I’ve been going to live music events all my life; it didn’t stop when I turned 30. Or 40, or 50 or 60. I’ve been asked if I were the performers’ parents. I’ve had people hit on my daughters in front of me, only to come up short with a horrible gasp: “YOU BROUGHT YOUR MOTHER!” I’ve had people exclaim over my energy, as though somehow being my age means I can no longer walk the dusty paths or risers and move to the music. Mostly I am jovially indulged, “We going to Portola, then?” in response to a comment about Adéla.

(I do have this funny aside, a TikTok algorithm which greeted me Friday night when I got home. There are parts of being older and wiser that feel pretty cozy.)

On Saturday I found myself in one of those jammed, unmoving, claustrophobic lines in the midst of the festival (this one funneling to a set of narrow stairs), and this incredibly tall, 7 feet-plus young man sidled past me on the right. His sheer size had everyone giving way, and I thought, This is my chance. I moved in directly behind him, all but holding onto his coat, moving swiftly past all the others bottlenecked by a fence. A young, young man/boy (bless his heart), tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, that’s my friend; I am following him.” “I am following him also,” I said, giving no ground. “You can follow me.” A minute later, he asked, “How long have you been going to music festivals?” “Longer than you have been alive!” I laughed over my shoulder.

As many of you likely know, Spotify assigns you a listening age at the end of each year, based on your habits. Last December Spotify anointed me **21** 🥂; clearly all the KPop Demon Hunters and Frozen and SuperKitties songs plus No Broke Boys made them think I was a young babysitter. Which I kind of am. I’m also the daughter of a mother (one young friend said to me recently, YOU HAVE A MOTHER!, which she immediately rushed to cover up; at least she has manners 😀). When I was in high school, my sister and our friends sat around the kitchen table one day talking about music. I still remember my boyfriend’s face when my mother cut through with a pile of laundry and offered, “No one is better than Mick Jagger.” Last summer when my mom and I went on a road trip to see my sister, I planned our offerings, playlists of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. I wanted her to know some of the big ladies in music. She loved it. She told me Taylor was her favorite, Beyoncé made her feel brave, and she was so glad to learn about that Billie Eyelash. Maybe it runs in the family. Keep on keeping on, Mama.

For the recipe portion of this post, I attempted to make a version of a cookie that I had from the pop up Tano at Outsidelands. Theirs was called Sesame Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookie. For my experimenting, I combined portions of David Leibovitz’s Salted Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies recipe, using also my version of My Favorite Food Ever (chocolate chip cookies), based on the Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe with an assist from Deb Perelman’s Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies, adding Vaugh Vreeland’s Toffee to the mix, and topping the whole thing with both black and white sesame seeds. Below I give you my version so you don’t have to click on all of those links 🙂

Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toffee

1 cup/8 ounces of unsalted butter, room temperature
¼ cup/60 grams tahini, well stirred
1 ¼ cups/10 ounces of dark brown sugar
1 cup + 2 tablespoons/8 ounces granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 ¼ teaspoon of baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons of coarse salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
17 ounces/460 grams/3 ½ cups + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons of all-purpose flour
15 ounces of bittersweet and milk chocolate chips, mixed
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon each black and white sesame seeds (6 tablespoons total + 2 teaspoons, divided)
1 ½ cups chopped Toffee (*See recipe below)

• Combine the 8 ounces of butter, ¼ cup of tahini, 10 ounces of brown sugar and 8 ounces of granulated sugar into a large mixing bowl

• Beat at medium speed until well-mixed and creamy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go to make sure all is combined

• Add the two eggs and mix well

• Sprinkle the 1 ¼ teaspoon of baking soda, 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder, 1 ½ teaspoons of coarse salt and the 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract over the dough, and mix well

• Measure 17 ounces of all-purpose flour in a medium bowl

• Carefully pour half of the flour over the dough and mix well

• Pour the remaining half of the flour over the dough

• Beat the mixture well until combined, making sure to scrape the sides and the bottom of your mixing bowl as you go

• Add the 15 ounces of bittersweet and milk chocolate chips (I use half and half), along with the entire recipe of chopped toffee (below), to the dough; mix extremely well so there are no dry bits in the bottom of the bowl

• Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper

• Using a #30 ice cream scoop or your method of choice, scoop and place the balls of dough close to one another on a baking sheet

• Refrigerate the baking sheet for ~1 hour to set the balls of dough, and transfer them to a large covered glass or plastic container and refrigerate overnight (24-48 hours)

• When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper

• Place 3 tablespoons each of black and white sesame seeds in a flat plate or pie plate

• Roll the tops of each ball of dough in the sesame seeds, pressing so they adhere

• Place 5-6 balls of dough on a baking sheet evenly spaced so they don’t run into one another, and sprinkle with a bit of flaky sea salt

• Bake for ~14 minutes, rotating the sheet front to back if you think of it

• Cool on a wire rack and eat while gooey and warm, or let them cool. The toffee solidifies and makes lacquered-like bits in the dough which is delicious

Toffee

¾ packed cup/165 grams dark brown sugar
6 tablespoons/85 grams salted butter
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon each black and white sesame seeds

• Line a large (13- by 18-inch) sheet pan with parchment paper

• In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan set over medium-high heat, melt the brown sugar, butter and 2 tablespoons of water, stirring constantly until the sugar begins to dissolve

• Bring to a boil and continue cooking, swirling the saucepan occasionally, until the bubbles slow considerably and the mixture reaches 290 degrees on a candy or instant-read thermometer, 6 to 8 minutes. Watch carefully!

• Immediately pour the sugar mixture onto the prepared baking sheet; right away (before the toffee begins to harden), sprinkle with the 2 teaspoons of black and white sesame seeds

• Allow the toffee to cool completely until hard and brittle, at least 15 minutes

• Using a large serrated knife, cut the toffee into ½-inch pieces and set aside until ready to add to the cookie dough

Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies With Toffee2

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The other day Mariah was at my house and scrambled herself some eggs because she had not yet had breakfast. Oh my goodness these eggs are beautiful, she said. Vital, I replied, because they really are spectacular with their deep yellowish orange yolks which make you feel healthy just looking at them.

If there is one thing that has emerged from this Substack, besides recipes, I hope it is the importance of living in the moment. I implore us all, especially me, to be there, to be present, to take time to notice the here-and-now, the deep yellow color of your eggs maybe, and to let go of the idea that you have to get home and let your dog out, or tackle those mounting emails, or call your mother (*unless I am your mother). Be there and enjoy the conversation with a four year old who tells you she had a WHOLE DAY playdate 🙌🏼, enjoy that walk up and over a hill that gives you a spectacular view, stop in a second hand furniture store and browse all the 70s-era furniture that you got rid of yourself several decades ago. Don’t think about the errands you must do or the closets that beg cleaning. Stop and look at random artwork on your path, smell the utterly amazing daphne blooming because of all the rain, read the mini-newsletter tucked in your egg carton (this week’s headline: “Pasture’s Greatest Hits, Featuring Your Favorite Feathered Ladies”). Stop and talk to that person in the grocery store who really wants to know what you put miso in, catch up with the person at work who wants to tell you about his amazing daughter. Those are the moments that really define your day, not the checklist of things you accomplished like dropping off at the dry cleaners or sweeping up the crumbs. Those types of things are still going to be waiting for you; they actually and weirdly clone themselves so that when you get one completed, two more pop up in its stead, like Whack-a-Mole.

As you can well imagine, what comes out of this reflection is an egg recipe, Perfect Boiled Eggs from the New York Times Cooking site, which blew apart 6 full decades of hard boiled wisdom handed down from my mom. If you follow these simple instructions you will have absolutely perfect, beautiful boiled eggs, minus that unappealing gray rim around the yolk. The part that absolutely flies in the face of everything I learned is that you don’t have to plunge the cooked eggs in cold water after cooking. Simply draining the eggs and placing them on a plate to cool yields eggs that you can perfectly peel and mash or consume in whatever way you like: Cobb salad! Egg salad! Deviled eggs! Which recipe I include here: Peel and mash the yolks of as many eggs as you like with a big dollop of mayonnaise and a small dollop of Dijon mustard. Mound this mixture back into the whites and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper just before eating, or paprika if you like that fancy look. These are delicious with a little cornichon on the plate as well.

I love also the relaxed conversations we get to have when we are spending the weekend in Calistoga, or visiting the golf haven Pinehurst, or in the lazy vacation areas around Lake Tahoe. Often in these locales we are together with friends and family we don’t otherwise see, blended sometimes with people we have just met, and we have those meandering conversations that can only be had when you really are checked out of your daily life, sitting on a deck somewhere. On a recent weekend my friend Mike started to tell me about eating Greenland shark in West Iceland, and I chimed in with my arcane knowledge of this delicacy, trust me not because I have eaten it, but because I read about it in a book (armchair traveler that I am). Greenland shark or hákarl is both a delicacy and a seeming horror of a food, one that requires deliberate preparation, somewhat like the Japanese blowfish or Fugu. Apparently the flesh of the shark is poisonous unless it is fermented for days/weeks/months, and then it smells like overripe brie left out on a hot deck in the summertime. You pop this delicacy in your mouth quickly so quickly followed by a shot of Akvavit, to kill the taste (hopefully not to kill the toxins). No thank you, but brave Mike unflinchingly rose to the challenge such that the chef himself insisted he have another piece, since he liked it so much. I too like to compliment a cook who has labored over a dish, but this goes under the heading of no good deed goes unpunished.

[As an aside, I would like to recommend books occasionally on this Substack, as I get as much pleasure from reading as I do from cooking and eating and taking iphone photos of cute signs. I hope you will read The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasures, or Vanishing Treasures as it is published in this country, by Katherine Rundell, and that you enjoy it as much as I have. It will allow you to trot out random facts about Greenland sharks or seahorse parents rave dancing when in social situations on vacation during one of those meandering conversations.]

The kind of folksy, friendly trips I am speaking of don’t lead to that kind of Greenland shark trauma, fortunately. I gravitate towards vacation spots featuring ice cream shops wafting the perfume of a waffle cone, or cafes offering crispy fried chicken topped with pimento cheese. In that spirit, I am offering here a recipe for S’mores Pie I sought out after friends had one at a Fourth of July gathering. I mean, what could be better than a pie made of s’mores, already one of those cutesy, evocative names? I hope you enjoy this gooey pie while perusing The Golden Mole, or something else that evokes vacation reading for you. By the way, this S’mores Brownie Pie is from Sally’s Baking Addiction, another one of those names!

S’mores Pie

For the Crust

1 ½ cups/ 180g graham cracker crumbs (about 12 full-sheet graham crackers)
1/4 cup/50 granulated sugar
6 Tablespoons/85g unsalted butter, melted

• Preheat the oven to 350°F

• Pulverize the the graham crackers in a food processor, or in a plastic ziplock bag, using a rolling pin to crush (gently, so you don’t make holes in the bag and have crumbs everywhere)

• Mix the crumbs and ¼ cup of granulated sugar together in a medium bowl, and then stir in the 6 tablespoons of melted butter

• Pour the mixture into an ungreased 9-inch pie dish. With medium pressure, pat the crumbs down into the bottom and up the sides to make a compact crust. You can use a small flat-bottomed measuring cup to help press down the bottom crust and smooth out the surface, but do not pack down too hard

For the Filling

½ cup/113 grams unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons/30 milliliters vegetable oil or melted coconut oil
1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar
2 large eggs + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¾ cup/62 grams unsweetened natural or dutch-process cocoa powder
½ cup/63 grams all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup/180 grams semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

• Melt the ½ cup of butter into in the microwave or in a small saucepan on the stove

• Whisk the 2 tablespoons of oil and 1 cup of granulated sugar into the melted butter; let it sit for 3–5 minutes to slightly cool

• Whisk in 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract until combined

• Add the ¾ cup of cocoa powder, ½ cup of flour, and ¼ teaspoon of salt and whisk until combined; the batter will be thick

• Fold in 1 cup of chocolate chips

• Immediately spread the filling evenly into the prepared crust

• Bake for 25-30 minutes, watching carefully so you do not overbake. It will bake a few more minutes when you add the topping

For the Topping

24–25 large marshmallows (1/2 of a standard package, or use mini marshmallows)

• Remove the pie from the oven and arrange the marshmallows neatly on top, pressing each very lightly down into the filling to help them stick

• Return pie to the oven and continue to bake for an additional 3 minutes to toast the marshmallows

• Alternatively, you can turn on the broiler and place the pie inside for 30-60 seconds, removing the pie as soon as the marshmallows look toasted

• Cool for at least 45 minutes on a wire rack, or cut into gooey slices if you can’t wait

• Cover and store leftover pie at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week

S'mores Pie

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Last week I was downtown getting my hair cut. A half dozen of us were in the salon’s washing station leaning backwards over those sinks with the neck divots, having warm water poured over our heads; those of us lucky enough were having a short scalp massage. The woman in the chair next to me began to loudly regale us with her summer plans:

“I am going to Washington DC next week to help my women’s group finalize our statement against transgender people. Which I am ONE THOUSAND PERCENT in favor of. I think only actual women can be in our group.”

