It's The Thought That Counts...

The phrase “Let them eat cake” is commonly attributed to Marie-Antoinette, even though there is no record that she ever spoke those words.  The story in its many incarnations is meant to be a parable; a tale of a queen so out of touch with the needs of her people that when she learns they have no bread she tells them to eat cake.  An entire lecture could be given about the phrase, its origins and why it, in so many ways, reflects the current political and economic climate. 

But this is a blog. 

This year Christmas at our house will be about faith and gratitude, not gifts under the tree.  While my daughter is still too young to appreciate the story of Christmas, or indulge in the myth of Santa Claus, I have begun to think about how I will teach her about the season.  Regardless of your religious beliefs, the story of the birth of Christ can also be read as a parable.  It’s a story about miracles and faith and helping those less fortunate.  That’s the story I will tell my daughter.

So this year instead of becoming consumed by the gift giving frenzy, we are going to remember that it is, in fact, the thought that counts.  For most of the people on our holiday list a jar of cake will be hand delivered.  So let them eat cake and know that every bite was made with love and gratitude.

The first batch of Christmas cakes.  I love these half pint jars.  They say Better Homes and Gardens on the side.  They are shorter and wider than the other half pint jars I've been using.  When I made this last batch of Toll House I tried sprinkling a few chocolate chips on top about half way through the baking process, since they tend to sink to the bottom.

Things to be thankful for...

As an only child I was infatuated with large families, The Walton’s in particular.  We had close friends who were an Irish Catholic family with five kids and I loved nothing more than to hang out at their house.  Their dining room table had bench seats like a picnic table and no matter how many kids there were there always seemed to be room for one more.   There have certainly been times in my life when I wished more than anything to not be an only.  I look at my cousins; three girls who despite the occasional quarrel seem to be the best of friends, and wish I had that camaraderie. 

However, I learned early on that there were certainly perks to being an only child; one of them being that you never had to share the beaters.  Whenever we baked my mom and I would divide the leftovers; one of us would get to lick the bowl and the other would get to lick the beaters.  I remember asking my mom, with a great deal of concern in my voice, what kids with brothers and sisters did when it was time to lick the bowl.  It was a legitimate dilemma in the mind of a seven year old.

My daughter, The Short Person, is starting to learn that sharing isn’t always fun.  It’s a difficult concept to teach to toddlers who see the world as revolving around them.  This week I initiated my daughter, a third generation only child (she, like my mother, has a half brother 21 years her senior) into the glory of licking the bowl. When that little hand went into the bowl and she licked the gooey goodness off I couldn’t help but smile.  She paused for a moment, then pulled the bowl away.  She had staked her claim.

It was a busy week in the kitchen.  I tried to make a chocolate peanut butter cake in hopes that the peanut butter swirl would be creamy enough to serve as icing.  Unfortunately, the cakes were a little too dense.  I did, however, score big with the Tollhouse pie and the chess cake, which I shared with my family at Thanksgiving.  I think those two recipes will make the short list.

Two packages of cakes went out on Friday, one to Marisa and one to a friend in New York.  We’ll see if they are willing to share when it’s time to lick the bowl.

The Chess Cake has been a hit with everyone who has tried it.  These short jars are so cute.

Chocolate peanut butter.  This was adapted from a brownie recipe and although they tasted good, the texture was too dense.

A little box of goodness...

If I could afford it, I could easily become an online shopping addict.  Not only do you get to enjoy the thrill of the buy, but you get to experience the high all over again when you find a lovely box waiting on your doorstep a week later.  Whether it’s hand delivered or electronic, we all love getting mail. 

So I was incredibly excited when I came home to find a little brown box waiting for me.  I knew from the postmark that it was from Marisa. 

Last week we were going to try our first attempt at a cake swap.  However, my plans for baking were thwarted by a bad case of Day Care Funk that overcame our household.  In the interest of public health, I decided it was not wise to bake for the masses while there was something potentially communicable floating around our house.

I couldn’t wait to see what was inside.  The short person and I both sat on the floor in our entryway and tore into the box.  We pulled out two well-wrapped, perfectly intact vanilla bean cakes with an apple caramel filling.  I waited until the short person went to sleep before opening the jars.  Much to my excitement the cake, which was now almost two weeks old, was just as moist as if it had been baked that day.  The caramel filling fulfilled my need for frosting.  The apples were a little overpowering.  Perhaps they fermented a bit, I don’t know.  I’ve been a little anxious about using fresh fruit, so it could have also been my paranoia creeping in.  All in all, the cake was a success.  Three days have passed since the taste test and I’m still alive, so I think my fears of botulism were unfounded.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to find time to bake this week.  I’d love to be able to send Marisa a little brown box of goodness to return the favor.

