A soft pretzel is a bread-like substance. From bread-like substances, it’s a short step to bread pudding.

To get ourselves in the proper festive mood, let’s try the very first live performance of a song from Cassadee Pope’s upcoming album. “Good Times” is the kind of party song I usually avoid, but there’s something about sounding as if Avril Lavigne took up the kind of 1970s rock that was influenced by country’s Bakersfield Sound… it just amuses me.

Pre-Pudding Steps
For two servings:

Soak 1/3 cup of raisins in a drizzle of bourbon.

Prepare two pretzels according to package instructions. That’s just 5 minutes in a 350 oven! I skipped the step of brushing the pretzels with water and sprinkling with salt, as I’ll just add the salt at assembly time. (Or you could crumble in candied bacon. I’m regretting that I didn’t.)

Mix together one egg, 1/2 cup milk, and good healthy shakes of allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Tear the now-baked pretzels into bite-sized pieces and dredge them in the milk-egg mixture. Let the bread hang out in the milk for a while and get mushy.

Assembly and Baking
The oven should still be set to 350. Take two ramekins and sliver a little butter into them. Put the ramekins in the oven to let the butter melt.

Now, drizzle about half a teaspoon of caramel sauce and a similar amount of bourbon into the butter. Stir together. This is going to assure a self-forming sauce for the pudding. (You can make your own caramel sauce, or you can follow my example and use the caramel sauce that’s sold near the ice cream aisle. This recipe is intended to be easy enough to assemble as a decadent Sunday brunch item, while still not fully caffeinated.)

Pour about one-quarter of the bread/milk/egg mixture into each ramekin. Sprinkle with salt (or candied bacon), sprinkle with raisins. Drizzle some more caramel sauce into the mixture and give it a little stir.

Divide the remainder of the bread/milk/egg mixture into the ramekins. Sprinkle again with salt (or candied bacon) and raisins. Sliver a little more butter on top.

Into the oven it goes for about 25 minutes. It should emerge browned and bubbly!

And lo! It’s a salted caramel bread pudding!

It’s a decadent, grown-up salted-caramel bread pudding — and mildly chewy — that’s appropriate both for dessert and for a Sunday brunch dish, served with lots of hot, strong coffee and maybe some strawberries. Eat this on the patio while wearing a large hat and fanning yourself.

Faced with an incomprehensible quest, Diggs musters his power of suspending disbelief, which enables him to float over dark bottomless pits of implausibility, held aloft by only a wink, a smirk, and determination to hold onto his top hat. His reward is wealth, power, redemption, kisses with the one hot chick who doesn’t hate him yet, and the opprobrium of people who got as far as the second volume of Frank L. Baum’s classic series.

Come with me into the spoiler-filled Land of the Plot Holes… but first, learn the magic phrase that will get you from point to point over this rough terrain.

No, it’s not “there’s no place like home.” It’s “wait, what?” Say it with me. “Wait, what?” (If no children are present, “WTF?” will also work.)

Here come the credits, delightfully in black-and-white turn-of-the-century clip art, so try your utmost to disassociate this look from Monty Python’s Flying Circus…

A carnival! It’s a stunning period set, looking exactly like a turn-of-the-century carnival… as imagined by movie makers in the middle of the 20th century. There’s that temporally askew look, where the sets are accurate to the placement of the nails, but the women’s hair and make-up is present-day. I think that’s on purpose, to capture the feel of the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, so hold off on the magic phrase for a moment…

It’s time for clunky expository dialog! A young woman is in Oscar Diggs’ carnival wagon… wait, what? In 1905, even a fairly non-respectable young woman wouldn’t have gone alone to a man’s wagon, but don’t worry — a few scenes later, a character who’s clearly a Good Girl will do it, too. After assorted toing-and-froing to establish that Diggs is a prize jerkass, his stolen balloon gets sucked into a tornado and he’s transferred to Oz.

Oz is defined by flowers larger than my house and topography straight out of Dr. Seuss, with a possible detour through New Zealand. Oz is a visually impressive feat of CGI that sucked up the budget for, say, script-writing. The overwhelming CGI-ness of Oz also means that most of the acting takes place in front of a blue screen, with several characters not actually present, which may explain the actors’ reliance on mugging, hamming, winking, and nudging. Or it could be that they’re as puzzled as I was about what their motivations could possibly be.

The switch from black-and-white to color is, of course, a shout-out to the original Wizard of Oz movie. There will be many such shout-outs, including hints at the back story of the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow. And yet, even canon from the movie will be mangled.

Enter Theodora, a dewy but dense witch who has, until now, lived a life of loneliness because nobody would be friends with a witch… wait, what? It’s established in The Patchwork Girl of Oz (if not earlier) that Oz is so rife with witches and wizards that the then-ruler bans all use of magic (other than her own and Glinda’s) in order to keep the peace. So there’s no reason Theodora wouldn’t have had a whole play group.

