Olivia has already done a great job of documenting what we baked, so I’ll focus on the rest of this morning’s bakefest: brunch.  Also the Leland Palmer, featured in this month’s Bon Appetit.

I can’t fairly say that I was a Twin Peaks fan ‘back in the day’, as I didn’t discover the show until 6-7 years after it aired, but at that point, I more than made up for lost time.  My dorm neighbor and I binged on Twin Peaks while studying for our art history final – and all the rest of our finals – and it’s fair to say that Twin Peaks has had a more lasting impression on me than most of what I was studying for that week in 1997.  I dressed up as Laura Palmer for Halloween one year (“she’s dead, wrapped in plastic”), and the only recurring nightmares I’ve had as an adult have involved Bob (to whom I would provide a link, but it’s too scary). One of the most exciting parts of our trip to Seattle last year was the daytrip out to the Double R Diner, where Mel and Ray and I had cherry pie in honor of Agent Cooper:

This is all to say that when I saw a drink named after Laura Palmer’s creepy dad, whose hair turned white from an intense shock, I had to make it, even if it is only spuriously connected to the show.  The drink recipe comes from a Brooklyn bartender who was inspired to doctor the classic Arnold Palmer while nursing a hangover with said drink and with old episodes of Twin Peaks.

With jasmine tea, two kinds of citrus, gin, limoncello, and a honey syrup, the Leland Palmer is sort of a halfway point between gin-and-juice and the more refined Arnold Palmer – floral and a little bit boozy, dangerously refreshing – just the sort of thing that could land you in trouble if you drank too many of them on a hot summer day.  Today, though, we exercised restraint – not that we needed to, what with a ridiculously delicious and also good for us and also super local brunch like this:

Over-medium egg over rapini and a slice of excellent toast, bacon, sauteed mushrooms and radishes, and a couple of perfect strawberries

Oh yeah, and the final product of our baking day – brioche a la Jefferson Market filled with vanilla cream and chocolate chips:

Thanks, ladies, for another month of good baking and good eating!