The entire washing area was suddenly very quiet, that quiet where you know someone is being scary and awful but no one knows quite what to do. After several uncomfortable moments, the woman’s hair stylist gamely waded in, “Soooo ( you could literally see her wheels spinning, even though we were all facing away from her)..... tell me about your Napa house renovation!” she lands on, to the relief of us all.

“It is sooo expensive,” the woman tells her. “They charge you exactly TWICE AS MUCH as you imagined in your wildest dreams!” She goes on to describe labor costs, skating dangerously close to another topic none of us want to hear her opinions on. The poor stylist, striving to keep her client from further antagonizing anyone, but also trying to earn her own living, seems to be weighing her options. Luckily, or not, the woman pivots back to her trip: “I have SO MANY FABULOUS OUTFITS to take with me to DC! I am so excited to show them off! I am packing two full suitcases,” this as the stylist wraps her head in one of those warm-from-the-dryer towels and leads her off to her hair dressing station. “You never know what you are going to hear at the hair washing station,” Ingrid murmurs in my ear as she similarly wraps my head in a warm towel.

I saw David Bryne in concert recently. “Love and kindness are the most punk things you can do right now,” he said, a theme woven throughout the evening. Seeing the 70-something musician, brilliantly creative with his staccatoed, precise dance moves, his now completely white hair falling across his brow in that signature way, was a comfort. That he chose this message to embed in his tour reminds me that art, and artists, are more essential than ever to our well-being. Seeing what human beings can create out of absolute air, what they can think of in their own amazing heads, and then share with us, is a reminder of all that is elevated and holy in our existence. What a beautiful thing to have him remind us that being kind to one another is the only thing we have to offer, because there is absolutely not one other thing in this world that we can control. The woman at the salon, with her gratuitous unkindness, should only be a reminder of what we ourselves can do to lift one another up. I love that David Byrne couches that as revolutionary, an act of defiance. In today’s world maybe being kind is the act of a rebel, and yet kindness and care are the supposed basis of so many traditional institutions in our communities—faith-based organizations and women’s groups included. Why would one go to the trouble to make a formalized statement aimed at excluding such a small minority of people who, in my own (and possibly inaccurate) opinion, are not lined up to join exclusive women’s groups anyway? Why would that be what anyone leads with, given all the other things we have going on that are real and frightening and so sad?

To spend time with my goddaughter Brittany was to watch her frequently dispense kindness to everyone from a fellow passenger in the elevator to her Uber driver to the nurses and doctors taking care of her. She was a living example of gratuitous kindness, and she still is. This is the legacy she leaves us with, and is how I want to end this piece. I wonder what Brittany would have said to the woman at the hair salon? Twelve year-old Brittany once stood down a man, an acquaintance of her parents who said something derogatory about a person who was gay. Would adult Brittany have called out the woman at the salon somehow, embarrassed her into recognizing her own blind spots, her carelessness in thinking those of us also having our hair washed would agree with her view of trans people? Or would Brittany have found a way to sweetly redirect her, to remind this lady of her own humanity, and to somehow connect that with our need to take care of one another? I want to think about that some more, and in the meantime, it isn’t a leap for me to connect these musings to the taking care of people by feeding them. I think any food you can provide for someone is nourishment and caretaking, and in honor of Brittany what I really should do is to include a recipe for Sees Candy, her favorite, which I don’t have. In its place, I will include a link to the Sees Instagram account, which brings me immense pleasure. Maybe you will also enjoy reading about which Met Gala costumes match which Sees candy, or maybe you want to learn about the McConnell ice cream and Sees Candy collab. In the meantime, I offer you a recipe for these delicious World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan, something I think Brittany would have approved of in every way.

World Peace Cookies (Dorie Greenspan)

1 ¼ cups/155 grams all-purpose flour
⅓ cup/28 grams cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
11 tablespoons (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons)/149 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
⅔ cup/147 grams brown sugar
¼ cup/50 grams granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract¾ cup/5 ounces mini chocolate chips, or chopped bittersweet chocolate

• Stir together in a medium bowl the 1 ¼ cups flour, ⅓ cup cocoa powder, and ½ teaspoon baking soda

• Beat together the 11 tablespoons of butter, ⅔ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup granulated sugar, ¼ teaspoon sea salt, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract until thoroughly blended and creamy

• Turn off the mixer. Add all at once the 1 ¼ cups flour, ⅓ cup cocoa powder, and ½ teaspoon baking soda

• Drape the mixer with a large dish towel so the dry ingredients don’t fly all over the kitchen counter

• Pulse the mixer at low speed 4-5 times. Check to see if the flour is mostly incorporated. If not, pulse a few more times. You want the flour incorporated, but do not overwork the dough (this keeps the cookies somewhat crumbly, like very good shortbread)

• Add the ¾ cup/5 ounces of mini chocolate chips or chopped bittersweet chocolate; mix just until incorporated

• Divide the dough roughly in half, and roll each half into a log 1-1 ½ inches in diameter. I do this on a piece of parchment paper, and I use the paper to shape, form and roll the log, so I am “handling” it less

• Refrigerate the logs of dough for at least 3 hours, and up to 3 days. You can also freeze the dough for up to 2 months

• When it is time to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 325 degrees

• Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper

• Using a sharp knife, slice the logs into rounds that are ~½ inch thick

• Arrange the cookies on the baking sheet, leaving room between for them to spread

• Bake for 9-12 minutes, depending on size of the cookies. They will not look done, but remove them from the oven and cool almost completely before eating

World Peace Cookies

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When my children were young and we had spent seemingly hours collecting ourselves to get out the door, I used to extend my hands to their little chubby ones and say, with great relief, “We’re off to see the Wizard!” Apparently I say this to my grandchildren, because the other day my grandson said to me as we headed off in the direction of the park, “We’re off to see the Lizard.”

My friend Maddie and I send each other random texts with baby versions of words: Buttersly. Marmer’s Market. Cumber. Opidus. I still on occasion refer to my computer as a Pecuter, so dubbed by my college roommate’s 7 year-old brother. As a parent, there isn’t an age or stage that I haven’t adored, including even the difficult teenage years where they have so much knowledge and compassion and understanding for anyone but their parents. But the acquisition of language in young children is my hands-down favorite. There are two of those periods in a child’s life: learning to talk and then learning to read. It’s so amazing to see their minds blossom and flower outward. Watching the wheels churn in toddlers learning to talk is like feeling myself try to speak French, but much more exciting. I can see the thinking it requires as they seek the word for what they are trying to say or grope for the proper order in which to put a concept or idea.

Children in general do delight me, and not just the tiny ones. The other day I got to be a Special Friend during Grandparents Day with my friend Belle. The 6th grade classroom visit included an assignment in which she was to interview me, ostensibly about my time in middle school. But our conversation ranged over a variety of topics, including what we were both afraid of, which in her case was lizards. I asked her why, and she responded, “Why do they have to have all that skin? It’s just so much… skin,” accompanied by a little shiver. I cannot imagine that I will ever head off to see the Lizard without thinking of her articulation of the very unsettling nature of a blinking, textured reptile.

My little brother didn’t really talk until he was about 3 ½, at which point he spoke in fully formed sentences. There was no ball or dog or juice transition for this human being, and why should there be? His every whim was taken care of by the four doting, eager females in his midst: my mother, our babysitter Ollie, my sister Sallie and I. We vied for his attention and love all day long. So when he started talking in these fully formed sentences, we were amazed at what had been going on in his head all that time. I remember vividly (or I conjured this image long ago and have clung to it ever since) Tommy perched in front of the sliding glass doors, watching a ferocious thunderstorm with lashing rain and lightning. He turned to us and said, “The trees are gently swaying.” This is probably not representative of many people’s first word or even first sentence, but my brother has turned out to be quite eloquent as an adult, which is in contrast to the time he answered the phone when he was about 4 or 5 years old. My father traveled a great deal for work at that time, and Tommy informed the caller that Dad was in DeToilet. We never figured out who we were supposed to call back and inform that our father was in Detroit.

The other day Noam was directing me and his mom in a shapes-finding game. “Let’s find an O shape,” he suggested. “Let’s find a flat shape.” Next, “Let’s find a croissant shape.” I laughed out loud at this—a truly genius recognition of shape, not your simple triangle, mind you, surely one reinforced by our larger family’s dedication to baked goods. So on that note, I am including a recipe for a flat shape, for a kid’s (and adult’s) perennial favorite: Pop Tarts, from the New York Times Cooking site. This might seem like a lot of fuss, but they are truly easy and delicious and a huge crowd pleaser.

Homemade Pop Tarts

Pastry Dough:

6 ounces/170 grams cream cheese, at room temperature
4 ounces/113 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons milk or heavy cream, plus more as needed
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 cups/255 grams all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1 egg

• Place 6 ounces cream cheese, 4 ounces butter, 2 tablespoons milk or cream, 1 teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons sugar in a large bowl

• Using a pastry cutter or two forks, mix together until uniform and smooth; you shouldn’t see chunks of cream cheese or butter

• Add 2 cups of flour and stir until dough comes together and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. If it’s dry and not coming together, add more milk or cream (in tiny amounts) as needed

• Move the dough to a lightly floured work surface and gently knead 2 or 3 times, until the dough comes together, neither too sticky nor too dry. If dough seems sticky or wet, sprinkle on another few teaspoons of flour

• Divide the dough in half and shape into two squares; flatten them slightly and wrap in plastic

• Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 2 days

Meanwhile, make the

Quick Berry Jam:*

2 cups fresh or frozen berries, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, or to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons water, or lemon or lime juice, plus more as necessary
1 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 tablespoon water

• Put 2 cups of fruit in a medium saucepan over medium heat

• After a minute or so, add 2 tablespoons of sugar, more or less to taste, and stir to combine

• Add 2 tablespoons of water or juice and stir to combine

• Simmer (you may need to lower the heat) for 10 to 30 minutes, until the mixture has thickened nicely, adding more liquid if it starts to look too dry, and breaking up large chunks of fruit with a fork or the tip of a wooden spoon

• When most of the liquid has evaporated but the fruit is not sticking to the pan, remove from heat and stir in the 1 tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon of water. The jam mixture will clump together

• Set aside to cool completely

*or you can use about 3/4 cup thick store-bought or already-made jam, but try the jam recipe at least once; it is so easy and delicious!

Assembly (including optional Glaze, below):

• When the dough is chilled, remove it from the refrigerator, unwrap, and place it on a lightly floured surface

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside

• Crack egg into a small bowl and whisk

• With a rolling pin, roll each piece of dough into a 10-inch square about ⅛-inch thick.

• Trim the rough edges away with a knife to form a 9-inch square and cut each piece of dough into three 3-inch by 9-inch strips, for a total of 6

• Spoon 1 to 2 tablespoons of jam (or filling of choice–I have also tried nutella, or cinnamon babka filling) onto the middle of one end of each strip, leaving at least a ½-inch border of dough on three sides

• Using a pastry brush or your fingertip, brush a rectangle of egg around the filling (this will act as glue). Fold the dry end over and crimp with a fork on all sides

• Repeat with remaining dough strips

• Prick the top of each tart multiple times with a fork to let the steam escape while baking

• Transfer the tarts to the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until golden

• Cool completely before icing, using the recipe below

Glaze (optional):

1 cup/123 grams powdered sugar
¼ cup milk or heavy cream, plus more as needed
1 to 2 teaspoons lemon or lime juice (optional)
Colorful sparkling sugar or sprinkles

• Whisk 1 cup of powdered sugar, ¼ cup of milk or cream, and 1-2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice (if using) together

• Add more liquid as needed; you want the glaze to be pourable, but not so loose it’s transparent

• Spread or drizzle over the top of each tart and scatter with sprinkles or colored sugar, if desired

Serve Pop Tarts warm or at room temperature.

