My Most Favorite Time of Year

I'm seriously in love with this time of year. So much so that I think I have reverse seasonal depression. As soon as the wind and rain and earlier dark nights come I get giddy. And while during spring and summer you pretty much get all you're going to get as far as positives go from the beginning, with the cooler months there are so many surprises that get forgotten over the year. It starts with boots and scarves and then you get to turn on the heat and see the leaves change...

and then you get to eat pumpkin flavored things.

I actually don't really bake. I like the product of baking but the work to do it is just sort of tedious to me. With cooking you can just do and things will turn out. It's like an adventure. And while it can be different every time it's usually not bad. With baking you have to follow the directions or you can almost guarantee it will be bad.

Anyways, my friend Lana and I decided we wanted to bake, actually we wanted to have a whole day of baking but that didn't happen. So instead we had an evening of baking/freezing because we made...wait for it...homemade pumpkin ice cream that we sandwiched between chocolate molasses cookies. Seriously, best. Thing. Ever. It makes me want to go get some of the leftover ice cream just thinking about it. The awesome thing about this endeavor is Lana is really good at baking. And really patient. I think baking with me in my studio apartment kitchen was probably a little like trying to cook with a four year old but she was awesome about it. She even made herself a little cookie rolling station on my bed so we could watch Gossip Girl too.

We definitely could have done this with a little more finesse but here are some photos from our very delicious food making. Also, I'm going to be making pumpkin ice cream year round from now on.

This was our cookie recipe. It's from the Martha Stewart book Cookies. Her baking books are amazing by the way. A little intense but it wouldn't be Martha if it weren't.


Lana worked on the wet part of the batter...


while I did the dry. It's pretty right? I was loving all the shades of brown.


This was before our dough went into the freezer. We were supposed to let it refrigerate over night but I didn't read the recipes before we started. Such an amateur mistake. I did mention Lana was patient right?


So the recipe didn't really make many cookies and then we burned half of them so we could only make a few ice cream sandwiches. The cookies and ice cream are equally delicious together though not in sandwich form.