Recently, I emerged from Boule as a proud owner of a small bag of French macarons.

I made the short walk back to my car, got in and buckled my seatbelt. But instead of starting the engine, I placed the bag on the passenger’s seat and selected a caramel macaron to devour before the long drive home. Its smooth crust cracked softly against my lips.

At once, I catapult through the upper echelons of social class. My driver’s seat is a plush throne, and I’m perched in it with a silk sash draped across my velvet robes. In my left hand sits the royal caramel delicacy, in my right, a jeweled scepter.

Chewing slowly, I peer out of my carriage as peasants walk by, oblivious to my transformation. “Ha!” I guffaw at them with my mouth full. “You’ll never sample a dessert as elegant as this.” I taste a quick burst of caramel, with notes of almonds and vanilla. The flavors fade, and I shove the final morsel into my mouth. And in that instant, the macaron is gone.

With nothing more than a lap full of crumbs, I plummet back to the sober land of lower-middle class. My velvet robe melts away to reveal a $10 cardigan. In my right hands is a beige transmission lever. My left hand is cupped around an invisible macaron, still quivering from the sudden fall from grace. I’m just a nobody sitting in the driver’s seat of an illegally parked Corolla.

So I have another.

– Cynthia Furey

As a kid, I loved going to McDonald’s. It was one of my first experiences with American food, as I had grown up largely on Vietnamese pho and other variants of the cuisine. In fourth grade, a drive-through window at a McDonald’s granted me my first taste of barbecue sauce; my first bites of cheese. As much as I hate admitting that I grew up loving (and still kinda have an affinity for) fast food, I really do have to credit the genre for making me less picky about what I eat.

I occasionally go back to those drive-thru windows, albeit when I’m hungry and broke or when I’m having a bad day and all I want to do is wallow and feel even worse. The price of a meal has increased since my first time, but the taste of the burgers and sauce haven’t changed.

What did change, however, were McDonald’s apple pies, which provided me my first-ever taste of apple pie. Back then, they were little pockets of glossy mush, tasting of nothing more than sugar and cinnamon. There could have been anything in those things – apples, peaches — and no one would have noticed a difference. And, most importantly, they were fried.

I LOVED those things. My mother would drive us to McDonald’s and, in front of the drive-thru speaker, we would engage in little arguments over whether or not my behavior warranted one. In her eyes, I was a hyperactive, unruly child who could live without the treat. In my eyes, my mother didn’t love me and was depriving me of one of life’s greatest pleasures. These were epic battles.

It was during this time that I learned the art of making a deal: I proposed to rake leaves, baby-sit my cousins for free and morph into an absolute angel, in exchange for one of those apple pies.

Each time my mother relented, it was like I had won a battle. Each pie was a prize for my efforts. My mom would hand me a little rectangular red box emblazoned with a food-porn photo of the apple pie, and I would eat its contents voraciously, tasting victory with every bite. It didn’t matter if I had to rake the yard or do extra chores. I had won.

One day, it so happened that I emerged a winner from another of our battles and was handed a new box. Still red, but with a different photo on the front. It was one of McDonald’s new apple pies – baked.

These things lacked everything I loved about the old ones: The chewy, blistered crust, the super-sugary mush. Instead (and probably what most people like about them), they had a flaky crust. Sprinkled with cinnamon, and with the taste of apples. I was not a fan.

After that day, I actually did become the angel I had always promised to be: Shy, reserved, ordering just what was necessary to quiet my hunger. Apple pie? No thank you. I never had a McDonald’s apple pie again.

Since then, I’ve eaten dozens of slices of apple pie – some fantastic, some inedible, some I’ve made myself – but nothing has come close to the feeling of biting into those awful little pockets. But, as I’m pleased to announce, there is a happy ending to this story. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” below for more)

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Pumpkin is one of my favorite flavors. The following is a recipe I developed; one of my favorites, and the one I’m most proud of. The story (and the above photo that I took) ran in The Orange County Register this month. it can’t be found on the newspaper’s site, so I’ve posted it here. Enjoy!

Food 101: Pumpkin muffins, or cupcakes?
With this recipe, you can choose between the two, or make them both.

By CYNTHIA FUREY
Special to the Register

It’s a question for the ages: What’s the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? If you slather some frosting on a muffin, would that make it a cupcake, or does the difference lie in the general makeup of the baked good? To help answer this plaguing question, I asked Chef Melissa Simpson, baking guru and culinary instructor at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, what her opinion was on the matter.

“Generally, I would say there is little difference between cupcakes and muffins,” said Simpson. “Muffins generally use fruit, vegetables or nuts baked inside the batter. Cupcakes are iced and if filled may use ganache, mousse, or creams. Fruits and nuts may be used inside the filling or garnishes on the tops.”

It seems you can often interchange muffin and cupcake recipes as well. For example, coffee cake has a lighter texture than most cakes, and can double as a muffin if it goes sans frosting or icing. “Instead of icing, it might be topped by a crumble or swirled throughout with cinnamon sugar,” Simpson said. “Carrot cake is another prime example. It can be a muffin or cake, topped with nuts (for muffins) or cream cheese icing (for cakes).”

With these clarifications in mind, I went to work on developing a basic muffin recipe that is slightly less sweeter than most recipes, so if you decide to add frosting it won’t be a sugar overload in every bite. Pumpkin, in addition to fitting into the holiday season, has a subdued sweet flavor as well. The cinnamon cream cheese frosting adds enough sugar and spice to transform the mild muffin into a decadent dessert, and the addition of a small amount of brown sugar gives it a slight hint of caramel.

If you’re going the muffin route, you can add nuts or chocolate chips to the batter to make them heartier for a breakfast meal, or to serve with coffee or tea. Eat them right out of the oven, or give them a short stint in the microwave to warm them up.

If going the cupcake route, you can pipe frosting on with a pastry bag or spread it on with a knife. These cupcakes will be lovely either way as long as you make sure to use at least two tablespoons of frosting for each cupcake (this will give you the professional-looking rounded top that you see in bakeries). I like to sprinkle a small amount of ground nutmeg over the frosting as an elegant finishing touch.

And for those who want to use minimal effort in frosting cupcakes, you can also use a regular spoon. Scoop frosting out of the bowl and add a dollop to each cupcake. This method will require the frosting to be at room temperature so that it’s soft enough to fall from the spoon. But any way you do it, you really can’t go wrong. (Click on link below for recipe)

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