Homemade Poptarts2

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There are so many ways that I appreciate books—reading them, listening to them, discussing them, watching them—that it is inevitable for me to want to write about them. Every person I know who loves books loves language, loves parsing it, thinking about it, wallowing in it, rolling it on the tongue. Phil’s grandmother once told me she was a slow reader: ”I shake the hand of every word on the page—how do you do, what are you doing here, how long have you known this about yourself?” I have a teaching credential improbably titled “The Teaching of Reading K-12,” as if such a momentous thing as teaching a person to read could be encompassed in a paper certificate.

I adore reading. It is a lifeline for me, as for so many others. Every so often Phil will interject into an impassioned conversation I am having with a fellow reader, with utter incredulity, “Most of the stuff in those books is made up anyway,” as if celebrating the ability for human beings to make up things completely inside their heads isn’t utter magic. I believe that books are the very thing that have helped me be a human being. I have been inside people and worlds and experiences that bear no relation to my own, but that nevertheless give me tremendous insight into the lives of others. Reading books are the perfect antidote to our world of artificial intelligence, precisely because they are the things that help us be actual humans.

I am always both reading and listening to a book, and I choose which one is a reader and which a listener based on many things. Some of my friends and family dismiss audio books, but for me the narrators of audio books give us an entirely different experience—they are not actors per se, nor are they your grandfather Columbo reading at your bedside. Professional book narrators possess unique skills, an ability to differentiate between characters by the mere timbre of their voice, so that as you walk or drive or needlepoint along, you are absolutely aware when Patty is speaking, and when Walter is. Narrators who are Irish especially delight me, probably because I imagine those are my ancestors speaking into my ears about bogs and bacon rolls, community dances and teas, sneaky places to stash a murdered body. During the lockdown of early 2020 I listened to all the Harry Potter books in succession, read by Jim Dale. What an unprepossessing name he has, and what mountains of talent reside in his many voices. (Jim Dale wrote the lyrics for the song Georgy Girl, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1966. My father gave me a portable turntable when I turned 6, with two 45s: one was Georgy Girl and the other was completely forgettable. I can still see my young Daddy teaching me how to do the twist to Georgy Girl, his black work socks rotating on the rusty shag rug in our family room, twisting his towering frame into a tight downward spiral which he then elegantly unwound. I can do the twist still.) I am aware that JK Rowling is neither admirable nor kind in real life, and so I won’t recommend that you listen to her books, but I will tell you that Jim Dale’s renditions have soothed me during many a negative news cycle.

Reading on the page is a consolation all its own, and one I won’t cover at this moment, because I am caught up in listening. I especially love to prop open an audio book while I’m working on a cooking project: my phone is precariously balanced on some cup or jar because I think this somehow resonates with better sound, while I move about the kitchen sifting flour everywhere and making a general mess. There are so many ways that books incorporate food, but I have to say the one thing I am constantly reading about that I have never experienced is the aforementioned bacon roll. You can imagine that I have searched for this online, for photos and recipes and so on, and I find them disappointingly mundane. It’s just fried bacon (not too crispy because you need to keep it succulent) on a soft white roll or bap, best served with ketchup or brown sauce, which I take to be something like Heinz 57. I don’t really want to eat this (though I do want to know more about a bap); I want to read about eating this. So I’m left wondering what recipe to juxtapose with this post about books. I have decided to tell you about the birthday cake I made last week for a friend who liked it so much he hid it in his bedroom. I made this moist yellow cake recipe developed by my friend Katy. Rather than using her chocolate fudge frosting, I put raspberry jam in the middle layer, and I frosted the cake with the Magnolia Bakery’s Buttercream Frosting from New York Times Cooking, which is my absolute favorite buttercream frosting recipe, and I don’t generally like buttercream frosting. I whirled it in the food processor with half a bag of Trader Joe’s freeze-dried raspberries, and this made the most beautiful and delicious pink frosting with little raspberry tidbits in it and the raspberry played off the tiny bit of almond extract in the yellow cake and I have to say it was a perfect combination. I can just imagine hiding in my bedroom, earbuds in with a delicious Ruth Ware thriller playing, eating my secret stash of yellow cake with raspberry frosting all by myself 😍

Raspberry Buttercream Frosting

8 ounces/1 cup of unsalted butter, softened
960 grams/8 cups confectioners’ sugar
½ cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
~ 1/2 ounce of freeze dried raspberries*

• Place 8 ounces of room temperature butter, 480 grams/4 cups of sifted confectioner’s sugar, 1/2 cup of milk, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract into the bowl of a food processor

• Blend well, pausing to scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula

• Add the remaining 480 grams of confectioner’s sugar gradually, mixing well

• Add 1/2 ounce (approximately half of a 1.2 ounce package) of freeze dried raspberries to the bowl and blend well

*Note that dried raspberries will not work in this recipe, only freeze dried ones! This makes enough to fill and frost an 8” layer cake.

Happy Cake Raspberry Buttercream Frosting 2

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When I first moved to San Francisco, I was obsessed with the rain, specifically the amount of rainfall we received each year. We supposedly had an average of 20 inches of rainfall annually, concentrated between October and March, but primarily happening between December and February. For some reason I felt that my personal monitoring of the tally of total rainfall per day and per year was what actually made the rainfall happen. Even then, in the early 1990s, we were obsessed with climate change and its terrible effects on weather systems. I recall that Caen similarly bemoaned our climactic state, referring to a bygone time “when the sky wept for days,” though a superficial search did not take me to that specific phrase in his archive. I did find this lovely article from a few years ago remembering Caen, and I was so happy to see that he also loved meandering through city neighborhoods. On one of our January brilliant days, I took a long walk from my neighborhood all the way to North Beach and back, and I “discovered” some amazing alley ways and businesses and flowers along the way:

North Beach is my current favorite neighborhood in SF, though we are fortunate to have several neighborhoods which have retained the character of immigrants and entrepreneurs for literally decades. North Beach is boastfully Italian, with street crossings painted in the colors of the Italian flag, and so many delicious pizzerias and bakeries and gelato shops and pottery importers and interesting bookstores and coffee roasteries, all anchored by a square overseen by the towering Saints Peter and Paul Church, that if someone covered your eyes and transported you there and removed their hands with a flourishing “ta-da!” you would think you had landed in Italy itself. I love walking there for several reasons, one being the lilting hills and valleys between my neighborhood and that, the skirting of the Broadway tunnel which takes me to the lesser known streets of Nob Hill, the flirting with Chinatown which smells of potstickers and Peking duck, to the broad bisect of Columbus Avenue (is this how the neighborhood was originally settled by Italian immigrants? They brought their explorer with them, or flocked to the street with his name?) and all the Italian delights which line it. I love all the shops and restaurants but believe it or not, I don’t really buy a lot of baked goods here, as my primary focus is the very haute pet store called Jeffrey’s, which sells unbelievably expensive dog treats and dog toys and dog leashes, which I shower upon my beloved Louie, who is as much of a miscreant as ever, no matter how hard I try to train him with those expensive chicken strips. (My friend Kathleen said to me the other day, as Louie was irrepressibly jumping up on her and on us, in spite of my vigorous attempts to scold him, “Have you tried dog training class?” I told her that in fact we did several classes at the fancy Jeffrey’s, where Louie was the star pupil that Teacher Michele used as an example in many of her lessons. Other dog guardians in the class used to say to me, “What a well-trained dog you have!” to which I would respond, “I have a clever dog, a manipulative dog, who knows exactly what to do to make Michele lavish him with praise and treats, but who does not transfer one single trained behavior to me when we are outside of class.” I have no idea why? 🤔)

At any rate, through all of this rain and reminiscing of rainy days past and the sunshine hopefully to come, I have been cooking and baking a great deal, so much so that I could not decide what to post here, but I have landed on a delicious chocolate sour cream bundt cake, from one of my favorite grocery stores ever, right up there with Fairway in Manhattan and Erewhon in Los Angeles: BiRite Markets (where you are currently exhorted to Squeeze the Day!). Alas, they do not have a store in North Beach, but there are three sprinkled throughout San Francisco, and while you are waiting in the checkout line, there is a panoply of baked goods and specialty items which you may impulse-toss into your basket, including this delicious chocolate bundt cake wrapped in individual portions. Years ago I gave my daughter Mariah their cookbook, and she shared their delicious recipe which I share here with you, because 1) it is a cake and 2) it is chocolate. And that is the only connection I can make between this recipe and this post. Make it for yourself because it is so very easy and foolproof, then pour yourself a hot cup of tea or a café au lait, and enjoy it as the rain streams all around you outside.

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze

For the cake:

1 cup/8 ounces unsalted butter
⅓ cup/28 grams cocoa powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup water
2 cups/250 grams all-purpose flour or gluten-free flour blend
1 ¾ cups/350 grams sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
2 large eggs
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

• Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 10 or 12 cup bundt pan (I use 10-cup so it is smaller but taller) and set aside

• In a small saucepan, combine the butter, cocoa powder, salt and water and put over medium heat. Cook, stirring, just until melted and combined. Remove from heat and set aside

• Put the flour, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl and whisk to blend. Add half of the melted butter mixture and whisk until completely blended (it will be very thick). Add the remaining butter mixture and whisk. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking each to blend completely before adding the next. Whisk in the sour cream and vanilla until smooth

• Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, ~40-45 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes and then invert onto a rack. Let cool completely before making the glaze

For the glaze:

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 ½ tablespoons agave nectar or corn syrup
½ cup heavy cream
1 ½ tablespoons sugar

• Put the chopped chocolate and agave nectar in a medium bowl and set aside

• Combine the heavy cream and sugar in a small saucepan and put over medium heat. Stir constantly until the cream is hot and the sugar is dissolved

• Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth

• Drizzle over the cake and serve.

*I recently made this for my goddaughter Brittany, who had requested a raspberry chocolate cake. I made it with gluten-free flour for her, same weight, substituted 1 tablespoon Chambord liqueur for the vanilla in the cake, and made this raspberry coulis (which also has Chambord) to go with it.

Chocolate Sour Cream Pound Cake

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We live with a news cycle and life in general that is at warp speed, while we can barely catch our breath or catch up. We want everything when we want it, which is now, and yet we also see that the sun is setting or the full moon is out, and we have to stop and absorb the splendor. (At this point I have to digress and say that the other day when I was walking home, my grandson videochatted me, and he kept exclaiming over the sunset behind me. Finally I turned around and saw that the sky was indeed glorious and pink, with spreading purple, and there was a tree as well and a house behind me—all breathless details provided by Noam—which made me so grateful that he had called and made me appreciate what was happening right behind my very eyes. In turn, this reminds me of the time he informed us all that he was Tiny Big, when we were talking about how tiny his new baby was. With this delicious juxtaposition he captured that he himself was just 2 ½, hardly ready to go to college, even as we were all exclaiming over his newborn sibling and how big Noam was in comparison. I think we all melted, and I will forever use the phrase Tiny Big because that, like downward dog, is genius.)

Another thing I have noticed lately that makes me grateful for time is visiting people. My friend Anne and I went to see her daughter’s art exhibit the other day, and afterwards we sat outside at a cafe in Dogpatch and had tea and cookies. We sat there for maybe two hours, until we both realized it was late and we had Friday afternoon traffic to deal with, which was also okay because that meant we got another 30 minutes of chatting. This week I also visited with my friend Dana and her daughter, keeping them company while they applied gelatinous paper face masks and we took silly pictures to send to other family members. I had a slow long dinner with my friends Brooke and Abiah, which we have been “meaning” to do for ages; I had a quick dinner with Belinda whom I see all the time, and we had the bonus of walking to and from the restaurant together. I went to see all my grandchildren this week. I got to visit my daughter and her husband in Los Angeles three times in the last month. I talk to my mother on the phone every single day I can get her to answer that confounded cell phone. Last week during the big eastern seaboard snow storms, my mother got herself all dressed up (which she told me in advance she planned to do; “I will put on my best sweater”), and FaceTimed me and Noam so she could roll her wheelchair out onto her covered porch, expertly flipping the phone like a teenager to show us the magnificent sweep of white landscape outside her door. How is there time to get anything else done, really, when you are busy catching up with all your important people? Why are we in such a hurry when the best part of the day is a walk with a friend or a stretching session with a dog or a rambling phone conversation?

Because these past few weeks have been an appreciation of time for me, a recognition of the benefits of not racing through the day, I am going to share a recipe that many of you may have seen, and either way I hope this serves as a reminder that you can make something delicious, spending just 15 minutes on it, cook it very fast in a hot oven, and enjoy it slowly over dinner with a glass of wine or a child who exclaims over the crispy chicken skin. And I wish for you this week the time to revel in making or eating the simplest of things, a simple rolled omelet or a pan of brownies or a leafy salad with a perfect vinaigrette. Which you then get to savor with a friend or dog or family member, maybe even letting the dog have a nip of chicken under the table.

