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The family and I are celebrating the return of one of our favorite geeky shows tonight with fish fingers and custard! If you’re also a Doctor Who fan you know what’s up, if not you can get a little background here.

This is actually a surprise for the girls — they know I’ve been in the kitchen all morning baking but haven’t been allowed to come in and see what it is yet. And with that I have to admit that it’s not really fish fingers — we’re not that hardcore! These are actually shortbread cookies rolled in graham cracker crumbs, swiped from bakingdom.

We’re fairly new to the Doctor Who obsession — I want to say it’s only been a year or so — but it makes my little sci-fi heart happy, and fills a void left by Battlestar Galactica and Firefly and Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teen (it was not cool to be into sci-fi when I was a teenager so many hundreds of years ago, so it’s fun to get into it with the girls now, as evidenced by the TARDIS cake for the 14-year-old last November).

The custard (actually vanilla pudding) was also homemade because I’d already run out once to pick up forgotten graham crackers, and I couldn’t bring myself to run out again for a box of pudding. I put up with standing at the stove for what seemed like forever, but it was worth it. Homemade pudding is cool.

The fish fingers are delicious too, very light and crunchy. They’re really close to being too salty, though, so when I make them again I’ll go with just 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

If you’re a geek at heart and a fan of the Doctor, you can get the fish finger cookie recipe from bakingdom.com, and the homemade vanilla pudding recipe I used is below:

Homemade Vanilla Pudding
serves 6

3/4 c granulated sugar
3 Tb cornstarch
3 c cold milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 Tb butter
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a heavy medium saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Add milk and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until bubbly. Lower heat and cook and stir for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat. Gradually stir 1 cup of the milk mixture into the beaten eggs.

Add the egg mixture to the saucepan with the rest of the milk mixture and bring almost to a bubble but do not boil. Reduce heat and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and vanilla extract.

Pour pudding into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least six hours before serving.

I know everyone hates it when bloggers come back after some time away and say “I’ve been gone so long! I’m so sorry! Wow, I’ve been so busy! I need to get things rolling again!” so I won’t 🙂 (but it’s true!).

We haven’t actually been so much busy as we have been contaminated with plague.

Someone who may or may not work at Mike’s place of business may or may not have decided to head into work sick a couple of weeks ago, and it’s ripped through our household like wildfire. We’ve had two separate rounds of antibiotics, prescriptions for coughs and sore throats, and as many over-the-counter pills available for sneezing and runny noses. And we’ve been dealing with this alongside a pretty sick 13-year-old dog as well.

In other words, it’s been loads of fun around here.

Anyway, I had meant to do this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (brownies!) but just didn’t have the stamina to stay upright in the kitchen over the weekend, so I had to give it a pass.

And today has taken any energy I’ve had in reserve since it’s my oldest daughter’s 14th birthday. It’s been a caffeine-filled day as I’ve not only been baking for Thanksgiving tomorrow, but juggling the above birthday cake and birthday preparations as well.

Can you tell what she (we) is currently into? It’s an interest I am trying to encourage since I’ve wondered if any of the girls would be bitten with the science fiction bug (they all have!). The cake was heavily inspired by this picture, and as you can see I’ve got a little bit of temporal distortion happening along the bottom there. That blue is strong willed.

Anyway, I just made a basic old pumpkin pie alongside the cake (but I did get my spiced pumpkin cheesecake fix a couple of weeks ago),

And we’ve got the turkey prepped and ready to be lowered into some Alton Brown brine,

And tomorrow I get to wrestle with stuffing, potatoes and all the rest of it.

I hope all my American friends have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!