What to do when it snows

I checked the weather on Sunday morning and saw that the forecast was calling for 6-10 inches. Miriam, Will and I went to the store to stock up on the essentials. Snow was on it's way. It's what you do.

While we were out I picked up ingredients for butternut squash soup and lamb stew. While at Whole Foods something caught my eye. Key Limes. It's not often that you find key limes. I couldn't resist. I picked up a bag of them and decided I would find some use for them.

The snow came. We had 5-8" depending on where you measured in the yard. This meant I was working from home. After answering a large batch of emails I looked through some recipes and decided that I would attempt a key lime pie. The recipe I settled on called for a graham cracker crust but my graham crackers were stale. I made a pie crust and juiced all 25 key limes. That took a while. It was totally worth it. I love key lime pie but had never had home made. The taste was truly fresh and more tart than mass produced pies. This recipe may have to go in the permanent recipe book. Et Viola. The finished product.

Oscar Winners Don't Eat This

I had some people over to watch the Oscars. I served heavy hors d'oeuvres that everyone pitched in to put together. I wanted to try something new for dessert and came across this recipe. The detail sparked my interest. I won't lie, it took a couple trips to a couple different stores to find all the ingredients. The recipe was so detailed I felt I needed to follow it exactly (which really isn't my style). I sifted all the dry ingedients.Chopped the 85% cocoa bar that was in my Valentine's care package. Then I folded it into the batter. That's right. I'm still using Meaghan's mixer. At this rate she may never get it back. This was the densest cupcake batter I've ever made. It was closer to brownie batter. There was enough batter to fill 15 cups. The recipe calls for the cupcakes to be baked for 30 minutes but I think that was too long.

While the cupcakes baked, I fried the bacon, saved the drippings and browned the butter. That lovely combo went into the fridge to chill. I made sure my dinner guests didn't see the congealed concoction when I pulled it out and started adding all the other ingredients to make the crazy and yet delicious icing. If you take a look at all that goes into these cupcakes, you will see that these are not pre-Oscar diet approved. My guests were tentative yet intrigued. Once they gave them a try, the cupcakes were a hit!