Samin Nosrat’s Buttermilk Roast Chicken

Ingredients:

3 ½ -4 pound chicken
Salt
2 cups buttermilk

The day before you plan to cook the chicken, place it in a baking dish (something with sides so you don’t scatter salt all over your countertop), and season it generously with salt, inside and out. Let it sit for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour 2 cups of buttermilk in a large cup container, and stir 2 tablespoons of kosher salt or 4 teaspoons (1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon) of fine sea salt into the buttermilk. Place the chicken in a gallon-size resealable plastic bag (I put a dishtowel down in my sink, and place the bag on top; the dishtowel anchors it somewhat), and pour the buttermilk over. Seal the ziplock bag and squish the buttermilk mixture all around the chicken to make sure all of the chicken is marinating. Place the bag inside a large bowl or pan (I usually wash out the pan I salt-brined it in) and place inside the refrigerator overnight. If you feel like turning over the bag on occasion when you open your refrigerator to help distribute the marinade, do that, but Nosrat says it is not essential. (I do this because it makes me feel like I am doing something worthwhile, but I cannot tell any difference whatsoever in the final product.)

The following day, take the chicken out of the refrigerator one hour before cooking. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees, and pull out a large cast iron skillet or baking pan. When it is time to cook the chicken, take it out of the bag and remove as much of the buttermilk as you can without being obsessive, as Nosrat says. I usually squeeze the bag and its contents into the sink and let the buttermilk run down the drain. Then I pick up the chicken and lightly shake it to remove any obviously clinging liquid. Place the chicken in your baking pan, tie the legs and wings with a bit of string (so you have a nice neat tucked-in looking bird, as opposed to a splayed one; this is purely for aesthetics). Place in the preheated oven and cook for ~20 minutes, before turning down the heat to 400 degrees. Nosrat has a complicated method for rotating the chicken so that the legs are always pointing toward the rear and the breast stays in the middle of the oven, in order to keep the breast meat moist and away from the hottest part of the oven, which you should do if you think of it. Otherwise, let it roast away for a total of 50-60 minutes, or until it tests done (juices run clear or the chicken measures 170 degrees with an internal thermometer). Let the chicken sit for 20 minutes before carving. “Mahogany” seems clichéd but does not do justice to the gorgeous roasted color of your bird.

Buttermilk Roasted Chicken

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The passive phrase that gets me the most is “You are missed.” Why don’t we tell the person we miss them? Why don’t we take personal responsibility for the feeling we have, the fact that we miss this person who has retired or moved away or no longer comes to Kaffeeklatsch? Another one I cannot abide by is “A good time was had by all.” This sounds like something a young colleague says about the mandatory company party, which they then have to report on in the inter-office newsletter. There really isn’t a swifter way to get on my nerves.

Passive voice is a problem because I feel too often that we are afraid of owning our feelings, afraid of saying something direct, something that implies a personal and specific connection. In work or customer service settings, it also implies a “no one is responsible” attitude, which drives me crazy–the linguistic equivalent of the computer is down or it must have been lost. Why doesn’t anyone say “our power is out/we misplaced your records/we are working to fix it” instead? Using the passive voice gives the speaker plausible deniability, something to hide behind. Rather than saying “You are missed,” why can’t we say “I miss you like a bereft dog holding up the wall when you say goodbye”? Why not “I love you like a toddler in front of a box of cupcakes,” or “I love you like a rabid fan whose team just won the World Series”?

And now of course I have to connect this screed to a recipe; how should I do that? Do I dial in a passive recipe, something like making sun tea? Is a cake mix a passive recipe, is buying a pre-made pie crust passive, or marinated meat for your dinner? (I don’t hate cake mixes, though I don’t use them. If you want a cake mix, go into the kitchen 5 minutes before making a cake and put all your dry ingredients in a bowl; voilà, you have a cake mix.) One of my favorite stories ever involves a can of already-made frosting. My friend Patrick, who is a location scout, was in a park in Oakland one day outside a recording studio, and he saw Prince sitting on a bench, eating from a can of frosting with a plastic spoon as though it were a cup of yogurt. When he had scraped the can clean, he snapped the plastic lid back on and put the spoon on top. I like to imagine that Prince’s incredible dance moves were fueled by a can of frosting, an image as fantastic as this story. I imagine further research could tell me whether Prince actually ever recorded in Oakland, but I don’t care. The story is so amazing I like to think it is true. It makes me think me of a phrase that I copied down from an article in the New York Times, “The Essential Vladimir Nabokov.” Mollie Young is discussing Pale Fire when she writes, “In this way… Nabokov reminds me of Prince: a virtuoso who dances right up to the line of absurdity, pauses to observe the line, and then soars across it with a jeté of such controlled flamboyance that a witness can’t help swooning.” This is an example of the most vivid and exquisite writing in my opinion, connecting two of my favorite artists across centuries and disciplines. I love to imagine Prince’s jetés fueled by a can of Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy Fudge Frosting.

Which brings me to the perfect recipe for this post! This recipe for moist yellow cake with rich fudge frosting was developed by my baker friend Katy, and I made a cupcake version of it this week for my friend Katherine’s birthday. It is easy and delicious, the flavors not unlike those of a cake mix and can of frosting, in the best way possible. I hope you love it like I love a Prince jeté.

Moist Yellow Cake with Rich Fudge Frosting

For the cake:

2 ½ cups/300 grams cake flour (or use a gluten-free flour blend such as CupforCup)
2 ½ teaspoons/12 grams baking powder
1 teaspoon/5 grams salt
1 cup/227 grams/ 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 cups/400 grams granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon/15 milliliters vanilla extract
½ teaspoon/2.5 milliliters almond extract
1 cup/240 milliliters buttermilk

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350°F

• Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans or one 9x13-inch pan

• In a bowl, whisk together 2 ½ cups cups of cake flour, 2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of salt; set aside

• In a large bowl, beat together 1 cup of butter and 2 cups of sugar until light and fluffy, ~ 2–3 minutes

• Beat in the four eggs one at a time, then mix in 1 tablespoon of vanilla and ½ teaspoon of almond extract

• Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the 1 cup of buttermilk. Begin and end with flour; mix just until combined

• Bake for ~25–30 minutes for round pans, ~20-22 minutes for cupcakes, or ~30–35 minutes for a rectangular pan, or until a toothpick comes out clean

• Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a rack to cool completely

For the frosting:

6 ounces/170 grams semisweet or dark chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup/227 grams/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 ½ cups/312 grams confectioner’s (powdered) sugar
1 cup/80 grams Dutch-process cocoa powder (I like Valrhona)
1 teaspoon/5 grams salt
2 teaspoons/10 milliliters vanilla extract
4–6 tablespoons/60-90 milliliters heavy cream (or milk), as needed

Instructions:

• Melt the 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate in a double boiler or microwave and cool slightly

• In a large bowl, beat together 1 cup of butter until smooth and fluffy, ~ 2 minutes

• Sift in the 2 ½ cups of powdered sugar and 1 cup of cocoa powder; add 1 teaspoon of salt

• Beat the mixture on low until combined, then pour in the melted chocolate and mix until creamy

• Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla and 4 tablespoons of cream; beat on medium-high until light and fluffy

• Add more cream, a little at a time, until the frosting is smooth and spreadable

• Frost the cake or cupcakes as desired; add sprinkles for additional enthusiasm and engagement

  

  Moist Yellow Cake With Rich Fudge Frosting

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My mother, sister and I for a long time have rated our baked goods on a scale of 1-10, with anything below a 7 deserving only to be buried in the back yard (“a trick I learned from my cat,” according to Phyllis Diller, at least according to my mother). We were constantly calling out to one another, or phoning one another, or writing letters (how quaint; we often included handwritten recipes on those little index cards for the recipe box in the kitchen), referring to our baked goods on this scale. I bring this up, because for some reason this holiday season my baking has been a… 1. Or worse. It all started at Thanksgiving with my pecan pie, which I literally had to throw away. (I didn’t want to attract rodents so therefore did not bury it in my backyard.) Then I had to throw away an entire batch of babka. We are talking about baked goods in frequent rotation for me; I don’t know what I have been doing wrong. I mean, specifically the babka didn’t rise and the pie was runny, but overall, what have I been doing to jinx my baking? Add to that the fact that I keep forgetting ingredients. I am so frequently outside the Mollie Stones when it opens at 7:00 AM that I am afraid they will mistake me for an employee. I forgot the sour cream for the Oreo cheesecake topping, the Karo syrup for the pecan pies, the confectioner’s sugar for the chocolate sheet cake, the brown sugar for the snickerdoodles, the buttermilk for the yeast rolls. And baking during the holidays is supposed to be fun.

I am not one of those bakers who lines up her ingredients in a Mise en place (obviously; otherwise I would have noticed earlier that I was out of vanilla), though I like to pretend I am. I am a haphazard baker, frenetic and messy. My kitchen is covered in flour and footsteps when I am done. There are batter smears on the microwave. I think there is nothing wrong with making a mistake, mind you. The very first entry I published on this Substack was about a caramel cake failure. But it has felt like something is seriously amiss this season, which I was desperate to recapture.

Once I was baking a cake, Mary Jo’s Pound Cake to be specific, and I told my mother it didn’t quite turn out. “It’s the rain,” she intoned, from 2500 miles away. “How do you know that?” I asked. “You said it was raining today,” she reminded me. “You don’t bake that cake when it’s raining.” So was it the Atmospheric River getting in my way this season, the Cyclone Bomb, the PG&E blackout (which didn’t affect me, but was my oven suffering by proxy?), the threat of tornadoes in urban San Francisco?

On Christmas Eve Eve Phil and I headed to Los Angeles, where we were staying in an AirBnB with our older daughter and son-in-law and their family, visiting our younger daughter and son-in-law. I was apprehensive about the cooking, especially in an unknown kitchen, with unknown availability of appliances and spices, not to mention an oven whose temperature I was not intimately familiar with. We worked that kitchen like a workhorse, we baked and fried and scrambled and sautéed and simmered, in spite of its shortcomings. (I have never seen a kitchen without black pepper. Who knew I was such a fan of black pepper? Not I, until it was not available, and then it was all that I wanted.) But the best thing to come out of that kitchen were the Cinnamon Rolls I made with my grandson Christmas morning, using a water bottle as a rolling pin, minus the frosting because I forgot to buy cream cheese and alas no grocery stores in the vicinity were open on Christmas Day. Which is a reminder to me that the baked item itself is not the point; the company is. We made un-iced cinnamon rolls which were nevertheless warm and buttery and gooey with cinnamon. And we went around the corner to my daughter’s and son-in-law’s house and sat around the table in their kitchen, their tiny Christmas tree with lights in the corner, and we were together. My grandson led us in a spontaneous rendition of “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” (he only knew the one line) 10 or 12 times, and we laughed until we cried. It was an Eleven.

With respect and gratitude for Rob Reiner 🩵

*I am not including a new recipe in this post, but there are links galore!

My goddaughter told me the other day that hardship makes people more soulful. Hardship also reminds us to notice the things that are beautiful in the midst of things that are not. (I mis-typed Harship there which seems appropriate.) Thus this post is a mini-post, a little sliver of something that is hopefully nice during the holidays rather than something that is a spectacular blowout—a bowl of homemade applesauce, say, as opposed to a Bûche de Noël.

My mother has made applesauce my entire life. I just returned from visiting her, where we ate bowls full of her applesauce that resembles not at all the thing you find in jars or squeeze packets in the grocery aisle. Her recipe is so simple and so delicious, and it is perfect in the fall when apples are plentiful. It is also the best accompaniment imaginable to latkes if you are celebrating Hanukkah. My mother makes her applesauce with Granny Smith apples only, but lately I have taken to throwing in whatever apples are in my crisper from the Farmers Market. I do recommend some Granny Smiths in your applesauce, because the texture of those apples provide some of the body that you need to create a smooth, not runny, sauce. The night I returned home from spending a week with my mom I made a batch that included a few Hidden Rose apples, a delightful introduction from my friend Nancy, who dropped off a bagful along with a carton of soup recently when I had a cold. The Hidden Roses are now favorites with my granddaughters, who request PINK APPLES whenever they are visiting. The pink apples turned this batch of applesauce a rosy hue that is so appealing.

