Ah! More baked goods than writing! (the usual)

This weekend, keeping with the seasonal theme to my recent cooking, I baked two decadent dishes much to the delight of my cold, hungry roommates.

First, the pumpkin cake/bars with maple cream cheese icing and topped by bacon:

 Yes, that’s caramelized bacon on a cake.

I ran across this recipe on a food blog, took one look at their photo, and decided that it had to be made.  It makes a great dessert, but an even better breakfast.

Speaking of good breakfasts that can be also be a dessert, yesterday morning I whipped up a batch of apple cider donuts:

before the flip ...

... and after

 And here’s even a video of me frying the final (disastrous) donuts:

Please forgive the puns and misshapen results (delicious all the same, though.)  Actually, a mistake from the pumpkin bars the night before—a maple cream cheese icing that turned into a vat of rich caramel—turned out to be the perfect glaze: a sweet compliment to the fresh-fried dough as well as an excellent adhesive for the minced apple topping.

Oh, look: they read the New Yorker and the Village Voice with their doughnuts.  Well la-di-da ... A bit desperate to prove our Manhattan bourgeois cred, aren't we?

While the donut holes received a cinnamon-sugar treatment right out of the oil.

Yes, that’s how we do it up in Jersey City.  And this wasn’t even for guests!  Just stop in for a visit and see what kind of culinary madness you’ll be served (quite possibly on our roof, winter be damned).