BBQ Chicken Pizza

Sometime around mid-December, my parents asked for ideas a present for Mary. I suggested a pizza stone due to their inherent awesomeness. Meanwhile, back at the Bat-Cave, Mary was suggesting the same thing to her parents for me. And now we are faced with the problem of too many pizza stones, and not enough ovens.

Unfortunately, pizzas stones do not come with their own batteries or pizza. You have to supply your own of both. As I searched for the slots for the AAA batteries to plug into, I planned my pizza toppings in a logical manner that made sense to me:

Isaac: "Well, let's see what I have on hand.... two frozen chicken breasts, three strips of black forest mondo-thick cut bacon and about a quart of BBQ sauce I made for the BCS game. I can defrost the chicken, cook some bacon since bacon needs some love on the blog... and use the BBQ sauce instead of marinara... oh, I can get some roma tomatoes to thinly slice and add on top... and I need one more veggie... lets see... ah, olives."

Isaac: "Good thinking."

Isaac: "Thanks."

Isaac: *self-five*

After buying some fresh dough from the chick with the pierced sternum at Pizza Schmizza (and getting her approval on my BBQ chicken pizza idea) I was ready to get my pizza on.

Behold, the end product:

Two points if you can tell what is not in the picture........ time's up. Olives. I forgot the olives. I didn't miss them at the time, and actually just realized it as I was typing this up. But if you need to borrow some olives, I have lots.

--Isaac

Pumpkin Muffins

I had some extra pumpkin puree hanging around the apartment. Since it didn't seem motivated to look for a job, it wasn't paying for rent or utilities, and had filled up the DVR with "Maury Povich" and "Joy of Painting" reruns, I decided to bake some muffins with the puree.

Behold... the biggest pumpkin muffin ever!

Maybe that is a slight exaggeration...

Since I only had about a quarter cup of puree, I decided on baking many mini muffins instead of just a few real-sized muffins.

Small... it's the new big.

--Isaac.

Birthday Peach Pie

I was commissioned to bake a birthday pie for my father-in-law's birthday this week. He apparently ate the whole pecan pie I made him for Christmas without sharing an ounce. Which brings me to the Pie Fact of the Day: of the three pecan pies I have made, two were consumed by just one person each, start to finish. So I guess I must be doing something right.

Since eating an entire pecan pie is not a ideal situation for a diabetic, I was asked to make this birthday pie a bit more "diabetic-friendly." I went with peach because, A) they are naturally very sweet so I wouldn't really have to add sugar, and 2) I had some frozen fresh peaches left from this summer that had be hanging out in my freezer for the last five months.

I ended up adding three tablespoons of agave nectar to the peach filing instead of the usual cup or so of refined sugar that many peach pie recipes call for, and supplementing my peaches with some more frozen peaches from the store.

Birthday Cake: you've been replaced. Sucka.

--Isaac.

Holiday Baking

We're going to take a short jump back in time for this post, so hold on, it shouldn't hurt for too long.

It isn't the holidays without Chocolate Crinkles. So I made some, and then the holidays arrived for everyone. You're welcome.

I was also commissioned to bake two pies: a sweet potato pie for family dinner on Christmas Eve and a pecan pie for Mary's dad as a present.

I used a combination of white and orange sweet potatoes, but will probably go with all orange next time as the pie didn't have that deep orange color that sweet potato pies are normally known for.

This was my first ever sweet potato pie and overall, I thought it was pretty good. It was a little more savory that I would have guessed, but definitely deserving of a spot in the pie rotation.

Unfortunately, my picture of the pecan pie I made was confinscated by the govenment because it was too awesome for its own good. Sorry.

Overall, a fantastic way to round out an exceptional year of baking.

--Isaac.

Happy New Year!

Hope it's jumbo-sized!

--BvP