While on the subject of Hanukkah, I will share with you my favorite latke recipe, and also a piece by one of my favorite authors 😍 Why A Food Processor is the Most Jewish Appliance (because you will likely use a food processor if you are making latkes). And, while I am promoting pet projects, here is a link to one of my favorite baby books, Look Baby Look, in case you need to buy a new baby a present. And last but not least, I will end this mini-post on a hopefully up note, and remind everyone that we have had our irascible Louie for one year this month. This overgrown, furious tumble of tangled fur who literally skids across our recently re-finished hardwood floor (why did we get our floor redone for the first time in 30+ years just after we got a puppy 🤔), making a U-turn in the middle of running so those nails really dig in (traction, you get it) and his body looks like a pipe underneath the sink, has brought such joy to our household, along with so many shredded pieces from the wastebasket, that he is a reminder to notice the beautiful. Dogs are beautiful. Maybe you will enjoy this homage from Daveed Diggs, A Puppy for Hanukkah.

Mama June’s Applesauce

6 large Granny Smith apples (or others, but include some Granny Smith for body and structure)
1 cup of water
1 scant cup of sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

• Peel, core and slice thickly the apples

• Combine in a medium saucepan with the water and sugar

• Bring to a simmer and cook for ~20-30 minutes, stirring frequently, until the apples collapse and are sticky

• Remove from heat and cool

• Puree until velvety smooth*

• Stir in the juice of 1 lemon, and taste to make sure the sauce is properly tart and apple-y

*I use a blender to puree my applesauce, specifically an old-time stainless steel one that my mother gave to my son when he moved into his first apartment, that he in turn handed off to me in exchange for a giant blender my husband gave me that I felt belonged in a smoothie shop.

Potato Parsnip Latkes

1 large russet/baking potato, ~8 to 10 ounces
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 medium parsnips/~1 pound), peeled and coarsely grated
¼ cup all-purpose flour (GF flour blend is fine)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¾+ cup vegetable oil

• Preheat oven to 250°F

• Peel potato and coarsely grate into a bowl; add lemon juice and toss to combine

• Place potato on a kitchen towel, then gather up corners to form a sack and twist tightly to wring out as much liquid as possible into the bowl. Discard the liquid (this is a messy step)

• Stir potato together with grated parsnips, ¼ cup of flour, 2 beaten eggs, 2 tablespoons of chives, ¾ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper until combined well

• Heat oil (I always need more oil that the recipe calls for) in a large, ~12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat until hot but not smoking

• Fill a ¼ cup measure three-fourths full with latke mixture and carefully spoon it into the skillet, then flatten to 3 inches in diameter with a slotted spatula

• Form 3 more latkes in skillet, then cook until golden, about 1 ½ minutes on each side, turning carefully

• Transfer latkes with spatula to a paper towel-lined baking pan or cookie sheet to drain. Keep warm by placing cooking sheet on a rack in a 250 degree oven

• Make the rest of the latkes in the same manner, in batches of 4, with remaining mixture

• Enjoy with sour cream (the best dip according to grandchildren 😀) and applesauce

  

  Happy Cake Applesauce & Latkes

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Poinsettia has too many family members. She longs for time to herself, to escape with a book to her favorite reading place, a bay window where the sunshine pours in. Unfortunately on the day in question the sun is pouring over the plump body of her little brother Julius. From there Poinsettia visits all her other special book-nooks, finding her rowdy and rambunctious family infringing on them all. The detail that especially delights me about Poinsettia is the fact that she has a baked good tucked in her pocket to accompany the pleasure of reading her book: ”Poinsettia walked a little faster, patting her pocket to make sure it held the cherry tart she had bought for just this occasion.” Of course Poinsettia has lived in my imagination and my heart all these years; she is exactly like me. I will go to many lengths to procure just the right baked good for just the right moment, and I know I’m not alone. This scene also brings to mind a greeting card my sister sent me a decade or two ago, and which I still have standing on my desk. The picture is of two little girls, presumably sisters, on a backyard swingset, clutching kitties and handbags, with the caption reading “...and in their purses were candy bars. How happy were they?”

For me, the pleasure of reading is honestly even greater than the pleasure of eating a sweet, but the two together are pure bliss. I could write an entire book on what reading has meant to me over the years, but this Substack is supposed to be about baking, so I need to make my usual leap to a recipe that works with the subject matter. I should be teaching us all how to make cherry tarts, but that does seem time-consuming (pie crust being as finicky as it is). An easy substitute is thumbprint cookies with a dab of cherry jam, which would be delicious. For that I would use this recipe from my Holiday Cookies post last year. I have referenced that butter cookie several times already in this year of Happy Cake, so I want to include something new for all of us, something easy, and I have decided to include my beloved recipe for Snickerdoodles. Snickerdoodles tucked in a wax paper bag in Poinsettia’s pocket feels just right.

This recipe comes from Lee Bailey’s Country Desserts and is so easy and so delicious. The only thing you may not always have on hand is cream of tartar, and snickerdoodles are a valid reason to keep some in your pantry.

Snickerdoodles

2 ¾ cups/344 grams all purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
¼ teaspoon of salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ½ cups/300 grams granulated sugar
2 large eggs

For rolling the cookies:
¼ cup/ 50 grams of sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

• Combine the 2 ¾ cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and ¼ teaspoon of salt in a mixing bowl; stir with a whisk to mix

• Cream the butter and 1 ½ cups of sugar until fluffy, about 3 minutes

• Add the 2 eggs, 1 at a time, and mix well

• Add the flour mixture in 2 parts and and mix well after each part

• Refrigerate the dough in your mixing bowl for ~30 minutes (if you refrigerate longer, let come close to room temperature again before proceeding)

• Using a #30 scoop, scoop the balls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet; no need to space them at this point

• Meanwhile, place the ¼ cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon in a shallow pie plate and stir with a fork to mix well

• Roll the scooped cookies in the cinnamon sugar until thoroughly coated; place them 1 ½ inches apart on a cookie sheet

• Bake for 10-12 minutes or until just lightly browned; do not overbake

• Cool on cookie racks before removing the cookies from the cookie sheet

  

  Happy Cake Snickerdoodles2

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My mother, however, had heard every word we said, for she responded with genuine feeling after a moment, “I think that’s the best compliment I have ever received.” I am so sorry I haven’t told her that before; my family and I talk about her use of language all the time. It is refined, unusual, intensely perceptive and accurate, all tempered by the fact that she is 91 years old, and Southern, highly educated and well-read, but also the first to stir the pot, add her own details, weave and embellish a story. Part of her creativity is in filling in the blanks with her own suppositions presented as fact, such as a digression on what the person was eating when it happened, or how their love life was progressing. Once I called her on some tale she was unspooling (these are often stories about someone in our immediate family, someone I might have just hung up the phone with or talked to the evening before), and she looked at me and blinked slowly through her gold-rimmed glasses. “Well, that’s the next chapter in the book I am writing.”

Her use of language is at once a thing of beauty and exquisite perception, and a mash-up of incongruity and hilarity. When Madison Bumgarner pitched in multiple playoff games for the San Francisco Giants during the 2010 World Series-winning season, she texted my entire family that his shoulders were “magnificent and marvelous.” (Bumgarner hails from her hometown and shortly after the season ended Mama and I drove out to the billboard erected in his honor so she could have her picture taken in front.) She recently pronounced “We don’t eat nightshades” when perusing a menu . She once regaled me with the story of a car running into the back of my father after a crush of traffic exiting the parking lot after a Carolina basketball game at the Dean Dome: “That driver blew the wires out of his headlights, they were just hanging there like cartoon eyeballs, and your Daddy shrugged and said ‘There’s nothing I can do for him now’ and drove on.” She referred to the scandal surrounding one of her beloved business channel reporters as Humpty Dumpty hanky panky. She told me the other day her checkbook needed a rest. She defended the inadvertent demise of her Venus Fly Trap thus: “I fed it so much meat I suffocated it. I wanted to give it something to eat, so I fed each little flower a piece of hamburger. It smelled so bad I had to throw it away. Don’t even tell your brother. On the box it said ‘I am a carnivore. FEED ME.’” She described to me a neighbor’s encounter with a snake: “She was bending over to pick up her dog’s business and when she pulled up her arm she had a copperhead dangling from it.” I have a lifetime of living with this person who can convey a vivid picture via a modicum of words. Of a neighbor she doesn’t like, “Both her husbands were named John.” Of my sister’s search for a home, “They wanted to move to Charleston where we don’t have a single cousin.” There are worlds in her words.

One of my sons-in-law is a musician, and he describes song-writing as a stripping away or paring down of words to the fewest possible, while keeping the meaning at its most expansive and encompassing. My mother encapsulates this perfectly, choosing words that have multiple meanings or interpretations, that make you pause and think, and then delight, in her selection.

I am not quite sure how to weave these observations into a recipe. I considered some of those recipes with Southern-type names, like Better Than Sex Cake, or Wacky Cake, or Hummingbird Cake; Pecan Tassies or Lemon Chess Pie. But I decided on sharing with you my favorite pimento cheese recipe instead. This recipe is from Julia Reed’s book Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and other Southern Specialties. I have an oddly specific connection to Julia; she was in my sister’s class in high school. Julia was something of an icon then, tall and gangly, a magnet for students and teachers alike, an inveterate chain smoker. I thought she was impossibly glamorous. She went on to write for Newsweek and Vogue, wrote several hilarious books, the sort you could consume in one sitting. Her books were laced with tales of her escapades, and Julia had her own way with a precise turn of phrase. I adore this recipe for pimento cheese, which came from her friend Keith, who has one of those delightfully surprising names for a woman–a true Southernism in itself. If you think you don’t like pimento cheese, you are probably wrong. Everyone I serve this to says it’s delicious, and many don’t realize this is actually pimento cheese.

PS IMO authentic pimento cheese NEVER has cream cheese in it. Ugh. Also PPS Do not use pre-packaged grated cheese for this recipe. Something is added to pre-grated cheese to keep it from clumping, and it makes this recipe dry if you use it. Take the time to grate your own cheese, and using a food processor is fine.

Keith’s Pimento Cheese

1 block Cracker Barrel extra-sharp white Vermont cheese, coarsely grated
1 block Cracker Barrel extra-sharp yellow cheese, grated
1 cup aged Parmesan, freshly grated
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 small jars chopped pimentos, drained
1 dash of juice from a jar of stuffed green cocktail olives*
1 dash of fresh lemon juice
1 dash of Tabasco
1 dash of black pepper
1 cup Hellmann’s or Best mayonnaise**

• Combine all ingredients with a fork or wooden spoon and refrigerate for at least three hours

• Taste. If it needs more bite, add more olive juice, Tabasco or pepper

*Julia says, The cheaper the olives, the better the juice. Don’t use too much or the recipe will be watery.

**Click here for an explanation of the difference between Hellman’s and Best mayonnaise, if you are interested in that sort of thing. If you are really into mayonnaise and Hellman’s/Best in particular, you may be interested in this essay from Slate.

Happy Cake Pimento Cheese

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These days, it seems that everyone is so into Halloween, and let me tell you, I love it. I love it in the way that someone who doesn’t decorate her home, and gets maybe a dozen doorbell rings every year, can afford to be into it. I am into it in the way that I go to someone else’s house (shoutout to Dana and Teena) to “help” (ie, be given a glass of wine by the host) give out candy. I barely even dress up, donning maybe a headband with twinkling ladybug antenna before heading out the door, but I love love seeing the houses and the people and the adorable children, watching the themes of the year (Taylor and Travis, Squishmallows, The Last of Us). I like the clever costumes that middle school aged kids come up with—a live pinball machine with the self behind the “glass”, an umbrella made into a jellyfish, an inflatable frog costume. My favorite, though, is when an entire family or group of friends dresses up in theme—as the Gilligan’s Island crew or the Sesame Street gang or the cast of High Fidelity. I love it when people put a lot of thought and effort into their costumes or decorations (because I don’t😆).

I made Halloween decorated cookies with my granddaughters this weekend, which is also a really fun thing we never did when I was young, or even when my children were young. This time we made traditional “witches hats,” peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss smooshed in the middle, and we made butter cookies with ORANGE AND BLACK SPRINKLES AND GUMMY BEARS AND M&Ms (shouting caps courtesy of my older granddaughter). I am including the Witches Hat recipe below, which is pretty much taken straight from the New York Times’ Peanut Butter Blossoms recipe (though, as always, I try to streamline). For the butter cookie recipe I used this recipe that I included in the Holiday Cookies post from last year. And for those of you who have leftover candy after the 31st, I am also linking to the Blowout Cookies from my Valentine Cookie Tree post. This is a great way to use up leftover fun-size bars. And finally, I am linking to the very delicious Pumpkin Cake recipe I posted last fall. I have made it several times already this month and it remains the most delicious pumpkin dessert you will ever need!