Assorted adventures on the way to the Emerald City demonstrate that Theodora’s magic powers are limited to keeping her lipstick pristine under lip-biting conditions. Diggs befriends a flying monkey because omg! he’d called his real-world assistant a monkey, so making an actual monkey his assistant will be a form of redemption. (His real-world assistant is implied to be Frank L. Baum himself.)

Anyway, the reason Theodora’s dewy-eyed over Diggs — other than that she’s rarely let out without a keeper — is that there’s this prophecy. See, “the wicked witch” killed King Pastorius, but the king said there would come a wizard who would bear the name of the land and who would free his people… wait, what? It’s canon that the wizard deposed King Pastorius with help from the witch Mombi. Even if we decide Baum’s history was a bit garbled and Mombi did the deposing before the wizard got there, then assume the Mombi character had to be combined with another witch because the movie combined Glinda with the Witch of the North… *head explodes*… why are all these witches depending on a man to save them?

The exact nature of the wicked witch’s oppressive reign is unclear, as she doesn’t appear to rule in Emerald City, where Evanora is hanging out as advisor to the (empty) throne. Evanora shows Diggs the treasure of Oz, which is mostly gold coins… wait, what? Canon is inconsistent, but it’s often implied that precious metal and gems are commonplace and disregarded in Oz.

Diggs hies off to break the wand of the wicked one because if he didn’t, we’d have to explore his essential shysterism and his relationship with the witch sisters, and keeping him in motion seems easier. Meanwhile Evanora informs Theodora that omg! Diggs flirted with both of them. This causes Theodora to cry caustic tears because in her brief acquaintance with Diggs, she’d already managed to plan the coronation, the wedding, and how their kids would get scholarships to Hogwarts.

En route, Diggs encounters a wrecked “china town” where he glues together the legs of a china girl so she can walk because omg! he’d been unable to make a girl in a wheel chair walk, back in Kansas, so redemption. China Girl, who is pure CGI over motion capture, is the most subtle and touching actor in the cast, partly because she doesn’t mug. (Sell a version between 3″ and 6″ tall, and I’ll buy the tie-in.) When she wants to accompany him to break the witch’s wand, she pulls a hidden knife from… wait what? The knife’s as big as she is. Where did she hide that in a knee-length dress with short sleeves?

The putatively wicked witch hangs out in the forest for no reason that fits with subsequent plot revelations, in a graveyard… wait, what? Canon is inconsistent on whether Oz’s inhabitants age and die, but spooky graveyards do not show up, certainly not amidst forests. The putatively wicked witch is Glinda the Good… wait, what? Hold on there — and Glinda was framed by Evanora for murdering her (Glinda’s) father King Pastorius… WAIT, WHAT?

No, no, no! Glinda is not the daughter of Pastorius. Ozma is the daughter of Pastorius (or adopted daughter, depending), and she’s a baby when the wizard shows up, so she’s not lurking in graveyards with a magic wand. Canon just exploded.

Cue massive running around, much fog, and a visit to Glinda’s segment of Oz, where her good people include Quadlings, Munchkins, and tinkers… wait, what? And none of her subjects are soldiers… wait, what? In The Land of Oz, Glinda has a competent and highly trained army of women. But here, all they need is faith in the wizard, which Diggs imbues them with by announcing, “I am the wizard!” Easy sells, Quadlings.

Oh, and when Evanora sees her sister crying caustic tears, she offers her an apple to cure her broken heart. Theodora, being utterly lacking in sense and experience (as well as unaware that her sister is the evil power behind all the derring-don’t), doesn’t reply “wouldn’t some chocolate be more to the point?” No, she bites the apple and turns green because omg! Diggs’ duplicity has turned her wicked. In the real world, this gal’s inner goodness wouldn’t have survived middle school. (And it seems neither Theodora nor anybody else in Emerald City had noticed that the evil flying baboons were being emitted from the castle while the putatively wicked witch was elsewhere… wait, what?)

Being wicked involves flapping over to Glinda’s place to make threats but not doing anything concrete because the plot requires a big set-piece showdown later. Cue much toing-and-froing between Glinda and Diggs about how he must get people to believe in him, and somehow that belief will enable him to come up with a plan to defeat Evanora and Theodora, whose powers now extend from perfect maquillage to flying. If the theme was consistent with the first movie, the Oz-ites would be motivated by belief in the wizard to find their own plan. But no, here, everybody waits on the wizard to do the thinking. It takes him a previously unforeshadowed disquisition on Thomas Alva Edison as his hero to make him realize that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

Big showdown. Diggs wins. Glinda wins. No witches are killed because they need to reappear in the original movie. We all kind of know how this comes out. Add message about how “the people of Oz will always be free”… wait, what? The only signs of oppression we saw under the non-regime of the witches were the presence of a standing army and the sacking of China Town. And the original movie establishes that during Oz’s reign, wicked witches ruled the lands of both the Munchkins and the Winkies, so apparently Oz’s ability to enforce freedom was limited to the confines of the Emerald City.

