Are we making breakfast or brining chicken? Coffee, milk, butter, orange, brown sugar, black peppercorns, whole cloves, and star anise. (Not pictured: chicken -- try as we might, we just can't make raw chicken look good.)

In goes the salt. (Merrill, let Amanda help!)

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening ... you know the rest!

With conviction, Amanda pounds the star anise, black peppercorns, and whole cloves into the snow -- oops, excuse us -- salt.

Now that's what we call moral support.

No, Merrill, you may not use your orange as a handpuppet. 

The dry ingredients moistened with orange juice and poised for coffee action. Funky looking? Yes. The stuff of a great brine? You betcha.

We make our coffee in a French press (this one is actually the classic Bodum, despite the new, angular design -- we miss the handsome little feet!). 

Why, Merrill! How well you pour your coffee!

It may as well be late night at Amanda's -- doesn't it look like the midnight oil's burning in the background as we add the brine to the ice to cool?

An autumn punch? No, and don't even think about drinking this.

No matter how awkward the task, Merrill always manages to smile through it. Wider, Merrill, wider!

After the bird finished brining, we arranged him neatly on a sheet pan, re-posing his flailing limbs -- gingerroot smartly instructs us dry him out for an hour in the fridge post-brine to help the skin crisp up.

Skin nice and dry, we brown him on all sides. A bronzed bird in a blue Dutch oven -- a match made in heaven.

Not your average birdbath. Here's the step that had us thinking of pork cooked in milk.

Breakfast no longer. Dinner is served.

The cheesecake ingredients: egg, graham crackers, confectioners' sugar, sugar, cream cheese, butter, vanilla, chocolate, instant espresso, cocoa powder, chocolate covered espresso beans.

A curious bystander watches the graham crackers whizzing around in the food processor.  

Merrill tackles the crust while Amanda starts on the filling.  

A little cocoa powder in the crust.  

This is a cheesecake made with cream cheese, and lots of it.  

Boulangere calls for a 10-inch springform pan -- we used a 9-inch.  

Dissolving the instant espresso in a little heavy cream.  

Amanda consults the recipe before soldiering ahead.  

You add 5 eggs, one at a time.  

We used Amanda's fold and seal technique to create a double-wide piece of foil.  

Then we wrapped the bottom of the pan with it, so nothing could leak out or in.  

In goes the espresso cream...

We put the cake in a roasting pan and then poured boiling water about an inch up the sides.  

After about an hour in the oven and some time in the fridge, it's time to umold. Amanda starts with a sharp knife dipped in hot water.  

She sets the pan on a small bowl so that she can separate the outer ring of the pan from the base.  

Wow!  

A little whipped cream...  

A few chocolate shavings and some chocolate covered espresso beans cap it all off.