Happy Baking 🧡🎃👻🧙🏻‍♀️☠️💚

Witches Hats

½ cup/4 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup/130 grams smooth peanut butter
½ cup/100 grams granulated sugar, plus more for rolling
½ cup/110 grams light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon any kind of milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ¾ cups/219 grams all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
5 dozen (one 11-ounce package) Hershey’s Kisses, foil removed (grandchildren love this task)

• In a standing mixer or an electric mixer, blend ½ cup of butter, ½ cup of peanut butter, ½ cup granulated sugar, and ½ cup brown sugar until smooth

• Add 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of milk, and a teaspoon of vanilla; blend well

• Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of baking soda and ½ teaspoon of salt over the mixture; blend well

• In two parts, add 1 ¾ cups of all purpose flour; mix thoroughly

• Refrigerate dough for one hour

• Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees and prepare two cookie sheets with parchment paper, or spray with nonstick spray

• Put an additional ~½ cup of granulated sugar in a pie plate or shallow bowl

• Remove dough from the refrigerator and roll dough into small balls, approximately 1 inch in diameter. You should have 60 balls of dough, and a Hershey kiss for each one (unless, of course, someone eats one or more of the kisses along the way)

• Roll each ball in the granulated sugar, and place 2 inches apart on the cookie sheets (you may need to do this in batches)

• Bake until very light and puffed, but not fully baked, approximately 6-8 minutes

• Remove cookie sheet from oven, and carefully place an unwrapped (!) Hershey kiss in the middle of each cookie, slightly pressing down as you do so. The cookie will crack slightly

• Return cookie sheets to oven for ~2-3 minutes, or until cookies are light golden brown

• Remove from oven and place on cookie racks to cool

Happy Cake Witches Hat Cookies

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At the same time, I enjoy experimenting with all kinds of variations on the lovely brownie. She is a delight in so many iterations 😉 During the early Covid lockdown I made and delivered brownie flights to several of my friends, including cream cheese brownies, Nutella brownies, white chocolate brownies, shortbread brownies, pecan pie brownies, peppermint brownies, and pretzel brownies, plus many versions of basic fudge brownies. Those recipes are so much fun for me to make and share, plus they put me in a lane not necessarily occupied by the New York Times, so I have decided that I will revisit some of the more straightforward recipes in my repertoire more frequently in Happy Cake. That doesn’t mean I won’t veer down the garden path of complicated recipes from time to time, but at least for today I am sticking to my plan. This is the first in my “Brownie Flight” series, and I include one of my all-time favorite brownie recipes, Triple Chocolate Fudge Brownies. I have no idea where this recipe came from originally, but it is always delicious (as long as you don’t overbake), and is as easy as can be. To be perfectly honest, this recipe is neck-and-neck with the Supernatural Brownies from the New York Times cooking site as my absolute favorite brownie recipe, which I am perfectly confident in mentioning here as well (it is easy to be gracious when you are the Goliath in the relationship😀).

Triple Chocolate Fudge Brownies

6 ounces/1 cup of bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 ounces/⅓ cup of unsweetened chocolate, chopped
6 ounces/1 ½ sticks of unsalted butter
1 ½ cups/300 grams granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup/125 grams of all-purpose flour, OR 1 cup gluten-free flour blend*
6 ounces/1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with parchment paper

• In a double boiler or Bain-marie set over barely simmering water, melt the 6 ounces of butter, 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolates until melted; remove from the heat and let stand until lukewarm

• Stir in the 1 ½ cups of granulated sugar and 2 teaspoons of vanilla

• Add the four eggs, one a time, stirring well after each addition

• Stir in the 1 cup of flour and 1 teaspoon of salt; mix well

• Stir in the 1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

• Pour into the prepared baking pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, watching carefully so you do not overbake

*These brownies work well gluten-free

Happy Cake Triple Chocolate Fudge Brownies2

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I have always loved dessert; I guess everyone does, really. I credit my love for sweets to my father, who could happily exist on Wendy’s Frostys and Jello pudding cups. My mother is much more of a savory eater (she has a hollow leg reserved for all things cooked in butter according to my Dad), but Daddy’s sweet tooth clearly got passed on to my brother and sister as well as to me. We often had dessert at home, and there wasn’t any strict regulation of sweets. One Christmas an account of my father’s gave him this enormous, furniture-sized box of individually wrapped chocolate chip cookies. My parents simply put the box in the guest room, which was just off the family room, and we and any of our friends helped ourselves to these cellophane-wrapped cookie duos whenever we liked, to the point that we were dumpster diving for the dregs by March or April. The cookies weren’t even that good; my mother’s homemade Tollhouse cookies were far better. But that wasn’t the point.

I raised my own family with a constant flow of baked goods, which they took entirely for granted. One time my son got in the car after a playdate, announcing to his sisters that the family had served Chips Ahoy cookies. “LUCKY,” Mariah intoned, rolling her eyes at the extreme deficit of store bought treats in our measly household.

Around the same time I ran into my neighbor Vicki at the ice cream store one Sunday afternoon, where she was choosing ice cream to bring home for dinner. “Sunday is dessert day,” she told me, while instructing the scooper which flavors she wanted in her custom-packed pints. After that, whenever my children complained about my parenting, I would remind them that they could go over to Vicki’s house to live if they preferred. “Darn,” I would say, snapping my fingers regretfully. “It’s Monday, so you missed Dessert Day, but I’m sure she is still a much better parent. I bet they have televisions in every room.”

I realize that not everyone can and should eat a bunch of sugar, and I also realize that delicious food can give us such simple pleasure. So this week I am including my recipe for butterscotch pudding, as this is fairly easy and far better than Jello pudding cups or a boxed mix.

I got this recipe decades ago from Vertigo, a restaurant at the base of the Bank of America Pyramid in the Financial District of San Francisco, named in reference to the Alfred Hitchcock film. The server brought the dessert chef out to meet me after I raved about the butterscotch pudding, and the chef cited the recipe off the top of her head, which I frantically wrote down on a piece of paper procured from my purse or who knows where. She was named Jessica and I wrote down her phone number as well (this was so long ago that I am not even sure we used area codes then 😂). The recipe she gave me called for 7 quarts of heavy cream and 40 egg yolks. For home cooks I have adjusted the ingredients, which I have fiddled with over the years. Jessica’s version called for baking the pudding in a water bath but I could not make that work no matter how many times I tried. I ended up with an ugly crust of butterscotch which sounds good but was not, on top of a watery base, so I base my version instead on my mother’s vanilla custard recipe which she used in my father’s possible favorite dish ever, Banana Pudding. Making a custard or pudding from scratch and without cornstarch is not difficult, but it does require patience and a little know-how*. It also results in a slightly runnier version of pudding, more velvety and less congealed. (I promise to give you our recipe for homemade Banana Pudding one of these days. It is outstanding.)

Butterscotch Pudding

3 cups heavy cream, + more for serving
½ cup whole milk
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of water
1 ½ teaspoons Scotch whiskey
pinch of salt
6 large egg yolks
6 ounces/1 cup butterscotch chips (I like Guittard best)
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Combine 3 cups of heavy cream and ½ cup whole milk in a medium saucepan; bring to a simmer and set aside

• Meanwhile, in a small saucepan combine 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of water, 1 ½ teaspoons of Scotch and a pinch of salt, and bring to a simmer; also set this aside

• Separate 6 eggs into 2 separate bowls (save the whites for another use)

• Whisk the hot Scotch mixture into the heavy cream/milk mixture; stir well to blend

• Stir in the butterscotch chips and ¼ teaspoon of salt; cook for 2-3 minutes over low heat

• Into the bowl with egg yolks, carefully dribble about 1 tablespoon of the hot cream/milk/Scotch mixture, stirring all the time. This is called tempering the eggs, and keeps the egg mixture from cooking in unattractive clumps before you add it to the pudding mixture. Here is a comprehensive article by Sohla El-Waylly on tempering eggs—how to and why

• Once you have tempered the yolks, slowly pour them back into the hot cream/milk/Scotch mixture, stirring all the while

• Allow the mixture to cook over medium low to low heat for ~30-45 minutes, stirring constantly, until the mixture is velvety, coats the back of a large spoon (see video; mixture should have body and mound slightly), and takes on the texture of pudding. (Note that a homemade pudding will be runnier than a boxed version, or one made with cornstarch)

• Remove the mixture from the heat and place in an ice bath in the sink, careful not to let any water into the pudding mixture. Stir frequently as the mixture cools

• Once cool, stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

• Refrigerate for several (6-8) hours or over night, until well chilled

• Before serving, spoon the pudding into individual serving cups and top with freshly whipped cream

For fancy, you can sprinkle Valrhona chocolate pearls or real chocolate jimmies on top of the whipped cream when serving. Butterscotch pudding is also especially delicious served with a batch of bittersweet chocolate brownies or dark chocolate chip cookies, which offsets the sweetness of the butterscotch.

*I realize that several of my recent recipes may seem intimidating. My neighbor David told me he needed a PhD to make Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake. Since this Substack is supposed to be full of easy-to-make baked goods, I promise I will post something really easy next time! But truly, making pudding is an easy and worthwhile endeavor, if you like a baking project 🙂

Happy Cake Pudding Tummy

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Fear is a funny thing, and I appreciate Louie’s being in touch with his fears and letting them fly. My older granddaughter also does this. She is four, and surprisingly articulate about what she is afraid of and why (for instance the vrooming sound of her sister’s electric car; the Giants’ mascot Lou Seal; the dinosaur exhibit at Cal Academy—we don’t cross Fulton Street without a reminder from her that we are NOT GOING TO SEE THE DINOSAURS). She is unbothered by the fact that she is afraid of things that do not frighten her little sister. I hope she forever retains this ability to unabashedly name her fears; this is something many of us spend a lifetime working towards.

I am obsessed with the line from Tom Petty’s Crawling Back to You, “Most things I worry about never happen anyway,” because the counter to that, obviously (for those of us who are worriers 🙋🏼‍♀️), is that it’s the things I am not worrying about that tend to blindside me, which makes me then worry that I am not worrying about the right things. I used to tell my children, two of whom were very eloquent worriers (and one, bless her heart, who seemed so tough but was a worrier like the rest, though less likely to name her fears), “Your smart brain is too active for your own good.”

I am not sure “smart brain” is Louie’s affliction, and I won’t even go into the worry culture we all live in now, but I do want to address one baker’s worry with this post, and hopefully help you overcome your fear of… yeast (yet another reach for me to connect my thoughts to a baking project).

So many people shy away from any baking that involves yeast, and I promise you that today’s recipe is the answer. Who doesn’t like cinnamon rolls; who would not want a fresh warm batch on their plate within 2 ½ hours, only about 45 minutes of which (and I am being generous in that estimate) requires your active time?

My friend Lila, dog parent of the fabulous Chammy who is Louie’s love and has been featured here before, dropped off one day the most delicious cinnamon rolls I have truly ever had. I stood at the kitchen counter and ate a saucer-sized roll before even catching my breath, while talking on the phone to my daughter who is allergic to gluten, she who wrote a note for me when she was six years old that said “Cinnamon Rools” as a reminder to me to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast the next morning. This note still lives on our refrigerator, a remaining reminder that Cinnamon Rolls do indeed Rule. “You are eating a CINNAMON ROLL??” she said to me incredulously, “an honest-to-goodness cinnamon roll while talking to ME?” I have tried to make cinnamon rolls gluten-free, and that is a post for another time, but suffice to say I have not yet mastered yeast in a gluten-free environment.

Back to Lila: She shared her recipe for cinnamon rolls, and I have made them several times now. The addition of baking powder makes this dough especially light and springy, and allows it not to require much rising time, relatively speaking. I link to the original recipe from Tasty Recipes here, but below is the version that works best, including Lila’s suggested changes and one of my own.

