It’s been a rough week here at Yumbrosia Headquarters. Most of my energies have been devoted to battling The Sickness, with leftover efforts going toward schoolwork and helping out at the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon. My parents came to visit on Friday, and Matt is here this weekend. With all that was going on, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to fit in the most important event of the month: the Daring Bakers.

This month’s challenge was hosted by Marce of Pip in the City and the assignment was delicious. She gave us a choice of cinnamon rolls and sticky buns, with recipes adapted from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. While my original intention was to do some of each, my busy schedule led me to stick to sticky.

I put together the dough Thursday afternoon. This was the least sweltering day of the heat wave that hit us last week, but even so, the butter melted on the counter just out of the fridge. This worked in my favor, allowing me to easily cream the butter with the sugar. The rest of the dough came together just as easily, except that it was so sticky that I kept having to add more flour. This, I realized quickly, was my fault for measuring in the flour a half cup short, but shaking in some more fixed it all nicely.

In the heat, the dough puffed up quickly, and in the meantime, I made my glaze. I made some simple syrup and used that for the corn syrup, and it worked out well enough. I had planned to cut the amounts of sugar, butter, sugar, vanilla, and sugar in half, but accidentally added the full amount of sugar and had to go through with it. Oh, well. I suppose I’ll learn to live with the extra.

Things got a little more difficult after the first rise. The recipe doesn’t mention punching down the dough, but I found it impossible to roll out with all the air bubbles; it just kept springing back into an amorphous mass. After squeezing out the yeasty gases, though, I managed a passable rectangle and scattered my homemade cinnamon sugar over it.

Now, about two weeks ago, I saw Alton Brown making cinnamon buns on Good Eats. He showed us how to roll the dough up, working from the middle to the edges and back again with a twisting motion. The film for this, as for most of the demonstration, was sped up, but it looked easy. I am here to tell you that it was not easy. I rolled my dough with a twisting motion, only to see the middle unroll itself as I moved to the edges. Worse, any attempt to reroll was thwarted by the coating of cinnamon sugar.

After struggling with this for some time, I contented myself with a loose, messy roll and cut it into nine pieces, which I crammed into my wee 8-by-8-inch pan. I realized that the pan I had bought would be too small, but it was too late to go out for another one. Rather than sitting the prescribed half inch apart, they molded immediately into one great sticky bun.

I covered the tray, stuck it in the fridge, and went online to see if I was screwed. According to other Daring Bakers, the main concern would be overflowing glaze, so I planned to put it over a foil baking tray. It worked well. Friday morning, I took the rolls out for the second rise, and went off to class. I met up with my parents for lunch afterwards, and when we got back from a massive Target expedition for, among other things, more bakeware, they were ready for to bake.

As my dad put my bookcase together, my mom gave herself a tour, and I tried to comfort my exiled dog, the house filled with the smell of pure delicious. The glass dish helped me monitor the bottoms (aka the tops) of the sticky buns, and I pulled them out when they were fully caramelized. I flipped them out onto the defoiled baking sheet and beheld them in awe.

The recipe tells us to wait twenty minutes before digging in, but we couldn’t help ourselves. I used a knife to tear them roughly along the lines of the original rolls, and we gobbled them up. Although they were a bit shapeless and lacked a clear swirl, they were amazing. The light, fluffy bun had a hint of lemon that offset rich, buttery glaze. The earthy walnuts and plumped raisins were delightfully sweet against the pillowy, yeasty layers. I set one aside for Matt, packed another one to send home to Drew, and left the rest out for my roommates.

And the reactions? My parents said they were “perfect.” Drew said they were “very good, but far too many nuts.” Jenna and John called them variations on “sooooo good.” Tim called them “orgasmic.”

I think it’s safe to say that the sticky buns were a hit.

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Kramer: A hot bowl of mulligatawny would hit the spot.
Elaine: Mulligatawny?
Kramer: Yes, it’s a delightful Hindu concoction simmered to perfection by one of the great soup artisans in the modern era.
Elaine: Who, the Soup Nazi?
Kramer: He’s not a Nazi, Elaine. He just happens to be a little eccentric. Most geniuses are.

- Seinfeld, “The Soup Nazi”

It’s hard to believe in the midst of this ridiculous heat wave, but there were some grey days earlier this month that fairly howled for soup. I was driving home from class under oppressive dark clouds when I decided to give Matt a call. “What are the ingredients for mulligatawny?” I asked.

Weeks earlier, maybe even months, Matt had said to me, “If you make me mulligatawny, I will eat it.” It was then the middle of summer, and what’s more, Matt is not generally a soup enthusiast. He is, however, a Seinfeld enthusiast, and I knew whence this sudden craving came. I didn’t immediately acquiesce, but I kept it in the back of my mind for a rainy day.

And so on this particular rainy day, I had Matt look up a mulligatawny recipe on Food & Wine and text me the ingredients. I got a little nervous about spending so much money on ingredients, but considering that the rest of the spices are mine to keep and that the soup fed me for three days (plus the portion I froze for Matt), it’s really quite a deal. I wasn’t able to find all the spices I needed, so I just added more of the ones I had to taste. My hot bowl of mulligatawny did indeed hit the spot, and that rainy day was soon chased away.

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Summer’s ending. Deal with it.

But first, here are a few last dishes.

Before I left for school, I tried out The Pioneer Woman’s fresh corn casserole. Ree is pretty effusive about it and with good reason. It is simple simple simple: corn, cream, butter, salt, pepper. It is also good, good, good. It is lick the plate good, and I mean that literally. It is hesitate to share it with anybody else good, and I mean that literally as well. I would make this again in a heartbeat, and actually may do so tonight.

This summer, I felt besieged by zucchini posts. Inspired, I gave my new Mario Batali cookbook, Molto Mario, a whirl with his recipe for marinated zucchini. Neither my dad or my brother were interested in the results, but I liked the spicy, salady, herby concoction enough that I ate almost all of it at once and got myself a nice little tummyache. It’s not like, the best vegetable dish ever, but it’s fresh and different and very summery.

And then I packed up and went to Amherst, Massachusetts for school. I’m still working out the kinks of my new kitchen, and I’ll admit I’ve been a little timid. I haven’t used the oven yet, and have yet to make more than a one dish meal. But there’s always that old fallback, pasta. I put together a sauce by sautéing corn cut off the cob and heirloom tomatoes in a little butter, tossing it with chiffonaded basil and some half-and-half. I thinned some of it with pasta water and mixed it into cooked pipette pasta. Bright and sweet and tart, it was summer in a bowl.

I used the pipettes again for a version of my raw tomato sauce, but with a twist. I had bought some ricotta salata on a whim, and delighted with the salty, dry tang, I crumbled it into my pasta. The result was something like caprese salad with a sharpness to it.

But now with autumn creeping in, my thoughts turn to soupier things, to slow cooked things, to things featuring apples. Watch in horror and amazement as I navigate the school year and figure out how to cook for myself for sustenance as well as recreation. Fear not, for I am confident that yummy things are to come.

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