| SHINY HAPPY YUMMY | - What Pippa Wants ~PippaGoetz

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Don’t forget to vote today! Truthfully, if I can be honest, I would have tacked on a few additional petitions to add to the ballot to really shake things up. Champagne Fridays. Abolishing Daylight Savings. Remove the “White After Labor Day” stigma. And, despite the fact that my pants may disagree – Always eat Dessert. Cheesecake in particular. Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake to be even more specific. Not sure about you but, I’d stand in line to cast that vote.

Anyway, Here we are… Fall. Pumpkin spice everything season. Bye-bye belt, pajama-jeans-are-my-best-friend season. And, the season of giving. I am giving you this recipe because, it may actually change your view on Thanksgiving treats. It’s a cheesecake. It has pumpkin. It has chocolate. AND, it has a rich gingersnap crust. AND… you can serve it with super simple Maple Pecan Pralines that may completely send it over the edge. Need I say more? Yes, actually, you should know well enough now to know that I will almost always say more.

I would like to go on record to say that I won awards in Culinary School for this bad boy LOOOOONG before Pinterest was even a glimmer in someone’s eye. Actually, back then we were still using MS DOS on computers that were the size of microwave ovens (remember that?) and I was convinced I would NEVER need those stupid command based computer skills. Boy, was I wrong. Let’s just say that’s how long I have been making this decadent Autumn confection. I should also throw in that this falls in the realm of my college “zone”. Which, (if you have read previous posts ) might give you a better visual of what ‘life’ was like when I first cobbled this pairing together. The munchies + Culinary school = BOOYAH baby.

The cheesecake part is your average run-of-the-mill NY style fatty boombalatty mamajama found in just about every cookbook. The beauty of this dessert comes in it’s construction, the addition of the Ganache in the base and ginger snap crust. Both of which stemmed from a college care package that my parents sent me one year that included a case of Sweetzels Ginger snaps and a 10lb. block of Ghiradelli Bittersweet Chocolate. My parents knew what I liked. And needed.

You can Click here for the recipe and we can toast each other for upping the Fall dessert game a few notches and then we can move on because, while we are here, we need to quickly talk about something else. Something shiny. Let’s saaaaaay… COPPER?

Here at Witzend I am kind of swimming in copper. I am lucky that each year I have been handed down a beautiful piece of copper cookware from my mother… these are my prize possessions (among the 5000 other collections she has gifted me) and for 75% of the year they hang on a rack… a travesty really. But Copper makes me think of fall. It happens to match the autumn leaves perfectly and paired with the bright green remnants of the season just passed you really can’t go wrong. I am kind of meandering here because what really shines right here is the versatility of a good old fashioned can of copper spray paint. And produce. And the way the tell tale shake of that spray can completely change an armload of cheap flowers.

This falls under the ‘no need to be crazy, just be crafty’ category. Just another genetic characteristic I have inherited from my mom best friend. Seriously… my mother was “Martha” before Martha was Martha… she could make works of art out of curbside trash like it was nobody’s business. She scavenged and scoured for cast offs that could be transformed into things of beauty. Are you sensing a pattern here?

One of my favorite parts of each fall was watching my mother prepare for the onslaught of the holiday decorating season. No surface was sacred, each held a treasure of its own… hand shaped, painted and varnished salt dough ornaments, gilded pineapples, yards of yard-loot garlands and greens waiting to be hung, stacks of china, pressed napkins packaged for storage in the freezer (works great trust me), boxes of 12th night charms, and one of my favorites…. dried Artichoke Roses.

I may have been the ripe old age of 6 when my mom first taugt me how to delicately fold the fresh leaves and then patiently wait until the chokes were dried. It was then that I learned about the glory of spray paint. We wore matching aprons, she didn’t have a lick of gray hair, she was never seen NOT wearing her quintessential uniform of a puffy sleeved Laura Ashley dress (you know which ones), she pretty much ruled B. Altman & Co. and she still drank Tom Collins’ and TAB. Just a quick proud side note, my mom could drive a stick shift, down a Tab, smoke a cigarette and be sure her purse didn’t fly off the seat all at the same time. I mean multi- tasking goals people, and that was BEFORE cell phones!

I digress… again. The Artichokes… one of my favorites. Retro vibes being brought back to the forefront of your table decor. Because once they are dried you can paint them any of the 1,867 Pantone colors of your choice… coat after coat and, use them on repeat ANYWHERE and ANYHOW you choose. Here is the super easy no brainer tutorial in case you didnt have a mom like mine who walked you through what you thought was benign but was actually the basis for an entire lifestyle that you never thought would completely control your every breath.

So, Cheers to decadent desserts, real-deal crafty AF moms and breaking out the copper. Happy Fall!

Xo, Pippa

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