Cinnamon Rolls

For the Dough:

½ cup/4 ounces of unsalted butter
2 cups whole milk
½ cup/100 grams of granulated sugar
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 foil packet)
5 cups flour/625 grams, divided into 4 cups/500 grams and ~1 cup/125 grams
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt

For the Filling:

¾ cup/6 ounces of unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup/165 grams of light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

• In a medium pan, whisk together 2 cups of milk, ½ cup of butter, and ½ cup of granulated sugar. Put over low heat on the stovetop and allow the butter to melt. The mixture should be just warm to the touch, registering between 100-110˚F if you are the measuring type. If it is hotter, allow to cool slightly before proceeding

• Sprinkle the yeast evenly over the warm mixture and let set for 1 minute

• In a large bowl, place the 4 cups/500g of all-purpose flour. Stir in the proofed yeast/sugar/butter/milk mixture and mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. The mixture will still be rather runny/soft

• Cover the bowl with a towel or plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for 1 hour, until nearly doubled in size

• Meanwhile, generously butter four round or square pie or cake pans (I use 8” cake pans)

• Also meanwhile, beat together the softened ¾ cup of butter, ¾ cup of brown sugar and the 2 tablespoons of cinnamon until they form a smooth paste

• After an hour of rising/proofing time, remove the towel or plastic wrap, and add an additional ¾ cup/100 grams of flour, the baking powder, and salt. Stir well, then turn out onto a lightly-floured surface (I use a silpat mat for this)

• Knead the dough lightly, adding additional flour as necessary, until the dough just loses its stickiness and does not adhere to the surface

• Divide the dough into two even pieces, and working with one piece at a time, roll the dough out into a large rectangle, about ¼ inch thick. Adjust the corners to make sure they are sharp and even (I use a dough scraper for this)

• Spread half of the cinnamon/sugar/butter over the one half of dough

• Roll up the dough, forming a log, and pinch the seam closed. Place seam-side down on your work surface, and trim off or adjust with the dough scraper any unevenness on either end

• Cut the log in half (unflavored dental floss is the best for cutting yeasted dough, as it doesn’t pinch the dough the way even a sharp knife or the dough scraper will, and allows for a more even baked result**), then divide each half into 7 evenly sized pieces

• Place 7 cinnamon rolls in each cake pan, one in the center and six around the sides

• Repeat with the remaining half of dough and half of cinnamon/sugar/butter mixture, so you have four total ~8” pans filled with beautiful cinnamon rolls

• Cover and let rise for 30 minutes

• Meanwhile, prepare the frosting and preheat the oven to 350 degrees

• When the rolls have risen, bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until light golden brown

• Remove from the oven and let cool for ~30 minutes before frosting

** I am sorry I didn’t get a video of myself using dental floss to cut the rolls, but this one is a good example for demonstrating the process (Allybaker on TikTok)

For the Frosting:

(everyone loves the frosting and I recommend 1.5 x the recipe, so I give those measurements below)

4 ounces of cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons/1 ounce of unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup/120 grams of powdered sugar

OR, For 1.5 x the frosting:

6 ounces of cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons/1.5 ounces of unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons whole milk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ cups/180 grams of powdered sugar

• In a medium-size mixing bowl, whisk together 4 ounces of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 2 tablespoons of whole milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and 1 cup of powdered sugar until smooth

• Remove plastic wrap on rolls. Bake in a preheated oven for ~25 minutes, until golden brown (watch carefully and don’t overbake)

• While still warm, drizzle evenly with frosting. You can drizzle this right from the bowl (which is what I always do), or do the nifty thing of putting the frosting into a ziplock bag, squishing it down towards one corner, snipping off that corner and decorating the rolls as opposed to slathering on the frosting

• Enjoy!

THIS is the recipe to help anyone conquer their fears of working with yeast, because it is so easy and foolproof, and can be completed start to finish in a whiplash-fast (for baking projects) 2 ½ hours! You are in for a treat.

Happy Cake Cinnamon Rools 3

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“Music makes the people come together.” ~ Madonna

“A party without a cake is just a meeting.” ~ Julia Childs

I went to Outside Lands music festival this weekend with my friend Karina, and the first thing we did, funny enough, was stumble upon a wedding taking place at City Hall at Outside Lands, nestled in the trees just off the Polo Fields. Karina was the first one to spy the cake, which is why we stopped, and we recognized the couple getting married because we had seen them earlier as we were entering the park. Karina snapped this photo, and I had the revelation that cake and music are forever wed.

I love large groups of people, crowds even, especially at sporting events and concerts (as opposed to airports and metro stations), because these large crowded events provide the most beautiful moments of community and harmony among strangers, transcendence with humanity, which one of the best reasons for living. We have amazing experiences with our closest family and friends, but to share a moment with someone you have never met—to dance and sing the lyrics in synch with a stranger, to smile at a person you would not ordinarily get to smile with, to look up in the night sky and see stars reverberate with the music you feel in the tips of your aching, dusty feet, is truly one of the best things there is. Experiences such as these enable you to put aside the things that make you worry or that break your heart. Or maybe it is just that these benevolent strangers allow you to let those sad and anxious things wash over you, while sharing your sadness and forgiving you your shortcomings, all while not making you talk about it. Listening to Bakar hold onto the last note of Something I Said as he perches on the edge of a speaker box, watching Doechii’s hair whip around her face while she dances, hearing the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus rise like a religion to the tops of the trees, watching Ca7riel and Paco Lamoroso sing about their terror at being successful, popping around as Ludacris plays hit after hit (Who knew I was so familiar with Ludacris’ oeuvre?), hearing performer after performer respond to the crowd with the very awe that the crowd feels in return, makes for at once the most universal and the most personal, joyful experience.

Outside Lands isn’t just about the music, either. There is food you cannot imagine, cocktails and mocktails and beer and wine and comedians and product giveaways (we tried all four of the new La Croix flavors and I have to say I’m a fan. You should try the one called Sunshine right this minute) and murals everywhere and people on stilts or performing magic and you can even get married. The food, though—I have to go back to this: We had loaded Korean tots and Singapore noodles and fajita tacos and the most delicious cheese plate with those little cornichons and some fig jam and Peruvian chicken skewers and a giant graham cracker with a block of almost-melted chocolate and a vanilla marshmallow. There are benches and stand up tables and blankets everywhere, people stopping by your set-up to shop for their own meals (“where did you get that? what is it??”) And the drinks. We couldn’t get past the Scribe Pet Nat but that is not for lack of options; so many wines and bubbles and beer were on offer at different parts of the park, with even one special set-aside in the trees with strings of lights overhead that felt like a party on its own. (Not long ago my brother said to me and Karina that he was going to have to fly out for Winelands one year, and we both laughed. It is almost a destination unto itself.) Add to this cornucopia the outfits, groups dressing together or twinning or just sporting “Festies” hats (or wigs).

Remarkably, all of this describes how I feel about cake: Cake makes us happy. Celebrating brings us together, allows us to share a moment, to let go of the worrisome and embrace a moment of sweetness and solidarity. To pause beside an (albeit wooden) cake and share in someone else’s happiness in the midst of the trees in Golden Gate Park seemed the perfect kickoff to three days of blissful happiness with strangers and a few friends.

At this point, it feels like I could include almost any cake recipe and it would be fine, because the point is not the recipe, but the shared experience. However, since Outside Lands has been called a love letter to San Francisco, I decided to include the recipe for another San Francisco institution, Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake (a decent explanation of the cake/phenomenon is here, but suffice to say it is one of those legendary cakes a community fixates on, and rightly so, because it is delicious). For the cake itself I am using a recipe that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle decades ago, and for the crunch I am using my friend’s brother’s recipe. I have to say Jimmy writes a great recipe; the details he provides are just perfect, down to the hammer.

This recipe is not for the faint of heart; it is more of a project recipe. But the pleasure in creating contrasting textures of billowy egg yolks and egg whites, the lacquered sugar syrup, the foamy coffee brittle, the delicious yellow cake that is neither angel food cake nor chiffon, are really worth the effort if you like this sort of project. At any rate, I imagine most of you would like to eat a slice of this cake. They still make and sell it at Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop in Japantown if you are in the San Francisco area. I have to say, however, the homemade version is even better! Happy baking.

Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake

For the cake:

1 ¼ cups/125 grams (sift first, then weigh or measure) cake flour
1 ½ cups/300 grams granulated sugar, divided into ¾ cup, ¼ cup and ½ cup
½ teaspoon of sea salt
6 large egg yolks
¼ cup water
1 cup/7-8 large egg whites
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar (in the spice section if you are not familiar with this)
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and set out a 10” tube pan with removable bottom

• Sift 1 ¼ cups cake flour, ¾ cup of sugar, and ½ teaspoon of salt into a medium bowl; set aside

• Beat together the egg yolks with ¼ cup of sugar until thick and pale yellow

• Beat in ¼ cup of water and continue beating until thickened and billowy, about 4 minutes

• In a separate bowl, beat 1 cup of egg whites just until frothy

• Add 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar; beat until soft peaks form

• Add remaining ½ cup of sugar and beat until thick, glossy peaks form, ~2-3 minutes

• Whisk in 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1 teaspoon of grated lemon zest, and 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

• Pour yolk, sugar and water mixture over the egg whites and fold together gently but thoroughly with a rubber spatula

• Sprinkle ⅓ of the cake flour/sugar/salt mixture over the egg mixture and fold with a rubber spatula. Repeat two more times, folding gently just until ingredients are fully combined

• Pour batter into an ungreased 10” tube pan with removable bottom; level top with a rubber spatula

• Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until top springs back when lightly touched with a finger

• Invert pan over a long-necked bottle to cool for approximately 45 minutes

• Carefully take the pan off of the long-necked bottle. Using a flexible metal spatula (such as an icing spatula or icing knife), trace the perimeter of the cake inside the pan to help loosen.

• Push up the base of the cake, freeing it from the tube pan, and place on a cooling rack. Carefully remove the cake from the base with a spatula and place on the rack until ready to assemble the cake

For the coffee crunch:

1 tablespoon baking soda
1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar
1 tablespoon instant coffee crystals
1 tablespoon hot water
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 cups/400 grams granulated sugar
½ cup of water
½ cup light corn syrup (such as Karo’s)

• Place 3-4 baking trays such as a jelly roll pan, 10” x 15” or similar (see note*) in the freezer an hour before you will need them

• Sift the 1 tablespoon baking soda and 1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar together in a small bowl; set aside

• In a small pot (I love this little pot for so many things) dissolve the 1 tablespoon of coffee crystals with the 1 tablespoon of hot water; also set aside

• Place the 2 cups of sugar, ½ cup of water, and ½ a cup of corn syrup in a medium-sized heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover with a lid and let boil for 5 minutes (set a timer; this helps dissolves the sugar crystals). BE CAREFUL AS SYRUPS GET EXTREMELY HOT and can easily burn you

• Uncover the pot and insert a candy thermometer (I know this recipe calls for a lot of special equipment, and while most of us have a hammer lying somewhere around, I imagine many of us don’t have a candy thermometer. In fact I had to throw mine away recently, but I used my thermapen to great effect. However, I will buy another candy thermometer since I feel like clipping a thermometer to the side of the pan is super helpful when making a syrup of any kind, since you need to watch the temperature over time. You can also follow these directions for testing the syrup stage if you don’t have a thermometer)

• Meanwhile, take the cold trays out of your freezer and line the inside of the top tray with tinfoil, nonstick side facing up. Put these on top of a cooling rack nearby so you can easily access

• When the syrup reaches 280 degrees, take a serving-size spoonful and stir it into the coffee/hot water mixture; set aside

• Watch the temperature of your syrup carefully; it will seem to be increasing very slowly, but then will shoot up very quickly. Once it reaches 310 degrees (Jimmy calls this the hard crack stage), remove it from the heat quickly and place on a sturdy heat pad or similar on your counter. You want to be able to work with it quickly without burning yourself. (I dripped a little bead of syrup onto my tiled counter and it immediately formed a beautiful, clear round crystal droplet)

• Immediately (lots of immediacy here) stir in the contents of the coffee/hot water/tablespoon of syrup pot, sprinkle the mixture of baking soda and confectioner’s sugar on top, and stir vigorously. The syrup will foam up and go from deep coffee color to foamy butterscotch color very quickly. This part is so fun. Be sure you stir in all the baking soda, and get the foamy mixture as close to uniform as you can

• Scrape the mixture quickly onto the prepared cold baking tray lined with foil; spread it with a heatproof spatula so it is a uniform thickness, more or less

• Allow to cool for approximately an hour

• Place the crunch in a sturdy plastic bag (such as freezer ziplock); you may have to break into 2 or 3 large pieces to fit

• Wrap the bag in a large, thick dishtowel, and using a hammer on a sturdy/not delicate surface, crush it into small pieces. An actual hammer works way better than a rolling pin which is what you so often see, so shoutout to Jimmy for the hammer rec

*the idea is to have a very cold base on which to pour the syrup that forms the coffee crunch; the extra trays underneath help counter the hot syrup and cool it more quickly. Jimmy calls for 4 trays but alas I have only 3, which worked fine

For the frosting:

2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

• Combine 2 cups of cream, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla in a large mixing bowl

• Beat until cream holds soft peaks

For assembly of the cake:

• Slice the cooled cake in 3 (mostly) even layers using a serrated knife

• Spread whipped cream between each layer, carefully stacking layers

• Spread remaining whipped cream over the top and sides of the cake

• Refrigerate

• Just before serving, sprinkle the top and sides of cake with the coffee crunch. You will need to press the crunch up the sides of the cake, which makes for some messy business. It is okay; the cake is delicious and is not participating in any beauty contests

  

  Happy Cake Blum's Coffee Crunch Cake

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This is very different from the times my sister, brother and I spent at our grandmother’s house—by this I am referring to our maternal grandmother’s house; our paternal grandmother’s house was a different matter altogether. But at our grandmother Maga’s house (another great grandparent name, born of my sister’s imperfect attempt at saying grandma) we had unsupervised and unfettered access to anything and everything. The grown-ups accompanying us on our visits were all too content to have their cocktails in the living room while we roamed about the house completely free range. I remember still the musty smell of the glass-fronted cabinet in that living room, the old-timey dolls with their stiff and dated clothes, dark burgandies and dusty blacks, turn-of-the-previous-century throwbacks. Surely they were old-fashioned even in my mother’s time. Much more titillating were the stacks of Playboys in my uncle’s room on the top floor, along with letters from his many girlfriends and model airplanes in various stages of abandoned build. We were shocked that our rifling around in his room brought absolutely no admonition from anyone in the house, so much so that the room eventually lost its allure.