End credits roll after Diggs gets frisky with Glinda… wait, WHAT?  We’ve made Glinda the daughter of the king so she can be a romantic prize for the Wizard rather than ruler in her own right? And yet somehow in The Wizard of Oz, Glinda’s not particularly friendly with the wizard and rules only her own province? Did they have a bad break-up or what?

Baum deliberately didn’t write get-princess-as-prize plots for Oz, supposedly because he thought children weren’t interested in that sort of thing. Odds are decent that he would have actively disapproved of reducing female characters to love interests and distressed damsels, as he was married to Maud Gage, the daughter of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage — and Maud was not a sweet clinging vine wrapping herself around a big, strong man. If Diggs’ relationship with Glinda is meant as a tribute to Baum’s own marriage, it badly misses the mark, as well as missing the chance to write much more nuanced, human interplay between charlatan and powerful woman.

The guiding philosophy in the Land of the Plot Holes is that it’s so important to get to certain set-pieces that plausibility, sense, characterization, and consistency can be sacrificed on the way. In the case of Oz the Great and Powerful, the overwhelming drive to create a fairy-tale of a man’s redemption means that the opportunity to tell a more interesting and darker story — of the Wizard’s shrewd and self-serving takeover of Oz, as implied in the books, supplemented by whatever politics prevented the witches from uniting to depose him — is lost.

While peas and carrots actually were random ingredients hanging out in my kitchen, they’re also the March challenge ingredients for Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker.

Candied Carrots

Take about a cup of baby carrots and one-quarter of a large orange (with the center pith removed). Whirr together in food processor. Then simmer in a pot on the stove with about 1 cup of sugar and 1-1/2 cups of water. Stir occasionally. In the fullness of time, it should turn into a fairly dry (but not burnt-to-the-pan) assembly of carrot shreds that have absorbed the sugar. If you get carrot marmalade instead, that’s fine, too.

Pea Cupcakes

I started with Vanilla Garlic’s Sweet Pea Cupcakes to give me a loose idea of how this might work. You can follow that recipe, or you can try my half-sized and slightly different version. Either way, preheat the oven to 375.

Blanch or steam about 1 cup of frozen peas. Drain the peas (if they need draining) and dump them into the food processor along with 1/4 cup olive oil, juice of 1 small lemon, zest of the same lemon, 1/4 teaspoon food-grade lavender (optional), and 1 egg. Whirr it all together.

In a separate bowl, combine 3/4 cup sugar, 1-1/4 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, and 1 pinch salt. Stir together, then add the pea purée. If the resulting mixture seems dry, add milk 1 tablespoon at a time until the batter is fairly smooth and liquid. If it seems too wet, add flour on the same schedule. Compared to the original recipe, I skipped vanilla because I’m going after a strong lemon flavor, and I added baking soda because I’d ramped up the acidity so much.

Assembling the Cupcakes

Grease the muffin tin. I swear by spray olive oil, as it gives a nice crisp crumb to the outside of muffins and cupcakes, which I prefer over the tenderness one gets with cupcake papers. If you’d rather have a tender edge and you’re up for maneuvering a layered batter into papers, go for it.

Drop about 1 tablespoon of batter into each muffin cup. Top with a bit of candied carrot, then put another tablespoon of pea batter on top. I got 7 cupcakes from my batter, with cups filled almost to the top, so keep an eye on how much batter you’ve used as you create the initial layer.

Into the oven it goes! I started the timer at 12 minutes, and the edges were browning at that point, so I called it done. You may want a few minutes more. If you used a greased tin rather than cupcake papers, let the cupcakes cool in the pan for a few minutes before trying to remove them onto a rack: time to reflect is vital in convincing cupcakes that structural integrity is more fun than clinging to the pan.

My dithering over whether to frost these — I don’t much like frosting, but it looks pretty for the photo op — was resolved by determining that I had neither cream cheese nor sour cream handy to make a frosting. The sour cream frosting in the original Vanilla Garlic recipe is probably a better taste fit than cream cheese.

The result is more like a sweet cornbread than a true cupcake, which is another argument for not frosting. These cupcakes have a pleasantly spring-like and mildly grassy taste, with a little sweet surprise in the center. You could serve these for tea — I’m thinking with a strong, dark tea — and even get away with buttering them.

Variations

With pea batter: Vary the fillings with lemon curd, marmalade, or blueberry jelly.

With candied carrot filling: Vary the batter with spice cake, parsnip cake, or carrot cake.

