Some very belated, and very disorganized, and unforgiveably unreciped, tidbits from the past weeks:

Lucky boyfriend got three birthday cakes this year: favorite flourless chocolate, pumpkin cake, and a (very messy but delicious) triple-layer mint chocolate chip ice cream cake with mint chocolate ganache and whipped topping (one layer was another flourless chocolate, so this might’ve had an unfair edge on being the best of the three.)

I flew home for Thanksgiving to be with my family and spent three days straight cooking: multiple loaves of Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread (I feel like an idiot for ever having even experimented with bread recipes other than this one). Savory cornbread to turn into a marvelous stuffing and sweet cornbread (for which I made homemade buttermilk for the first time) to bring to a family friend’s Thanksgiving potluck. Melissa Clark’s Mashed Potato Casserole which I worried would verge on Deen-esque and did, gloriously so. Roasted sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, salt and chili powder. Very garlicky hummus. Brussels sprouts steamed with caramelized shallots. Vegan wild rice pilaf with sauteed onions, apples and raisins and toasted chopped almonds. Turkey. My mom made cranberry sauce, as she does every year, with a recipe I just found out this year is her grandmother’s. She does the pies, too, before the sun rises, and made an extra that my dad and I ate for breakfast and lunch. I made apple yogurt cake, trying to recreate one that I’d invented before but not written down (successfully!). And flourless chocolate cake, again. And vegan pumpkin chocolate cake. And pumpkin butter with fresh-squeezed apple juice and lots of ginger that turned out even better than Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t stop. It was the perfect vacation.

I have resentful memories of late October weather as a kid, investing hours conceiving a perfect Halloween costume only to have it ruined by the parental enforcement of an unmatching puffy winter coat. My birthday is the 29th, and this year I spent hours trawling thrift shops on the evening of the 28th to find a perfect white trenchcoat to match my Holly Golightly costume in anticipation of the unseasonal snowstorm that hit New York last weekend. Waking up on Saturday morning at 6 a.m. to construct a beehive and shellac it with enough hairspray to resist the elements, I roused the rest of the household by practically jumping on the bed until the remaining inhabitants were enlisted on an 8 am trip to Alice’s Teacup for breakfast tea. When I say “the rest of the household”, I mean that we brought stuffed animal friends and ordered scones for them. I take my birthday seriously.

By the time we’d returned from breakfast, heavy, thick flakes had started to fall, coating the view outside my window in a slushy sheen of white. So I did the only logical thing: cued up some Christmas music on Spotify and got to baking.

I’d initially planned to bake pumpkin cookies, by request for a Halloween party later than night, but in an effort to make something a little more festive looking than misshapen orange blobs, I turned them into miniature pumpkin whoopie pies, with pumpkin buttercream filling and the edges rolled in gold sugar sprinkles.

I began with this recipe for the cookies, doubling all the spices (as I always do in pumpkin desserts), adding nutmeg and ground clove, and omitting the vanilla and ginger since I was out and not planning to head to Trader Joe’s mid-blizzard. Instead of cream cheese filling, I beat together butter with confectioners’ sugar and a touch of Trader Joe’s pumpkin butter to make buttercream frosting. Each whoopie pie got a daub of pumpkin butter, then a healthy spoonful of frosting before another cookie was sandwiched on top and the edges were rolled in sprinkles. Tiny, adorable, festive and surprisingly portable.

For the past few weeks, we’ve developed a Sunday tradition of pumpkin beer imbibed in bed sometime between 10 am and 3 pm. This past Sunday broke our streak, as I couldn’t find any pumpkin beer at the Fairway but was intrigued by “The Saint” by Crispin, a hard apple cider. “Artisanal” and “natural” with Belgian Trappist yeasts (ooooooh) and organic maple syrup (aaahhhh), I was prepared to be impressed.

After his first sip, my boyfriend made a face that let me know I’d be finishing his glass. I swished mine around in my mouth for a few seconds before pinpointing exactly what it reminded me of: watered-down glasses of daycare apple juice, thin and sweet and cloudy yellow. Seeing as I’m still head over heels about everything that reminds me of back-to-school season, this cider was like a comforting reminder that it is October, on an eighty-five degree day in New York when I wished I was wearing wool tights instead of cutoff overalls. Fans of darker ciders with a stronger spice flavor and more carbonation should probably stick to Woodchuck, or whatever you drink, but I had no qualms happily finishing all 22 ounces of this. If only it had been in a juice box with a bendy straw.

