Yesterday was Sunday which means one thing in my world… Sunday Pastries.   I wanted to be Halloweeny so I made candy, pumpkin cookies, and breadsticks shaped liked bones.   Unfortunately, we ate all the breadstick bones before I thought to photograph them!    

Now, my pumpkin cookies are by far my most popular cookie:

Deeeeeeelicious

The cookies themselves are soft and cinnamonny and just a little sweet… but what really makes them so irresistible is that shell of frosting on the top.   Penuche is a brown sugar based frosting that hardens to an almost candy shell… and it makes my pumpkin cookies divine.    And good news!

In honor of fall, Halloween, and pumpkins, I’ll be selling pumpkin cookies for 50 cents this week!  Just email me at dina@dharmabakery.com and let me know if you would like any.   

But pumpkin cookies are old news for me.   I’ve been making them since my days puttering about in the hills of West-by-God-Virginia.   The new news were the peanut butter fingers I made!  The recipe I used specified the wrong temperature for the hard crack stage and so my first round of pbf’s were a bit too chewy and difficult to bite into…. but now… now they are AMAZING.   I’ve already eaten 3 today.

chocolate and peanut butter... unstoppable

 And in honor of Halloween, for the next week peanut butter fingers are just 50 cents each as well.  

And now, having nothing to do with food, here is what Wikipedia has to say about Halloween:  

Halloween has origins in the ancient celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sau-an), which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly “summer’s end”.  A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf (pronounced kalan-geyf). The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the “lighter half” of the year and beginning of the “darker half”, and is sometimes regarded as the “Celtic New Year.”

The celebration has some elements of a festival of the dead. The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family’s ancestors were honoured and invited home whilst harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces

And that my friends, is why we dress up in costumes, carve pumpkins, and eat lots and lots of candy….  to scare off the demons and ghosts that will be visiting from the Otherworld!    Happy Summer’s End!

Yesterday was good times.  I think around 13 people came over and chowed down on my yummy vegan goodies.    

I made rainbow cookies:

Rainbows!

Can I just say thank goodness for a Kitchenaid Mixer?  I had a bit of a panic attack when our electricity went out in the kitchen.. A man came over at 8:30 in the morning and reset the breakers and told us he thought it was because of the white thing sitting on the counter.  Now why a stationary non-turned on perfectly harmless mixer would trip the breakers, I have no clue.  I hoped and prayed that the man had been incorrect.. but I wasn’t going to take chances with my kitchen and so tested out plugging in the mixer in the living room at first.   Everything worked fine and I am super duper grateful because I did not want to break up all the almond paste by hand!   

Also made chocolate peppermint cake.  It was 5 layers of yummy moist goodness, separated by alternating layers of chocolate fudge frosting and peppermint buttercream.  

layers of chocolate and peppermint

Then it was coated in a chocolate peppermint buttercream and finally topped with peppermint fondant.   The fondant recipe was a new one and turned out to crack a lot and be greasy so I wasn’t crazy about it.   

Peppermint fondant

I also made pigs in a blanket with some Tofurkey sausages and homemade biscuit dough.   Biscuits are so delicious and I’m not sure why I don’t make them more often.  In fact, I might make biscuits for dinner!   

Everything I make for Sunday Pastries can be ordered from the Dharma Bakery.   A normal 8-inch layer cake is $25, and although I don’t have Rainbow Cookies on my order form, a 9×13 tray is $20.