With a green purée batter: I’m thinking this needs to be tried with a pesto purée (less the cheese) and a cream-cheese filling.

The key ingredients were almond paste and pastry. For two entire months of planning, I swore I was going to make a sort of tart with prefab pie crust, prefab almond paste, and jelly in a nice jar. Then I found myself standing in the baking aisle of Transitional Neighborhood Kroger with nary a tube of almond paste to be seen… but sliced almonds marked 40% off.

It’s not that I dare mightily: it’s that I’m both lazy and cheap. So this coffee cake is entirely made from scratch, and would probably have still been pretty easy if I were better at it.

For no really clear reason, this coffee cake got me listening to the stream of Megan Hilty’s new album, It Happens All the Time (buy at Amazon, buy at iTunes), so don’t hesitate to check it out, particularly her cover of “Dare You to Move” (which is not quite the same as “dare you to make pastry,” but it’ll do).

Jelly

Jelly is easy in small amounts that get used quickly, so that there’s no need to get involved with sterilizing mason jars. Jelly happened because the blueberries from the 99 Cents Only had turned out less flavorful than I’d hoped. Two pints of blueberries plus the remains of a pint of blackberries (because I had it), half a cup of sugar, and a cup of water all go in the pot to simmer. It’s done when the berries pop and you like the texture.

Pastry Dough

I started from Joe Pastry’s Danish Pastry Dough, though he’d probably be embarrassed to know me at this point. I also started the night before. Stir together:

1/3 cup milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons yeast

People reading the original recipe will note that I cut everything in half except the yeast. The flour is going to be heavier than ordinary white flour, so I wanted more yeast to lift it.

Then stir in:

1/4 cup rye flour
1/4 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour

The result will be a moist dough. Cover it with a damp cloth and let it rise for half an hour at room temperature, then overnight in the refrigerator. This is also a good time to throw some butter in the freezer.

Why rye? I figured if I was going to bestir myself to roll out dough, I might as well aim for a flavor that I can’t get in a Pillsbury can.

Almond Paste with Lavender

Into the food processor went:

1 cup of sliced almonds
1/2 cup (or so) of powdered sugar
a very generous drizzle of honey
1/2 teaspoon lavender
drizzle of orange blossom water (or rose water)

Hold off on the orange blossom water until the rest of the mixture has had a few good whirrs in the food processor, as it’s there to provide moisture that will make the chopped almonds pasty rather than powdery. The more cooperatively the almonds turn to paste on their own, the less added liquid you need. (Most recipes use an egg white, but I was feeling rebellious about separating eggs, even though I know perfectly well how to do it.)

Assembly

On a floured surface, with a floured rolling pin (okay, a floured bottle that formerly held sarsaparilla soda from my trip to Tombstone last year), roll out the incredibly sticky dough nice and thin. Slice butter onto half of it, fold it over, roll it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ideally, you will do this (a) more than the three times I did and (b) in a way that doesn’t leave you with lumps of butter sticking through the dough. Practice, as they say, makes perfect.

When you’ve created as many layers of butter and dough as you can stand, spread the almond paste down the middle and top with the blueberry jelly. At this point, it’d be ideal to make angled cuts in the dough so that the sides could be woven together prettily, but the dough was still too sticky, so I settled for rolling it up into a rough log and calling it “rustic.” It’s so sticky that it’s going to bake on the same parchment paper I was rolling on.

Give it half an hour to think over its sins while the oven preheats to 375. In it goes — check at about 15 minutes, and it may even be done at that point.

It tastes better than it looks! I need to master achieving flaky layers rather than just buttery fluffy dough… but it’s a respectable rye dough, and I like how the blueberries work with the almond paste, as well as how the lavender gives it all the effect of slightly exalted bath supplies.

I’m quite reasonably happy, as while my first shot at pastry dough won’t win prizes, I’ve found it’s not that difficult to put something together that tastes good and holds a filling.

Variations

Both the rye dough and the almond-lavender paste would go well with lemon curd or apricot jam. Cherry jam would also be worth a try, though I might skip the lavender then.

With the stickiness of the dough once under control, it should also be possible to make individual servings in any of the delightful shapes that Joe Pastry explains.

The book moves at a leisurely pace, leaving the reader time to ponder which recipe to try (or to think about booking tickets to the Gulf Coast, as the descriptions are seductive). I should probably make the cookies that Phyllis enters in the baking contest, but I cook so many sweets, and I’ve  often vaguely wondered whether seafood Mexican involves cream cheese or cream or what… so the seafood quesadillas, it is.

As a reminder that today’s grandparents and retirees are children of the 1960s, not the 1930s, here’s a little Donovan cover about a crab. I went with a cover because there doesn’t seem to be a clear live tubie of the original — and also because this Sou’sideLiam is a nice listen. (He has a Youtube channel of covers of music of this era.)