A few weeks ago I travelled to Czechia for work, and while I was there I spent some time eating foods in Eastern Czechia as well as Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria. Now I’m back and over my jetlag, and find myself super inspired by all the Eastern European food I tried while I was over there. In particular, the pastries stand out in my mind. In Budapest, I saw something like a croissant, though less laminated in texture, filled with walnuts, some kind of fruit, and dark kind of sugary paste, and it instantly reminded me of rugelach. I resolved to make some, but wanted to update the traditional Jewish recipe, which originates in Poland. I replaced the raisins with cranberries, and updated the dough a little to make it flakier, more similar to what I had seen in Budapest. The result was a crispy, layered, chewy confection, super sweet yet balanced well by a relatively huge amount of butter (obviously) and nuts.

I’ve been wanting to make cheesecake for a while, but I didn’t want to make a giant cheesecake, and I was having trouble finding smaller springform pans, so the idea just lingered in my mind like the one orange in the bag covered in mold that makes you not want to eat any of the other oranges. But, I finally found 4-inch springform pans, and so am now uninhibited in the realm of cheesecake, or so I thought. Alas, I think it was not a hardware issue that was keeping me from making this next culinary endeavor; I think I was afraid because I had no experience with setting dairy-based batters. People make cheesecake and it has this perfect un-cracked surface that seemed so unattainable. Whatever though, I like cracks more, so I decided I was really just being a baby, and so I took the leap and bought some cream cheese.

I just felt like doing something fancy, ok?? Then again, I also never want to get out of my pajama pants, or even out of bed for that matter. The result? I made this decadent craziness and drank wine out of jars with ice cubes in it for like 4 hours, and then passed out after watching an entire season of Preacher. It was my favorite kind of day.

I baked this tart like 3 years ago during my make-photos-interesting-by-putting-flowers-in-them phase. But this tart doesn't even need to look good - the flavors are just that good.

So I had orange curd leftover from some macarons I made last week, and I had a ton of chocolate leftover from a disastrous attempt at making eclairs, and I had a bunch of stout in my refrigerator because all I do is drink, so I put it all into a cake!