call them mookies or muffkies.  Therefore, since these are a combo of pie and cookies, I hereby deem these "pookies."  Maybe that's a terrible name.  Suggestions?

The author makes her little cookies with cream cheese, strawberry jam, and Nutella.  I decided to leave out the cream cheese, and in the spirit of gilding the lily, I decided to drizzle some melted chocolate (I didn't have dark, so I mixed milk and baking chocolate) on top.  

This is what I wound up with:

Verdict: Good!  Next time, I'll try 'em with the cream cheese, and I might add more strawberry jam because you can hardly taste it. Instead of Nutella, I wound up using Whole Foods way-too-expensive ($8.49 a jar "on sale" from $9.99, but I was desperate) knock-off organic whatever whatever brand, and I think it held up in the oven better than Nutella would have.  It also has less sugar, so it kept the filling from being too sweet.

In the spirit of experimentation, I tried a batch with Speculoos Cookie spread (if you haven't tried this yet, go out and buy a jar immediately).  Since the first batch burned slightly, I turned down the temperature to 340 instead of 350 and baked them for a wee bit longer--about 27 minutes.  I melted some more cookie spread and drizzled it on top, along with a couple puffs of cinnamon sugar.

I'm excited about this recipe because it showcases the pie crust, whereas for most pies, the crust is kind of an accessory.  Plus, it doesn't involve fussing with the pastry dough in order to create an attractive fluted edge, so the pastry dough has a better chance of staying flaky and holding together.  I was pretty damn proud of this batch--it takes a lot of patience to make a decent crust, and patience is something I absolutely lack. Lots of refrigeration, and a lot less water than you'd think...you just have to work to disperse it through the pastry, but you have to do so without overworking the gluten in the flour.  I also refuse to use shortening because yuck.  The ingredients on a can of Crisco are horrifying.

The other fun thing is that this recipe can be played with.  I'd like to try something with raspberry, and potentially a peanut butter version.

Additionally, pies are a bitch and a half to transport by bike.  These, on the other hand, just need to be fully dried/cooled and tossed in a box.  My goal in life, if all else fails, is to open up a bike/bake shop and call it the Bikery...we'd specialize in portable baked goods.  Or fancy devices that would make portable baked goods portable on a bike (I have an idea for a rack-mounted rectangular pie pan that suspends the pie on springs).  It's probably a niche market, but whatever.

Anyway, thanks From the Little Yellow Kitchen for the inspiration!

Sidewalks: Not for cars

I've been bitching about this on Twitter with some regularity, but after spending a morning with a chisel, a hammer, and concrete bits flying into my face, I feel that this warrants a blog post. Presenting exhibits A through C....

 Take a good look at the rack furthest from the bike.  

 Someone pointed out that this looks like a string of licorice

 There's an alley directly across from this...

Aside from the bike racks merely being broken, here's what's wrong with this.  First of all, these three racks were all busted within two weeks of each other.  Second, in order for any of these to get as busted as they are, a car would need to go full-up onto the sidewalk and hit them.  DC regulations require bicycle racks to be placed 2-3 feet from the curb exactly for this reason.  We've all had the experience of running car wheels over a curb on an especially tight turn, but this is just BAD driving.  There is absolutely no reason at all why anyone who is driving sober should have their car that far into the travel lane intended ONLY for pedestrians and, occasionally, bicycles.    

For the first (on 11th and U), I have absolutely no idea what happened, but the vinyl coating on the rack was torn and bunched up towards the bottom. 

For the second (24th and L, outside District Hardware), that's a rack sitting in 10 inches of concrete in a brick sidewalk, so it's wedged in there pretty firmly.  In order for a car to exert that much force on it, it had to be moving at a good clip. I talked to the folks in District Hardware, and they mentioned that some guy was teaching his girlfriend how to drive, and she somehow got the car up on the sidewalk and drove halfway down the block that way.  

For the third (14th and Q, outside the Bike Rack), there's an alley directly across from that rack.  I'm guessing a truck was trying to back out.  That being said, there's a parking space right next to this rack, and since it looks like it was hit straight on, that means whatever it was backed directly into it.  This means that there was no car parked there at the time, which means the vehicle had the ENTIRE STREET to back out of the alley, so how the hell the driver wound up knocking over the bike rack, I haven't a clue.

I passed yet another bent rack downtown today, but I forgot to snap a picture.  It was one of those radiator style racks, so unfortunately, I won't be able to replace it.  Since August, there have also been struck racks at 25th and N, on Thomas Jefferson Street in Georgetown, and along Georgia Avenue near the Petworth Metro stop.

The nonchalance with which these racks are struck annoys me because 1) what if a pedestrian had been standing there instead of a bike rack? and 2) because I have to go in and fix them.  I realize that this is part of my job, but making up for other peoples' intense stupidity makes me unhappy.  It's at least twice as hard to remove and reinstall a rack as it is to simply install a new one.  Particularly for situations like the second one--that's going to require a good 45 minutes or more of chiseling to simply get that thing out of the ground.  In the meantime, that's one less bike rack for people to use.

I guess the point of this post is that if you drive in the city, CHECK YOUR MIRRORS and DON'T DRIVE LIKE AN IDIOT.  Otherwise things like this happen:

Thus ends my rant for the day.