It’s December, which means holiday baking season!  I have been running around like crazy the past few days in a post-NaNoWriMo frenzy, trying to catch up with holiday shopping, getting my hair cut, meeting up with friends.  I went shopping with an old friend yesterday — she’s an astrophysicist up in Boulder — and I waited for 45 minutes in Victoria’s Secret while she tried on bras.  You haven’t lived until you’ve gone bra shopping with a physicist.  For her, it is a seriously analytical experience.

 

There is absolutely nothing I’m interested in in VS; the bras don’t fit me right and the underwear looks…weird…  I don’t know, I just can’t get my mind around the idea of wearing hot pink undies that say “Diva.”  I am just not a hot pink undie person, or a diva for that matter.  Also, I sampled their lotions and perfumes — they all smell awful.  Really fake and perfumey and sweet.  I tried some lipgloss without realizing it was that stinging kind that is supposed to make your lips look plump.   Gah!!!  I felt like saying, in my best Gollum voice, “It burns us!!”  So…Victoria’s Secret.  I just don’t get it.

 

I did get a start on some baking.  My hairdresser loves cheesecake so I baked him one last night (recipe below — I got it online somewhere a few years back but I can’t remember the source.)  I’m happy to say that he did my highlights and the gray hairs are now incognito.

 

Tomorrow:  Guided primary ashtanga class!  Yeah!!!

 

Dulce de Leche Cheesecake

for the crust:
4 Tb. melted butter
1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs

for the topping:
1 can dulce de leche (look in the Hispanic foods area of your grocery store)

for the cheesecake:
4 8 oz. packages cream cheese, softened
½ cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 Tb. vanilla
¼ tsp. salt
4 large eggs, at room temperature

Directions:  For the crust:  Combine butter and crumbs, mixing well with a fork.  Press into the bottom of a 10-inch springform pan.  (Variation: double the crust, divide between two 8×8 aluminum pans — the cheap ones you get at the grocery store — shorten baking time by 10 minutes or so and give as gifts).

For the cheesecake:
Beat cream cheese and both sugars at medium speed with an electric mixer until soft and fluffy.  Add vanilla and salt.  Add eggs one at a time, beating on lowest speed of mixer until just incorporated.

Pour two-thirds of batter over crust.  Beat dulce de leche into remaining batter.  Pour caramel batter over plain batter in pan and swirl mixtures with a rubber spatula.

Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes, or until edges are firm but middle still wiggles.  Remove from oven and cool.  Chill.