my my

i'm sure i have over 50 pictures waiting to be posted and written about. in the last 2 months of my absence from blogging, i have baked so much, and eaten so many good things. its a shame i'm just too damn lazy.

this:
is a chocolate from mink. mink is where i go to when i need to indulge and want to have a party in my mouth. and my sister (who is awesome - i know she reads this so i have to say that) knows it too and left me a box of some chocolates wrapped in cute wrapping paper when i came home from my trip last weekend. mink not only makes their own chocolate, and comes up with amazing chocolate combinations (chocolate + mint + bourbon; chocolate + rosemary + fleur de sel + caramel; chocolate + chai + spices; etc etc), but they do coffee too. and hot chocolates. and hot chocolates with peppermint. and hot chocolates with pepper and spices. and they donate all their tips to charities.

the chocolate pictured has got a dark chocolate ganache filling with subtle honey and blackberry in it.

brilliant. now i am craving chocolate. at 12:40am when i should be sleeping. hooray for the stat tomorrow!

this:

is the apple pie i made today. well, the last slice of it. which is resting happily in my belly currently. what can i say about pie? its fantastic. this one is a conglomerate of spices with apples. i used cinnamon, cardamon, and vanilla beans. and sugar. never forget the sugar. for the crust, i used the recipe at simply recipes and its worked well for me nearly every time. if you are patient with the dough and let it sit in the fridge a while before rolling, and don't tear it up by rolling it while its still cold, then its a beauty and becomes a wonderfully rich flaky crust that you want to be best friends with forever. i use butter only, no other shortening, and i don't care how many people rant about how better shortening is in pie crust... butter is best. firstly, because butter is natural. secondly, its not hydrogenated. thirdly, it just tastes better.

sadly, i can't really give a recipe for the pie filling. i kind of made it up. but i can give a general overview:
i spent hours peeling, coring, cutting apples.
i dumped them in some lemon water to sit and wait patiently.
i drained the lemon juice off, but kept the teensiest amount of lemon juice with the apples.
i added: lemon zest, cinnamon, sugar, flour, cardamon, vanilla beans (scraped from a split pod), vanilla extract, sugar.

i was inspired by the milk eggs chocolate blog and her vanilla cardamom pear pie.

and that's enough writing for one night.