In my house the children go to specific drawers in the kitchen or in our bedroom. My oldest grandchild selects a tiny thing each visit and politely asks to bring it home with her. This way she has acquired old, nonworking cell phones, a doll tea set, my collection of bobby pins adorned with little cherries or ladybugs or tiny jewels, and a pair of flower-shaped sunglasses that used to belong to her aunt. She adds those to her flowered backpack, which contains unused drawer knobs in lavender and French blue, a box of (mostly unused) glitter bandaids, various remote controls, and a keychain of a tiny snowglobe from Yosemite. I have to say that the wonder and beauty of a child’s mind is captured in that collection.

The children have their own drawer in our kitchen, one that surprisingly my husband (The Dude; I am sure you can imagine where his grandfather name came from) set up for them, and which he keeps clipped open with a large paper clamp, so they don’t inadvertently shut it on their little gnocchi fingers. It is mostly full of their own plastic dishes and cups, though tossed in among them you will find several bottles of nail polish gleaned from my bathroom, and a set of discarded keys from the junk drawer.

That clamp detail is in extreme contrast to the lack of supervision we had at my grandmother’s, including when my brother was maybe 12 months old and Sallie and I coaxed him into sitting on a box of petit fours, a holiday gift to my grandmother. By sitting on a box I mean individually sitting on each of the dozen or more petit fours in the box which we carefully placed on the floor for him, and then prodded him to squash. Imagine how delighted we must have been to forgo all that sugary cake ourselves in order to see him demolish each one beneath his rubber-panted, diapered bottom. As I recall we got into loads of trouble, probably so memorable because it was the single and only time I think the grown-ups noticed what we were up to. I also recall that the carpet in that room had to be replaced, as there was no other recourse for the mashed and smeared chocolate and white icings with their green and red miniature wreath- and holly berry- decorations. I have never been a fan of eating actual petit fours (I assumed the name came from the layers of the tiny cakes but Claude tells me the name means “small oven”; the tiny cakes were so named since they were baked during the cooling time of ovens), but I am fond of the almond flavor most often found in those tiny layers. Thus I will make a leap to this post’s recipes, two different almond cakes. You can make either of these cakes in no time at all, baked in a straight-forward 8” or 9” pan and dusted with confectioner’s sugar or adorned with jam. You can bake them with your grandchildren even—they are that easy, and preferable to turning your back and letting them run loose in your house.

Almond Cake

I have a binder section full of variations on Almond Cake, but this is my favorite and most easy version. It is delicious with berries, or sliced peaches, plums or pears, or with homemade cranberry sauce in the fall or winter, or with orange segments and a sprinkling of crystallized ginger, or with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. This recipe is also delicious gluten-free. Everyone should have this cake in their arsenal, since it travels well, is not at all fussy, slices beautifully, goes with almost any menu, and is universally delicious.

For the cake:
1 cup/120 grams cake flour or gluten-free flour blend
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
7 ounces almond paste **
1 cup/8 ounces butter, cool room temp
1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 large eggs, cool room temp

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

• Line an 8” or 9” round or square pan with parchment paper

• Sift together the 1 cup of cake or gluten-free flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ½ teaspoon of baking powder

• Beat together 7 ounces of almond paste, 1 cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar until very smooth, about 4-5 minutes

• Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla

• Beat in the 6 eggs one at a time

• Gently stir the flour mixtures into the creamed mixture until thoroughly incorporated

• Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean

** Almond paste is available in many groceries in the baking section, in either a tube or a can. I like Odense brand which comes in a 7-ounce size so perfect for this recipe.

Raspberry Marzipan Tart

This is another recipe gleaned during those years when I had three children in preschool and I was not working outside the home—when I really channeled my creative impulses towards cooking and learning more about baking. This recipe came from my friend Jody’s mom, and is nearly as easy as the almond cake, but it has a few more steps. It is so delicious and special.

For the crust:
1 ⅓ cups/167 grams all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup/4 ounces unsalted butter
1 egg

• Cream all ingredients together using a hand mixer

• Press into the bottom and up the sides of a 9”or 10” springform pan*

For the filling:
½ cup/4 ounces unsalted butter
½ cup/100 grams granulated sugar
7 ounces almond paste **
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
Raspberry jam (you could use other jams; this is spectacular with blood orange marmalade, for instance)

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

• Cream together the butter and sugar (I use the same bowl I used for the crust)

• Gradually beat in the almond paste

• Beat in 2 eggs and almond extract; beat for 3-5 minutes until fluffy and fairly smooth (the almond paste has texture)

• Pour into the crust and baked for 45 minutes-1 hour, watching carefully

• Once the tart is lightly browned, remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing the springform side

• Meanwhile, if your jam is on the thin side, you can reduce it slightly by heating on the stovetop; you want it thickened enough to spread on top of the tart without being runny

• After cooling the crust, spoon the jam over the top

• Allow to sit for 1 hour before cutting into slices and serving

** Almond paste is available in many groceries in the baking section, in either a tube or a can. I like Odense brand which comes in a 7-ounce size so perfect for this recipe.

*I made the one pictured in a 10” springform pan and the baking took less time (approximately 40 minutes) than it would have in a 9” pan, which is what I usually use.

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And the food and drink, obviously: breakfast with a heart-shaped cappuccino, transparent layers of smoked salmon laid out, deepest purple jam in a cut-glass dish. Croissants and escargot pastries swirled with pink raspberry or green pistachio. An apéritif served in a goblet with a branch of elderflower berries or a slice of pungent dried orange. Dinners where the baguette chunks are offered in little burlap stand-up sacks, a bowl of creamy lentils bejewled with pomegranate seeds, roasted chicken nestled in saffron yellow broth. The truly beautiful ice cream cones at Bachir (shoutout to Isabella!), deep pastel colors blanketed by green cashews and topped with Chantilly cream. Food à emporter is carefully prepared and wrapped, salads at sidewalk stands are truly salade composé, colorful components arranged in containers with a glittering vinaigrette cup nestled within. We found an entire bakery devoted to little bears: bear cakes, bear cookies, bear brownies, bear Croque Monsieur sandwiches. Food is a revered cult and lovely to appreciate across the senses.

Store windows and signs do this as well, tempting shoppers and diners with beautiful pastries or stuffed sandwiches, even with humorous references to the wares within.

But the most amazing food-related store I went to did not do this at all. It actively ignored presentation in every single way imaginable. It was E.Dehillerin, the name itself impossible to convey to others or to remember if you haven’t been (shoutout to Hale for recommending, even looking up the spelling so I could find it). If you go to this store, and you love to cook, you are charmed beyond charm at the haphazard disarray of items stacked throughout a maze of shelves and cubbies, open in the back to dark passageways packed with more merchandise, some items boxed or even wrapped and taped, other items sitting out for you to inspect—Pullman bread pans of all different sizes, in no discernible order; a crazy array of whisks and pots and pans and baking tools that even an obsessed person like me cannot fathom; knives tossed haphazardly in nicked wooden cubbies with completely indecipherable scribblings (but the people who work there make that pulled-down French face when you ask, “is this to slice a roast chicken?” How could you be so folle, they seem to say, “No this is a knife to slice roast chicken” which they pluck without looking from another cubby, miming the roast chicken slicing motion). The prices are literally in francs, because 2002 was just yesterday and who can get around to the Euro? A gate in the middle of the store leads to stairs which curve down either side of the basement, leading to more dark passageways and blind turns, merchandise in some places so coated with thick dust that you have to blow it off before inspecting the items. Here you will find lidded pots that a 6-foot person could literally climb inside, copper bowls you could bathe a golden retriever in, racks of professional baking trays on rollers that haven’t seen the light of day since the franc. I swear if you brought something up from downstairs to purchase (assuming you are a party of three hearty people fortified by pastry and ice cream), an employee would remark that they didn’t even know that was in inventory. They wrap your packages in brown paper and tape it with a bright yellow and green tape, the green and yellow of their painted storefront, a storefront generously coated with layers of graffiti when the gates are down, so again, their marketing and maintenance departments don’t need to engage, but someone did order that beautiful yellow and deep green tape. You can see this building coming from several directions.

I bought this little triangle-shaped do-hickey which I haven’t yet figured out what to do with yet, but I was motivated to make madeleines which are so delicious and so evocative of France (and of Peets coffee 😀) the moment I got home. I used Julia Child’s recipe from The Way to Cook, which I used to make all the time. Of course I couldn’t find my madeleine pan; why oh why didn’t I buy one from the dusty shelves of E.Dehillerin?? I hope you enjoy these as much as Marcel and I do (and does anyone know where I can find lime blossom tea?).

Madeleines
“Little shell-shaped cakes” from The Way to Cook

2 large eggs, lightly beaten in a 2-cup measure
⅔ cup/133.3 grams granulated sugar
1 cup/125 grams all-purpose flour, plus 1 Tablespoon for preparing the pans
5 ounces/1 ¼ sticks unsalted butter, cut into cubes
pinch of sea salt
grated rind of ½ a lemon (organic if possible)
drops of fresh lemon juice (I used with a gentle squeeze ~10 small drops)
drops of vanilla extract (scant ¼ teaspoon, or 5 small drops)
confectioner’s sugar for sprinkling

The instructions for this are a little fussy or persnickety but there is nothing difficult at all about the process. Just follow the instructions and you will have delicious little cakes just like Julia promises.

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set out madeleine or shell molds, or small cupcake/tart molds

• In a large mixing bowl, measure ¼ cup of the beaten eggs

• Add the ⅔ cup/133.3 grams of sugar and 1 cup/125 grams of all purpose flour; mix well until thoroughly blended, and then set aside to rest for 10 minutes

• Meanwhile, melt the 5 ounces of butter in a small saucepan, watching carefully* (read * note below)

• Place the extra 1 tablespoon of flour in a small bowl, and add 1 ½ tablespoons of the slightly cooled brown butter; mix well. This is the base for preparing the molds (so the cakes don’t stick)

• Once the butter is slightly cooled, blend it (minus the 1½ tablespoons used to prepare the pans) into the remaining eggs in your glass mixing cup, mixing well

• Pour this mixture over the egg/sugar/flour mixture you have let rest for 10 minutes, along with the pinch of salt, the lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla. Mix thoroughly (see photo for consistency check)

• Brush the madeleine, shell or small cupcake molds with the melted butter/flour mixture, using a pastry brush to get into the corners or ridges

• Place approximately 1 tablespoon of batter in the center of each mold, slightly mounded so you get that small hump that is so characteristic of madeleines

• Bake for about 15 minutes, reversing the pans about half way through, until cakes are lightly browned around the edges

• Allow to cool for ~10 minutes before unmolding

• Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar before serving
  

  * As the butter is melting, stir frequently and watch carefully so it doesn’t burn. You want the butter to get those brown little bits at the bottom, but from there to burn goes so fast. At first the melting butter will be very loud, as it were; once that susurrating sound subsides, pay even more close attention, because from there it will go to the brown bits fairly quickly. The moment you see those brown bits and smell that great toasty, almost nutty brown butter smell, remove from heat and pour the butter into a small heatproof bowl to stop the cooking. Julia recommends cooling the butter over an ice bath but I think that is an unnecessary step. I just place the bowl on a cool counter for a few minutes to cool slightly. You want it still liquid when you add it to the batter, but not hot enough to cook the eggs.

  

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