high-bar baking

Ed Sheeran’s X album turned ten today. Wow, that made me feel old. It’s been so long that I couldn’t remember when I became an Ed Sheeran fan. I was firmly one by the time Divide came out, but did I listen to X as soon as it dropped? Would I have been on Spotify (the desktop app) yet? 

It feels like it’s been out my whole life. 

I listened through it again, and the album holds up. I still think I know way more of the words than I actually do, just like when I was in high school. His voice is still kind of perfect. The loop pedal hits. Nobody does it like him. 

And he’s grown up, and I haven’t grown with him, and that’s ok. We’ll always have Paris. The classics are never, never going out of style.

In the spirit of other things that were the rage in the early 2000s: Oreo balls. I made way too many of them. The recipe makes 24 or something, and I thought that wouldn’t be enough for the small get-together I was going to. Word to the wise, folks, Oreo balls are rich. You will be safe with one batch. But I doubled it, because I am — if nothing else — on brand. 

And they didn’t go out of style either. I coat them in almond bark, the go-to candy coating of my childhood. It has no almonds in it; it’s just sugar. It shells the balls in a thin, perfect layer of crunchy sweetness, and the interior is Oreo goodness. You can’t beat an Oreo. As an ingredient. They’re really only ok as a solo foodstuff.

In summary, the classics are: X by Ed Sheeran, Oreo balls, and late nights with friends, the kind where you don’t ever want to step away from the fire pit and back into your regular life.

Only those three though. No room for any other classics. Don’t get crazy.