Pumpkin blondies notwithstanding, this was the first pumpkin cake of the season, made on a whim after a healthy vegetarian tofu dinner and for no occasion in particular, although we did end up taking the remaining third of it (after putting away 2/3 ourselves in 24 hours. yep. that’s right.) to my boyfriend’s parents’ house for pre-Yom Kippur dinner last night. I have two go-to pumpkin cake recipes as holdovers from last fall: this one and the one inscribed on the back of the Trader’s Joe’s Pumpkin Bread and Muffin Mix box, doctored with extra spices and TJ’s pumpkin butter. This pumpkin cake started with the Trader Joe’s box, but instead of two eggs, oil and water, I added a whole can of pumpkin, about a cup of milk, and tons of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. Then I made streusel topping, enough for a very generous layer on top of the batter, with crumbled graham crackers, butter, brown sugar and more cinnamon.

I still had some leftover butterscotch chips from the blondies, and had been thinking about mixing them into the batter when my boyfriend, whose cooking advice generally comes from what-seems-like-it-might-work rather than experience, suggested making butterscotch sauce to go with the cake. “Put some butter in it, too!” he directed, “and scotch!” So I’m pouring a half-shot of Johnnie Walker Black Label into the mixture of melted butterscotch chips and milk I’m stirring in a saucepan on the stove when it occurs to me to ask. “Hey, is there actually scotch in butterscotch?”

“No idea,” he says. (turns out butterscotch is traditionally the alchemy of butter and brown sugar. According to Wikipedia, “Food historians have several theories regarding the name and origin of this confectionery, but none are conclusive. One explanation is the meaning “to cut or score” for the word “scotch”, as the confection must be cut into pieces, or “scotched”, before hardening^. It is also possible that the “scotch” part of its name was derived from the word “scorch”.)

Here’s my super professional chef pro tip: it is definitely a really good idea to assume flavors go together if you think an ingredient is part of the name for another ingredient. Definitely always do this. Or maybe just with anything and scotch, because this butterscotch sauce was out of this world and I literally was drinking it by the spoonful.

I don’t understand the conception that French toast is difficult to make. As someone who struggles to achieve perfect pancakes and doesn’t own a wafflemaker, French toast is my standard special-occasion breakfast to impress. Even - or perhaps especially - on occasions when a slightly hungover me is the only one that needs impressing.

Also, HAPPY OCTOBER! Did you know that it’s my favorite month?! And it’s my birthday month, so this was basically a pre-pre-birthday breakfast. I had it with a tall glass of milk rather than with the namesake beverage, but I’m sure if your threshold for pumpkin is as high as mine it’d be delish that way too.

Pumpkin spice French toast:

• 3 slices challah, a day or two old
• 1 large egg
• 1 apple
• 1/2 cup milk
• honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp butter
• optional toppings: ice cream, whipped cream, more honey, and/or maple syrup

1. Dice the apple finely and add it to a saucepan with a teaspoon of butter, a squirt of honey, and cinnamon & nutmeg to taste. Cover pan with a lid and cook, stirring every so often, for 5-10 minutes, until apples are softened to your liking.
2. In the meantime, beat together the egg, milk, more honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Dredge challah slices in the mixture for about a minute.
3. Heat 1 tbsp butter in a frying pan. Place french toast slices in the pan and cook until browned on the outside, about 2-3 minutes per side. Some people put their French toast in the oven for a few minutes after this part. I don’t because A) My oven is broken, B) I’m not ultra-paranoid about raw eggs because I buy good-quality organic ones and have a very strong stomach and C) I love love love when French toast is all moist and custardy on the inside. It’s your call.
4. Plate French toast, add cooked apples, and top with whipped cream or ice cream - I used Trader Joe’s pumpkin ice cream, which we (okay, pretty much just I) have gone through a quart of this week.