 The Short Person was nice enough to help me reorganize my supplies.  I can now say with some confidence that mason jars are virtually indestructible.

 Marisa's cakes arrived safely.

 Ready to eat.

The Best Advice Ever Given...

When I was little my mother went to have her colors done.  It was an uncharacteristic act considering she was a woman who owned one lipstick and not a single pair of high heels.  I went along.  I was probably seven or eight years old; still young enough that adults would talk about things with the assumption that I was too young to understand.  As mother’s friend*** spun her color wheel and draped her with various shades of reds and blues, the friend imparted to my mother some of the best advice ever given. 

I am now going to share that advice with you.

“A woman should always decorate her home in her colors and she should always own a couch that she looks good naked on.”

While I may have been too young to fully appreciate what was being said, I must have instinctively known that this was a morsel of wisdom that I needed to file away for future use.

When I bought my first house, as a single woman, I also bought a light turquoise retro couch.  Turquoise is my color. 

There are many lessons to be learned from this story.  One is that we should try to surround ourselves with things that make us look good – perhaps even better than we are.  Just like good lighting and a great pair of shoes can hide many of your flaws, so can a good recipe. 

Everyone should have a couple of good dinner recipes, a dish that is always a hit at a pot luck, and a baked good that will keep them coming back for more.  That doesn’t mean you have to be a great cook, you just need to know how to do a couple of things very well.  They are those safe recipes that you know will never fail you.

For me, it’s my recipe for chocolate chip cookies.  These cookies have made me a lot of friends over the years.

It’s been a frustrating week in the kitchen.  Nothing I’ve tried to make has turned out quite like I anticipated.  The closest thing to a success was my attempt at making chess cake brownies in a jar.  Served in bar form, they are divine.  Served in a jar they are far too sweet.  They also overflowed when I baked them, then deflated so much that only half the jar was full.  So, in order to feel a little better about myself, I baked up a yummy batch of chocolate chip cookies.  They always make me look good.

*** I ran into my mother's friend a couple of years ago.  She was with another woman and was quick to publicize my successes.  She then turned to me and said, "And I don't care what Prissy always said.  You were never the demon spawn."

Cutting my losses...

Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you planned.

For most of my childhood, Saturday afternoons were spent riding around the countryside in one of the antique cars that my father and grandfather restored.  My dad always said that you didn’t always have to know where you were going, but you should always know how to get back.  He probably read that on a bumper sticker somewhere; my father was not terribly profound.  We got lost a lot (after all our pilot was a male who lacked the gene required to ask for directions), but we always found our way home.  Dad instilled in me my love of adventure and exploration.  There are situations in our lives where taking the unfamiliar path, exploring the unknown can lead to great things.  But dad was right; you should always know how to get back.  It’s a nice balance between risk and safety.

I’m a girl who likes a plan.  I like to know where I’m going.  I know how to follow directions.  I ask questions and gather information before making big decisions.  I find comfort in knowledge.

One of the things I like most about baking is that there’s a plan, a guide that will take you through each step until you accomplish your goal.  There is a little room for experimentation, a chance to make each recipe your own.  Taking a tray of baked goods out of the oven, or better yet, watching people devour them, leaves me with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.  I like that.  I am, generally, a person who is highly motivated by praise and reward.  Kind of like a puppy. 

But today was proof that even when you have a plan and follow directions the outcome is not always predictable. 

I don’t know where I went wrong. I was trying to make a flourless “Death by Chocolate” cake.  Once again, I have been trying to find a recipe that gives me the satisfaction of having cake, but doesn’t leave longing for frosting.  The description said that this had the consistency of a truffle, but fudgier.  The end result did not have the consistency of a truffle.  Not at all.

Instead, I had five jars of goo.  I went back over my recipe, trying to retrace my steps.  But the truth is, it was probably a project that was doomed from the start.  Some things are like that.  It was heartbreaking to waste perfectly good chocolate.  However, sometimes, even with the best laid plans, we have to cut our losses and start over.

 Death By Chocolate seems like an inappropriate name when you consider 

the chocolate to egg/butter ratio.

Uh, oh...

I went to start on my new batch of cakes and I found that the Chef de Cuisine 
of the Yellow House had decided to fill mommy's new jars with leaves and toy 
cars.

Uh oh.  Time to learn how to sterilize mason jars.

Going home...

So this is the view I look at every Friday evening when I'm on route back to my family.  I spend a lot of times on planes these days commuting 3 1/2 hours between work and family. I'm the modern day commuter mom. 

I miss my boys so much. Did I mention that my four year old son is my official sous chef? I like to refer to him as the Chef de Cuisine of the Yellow House. I'm planning my next cake adventure on this plane ride right now.  I've got two in the works-  Dark chocolate espresso cake with a chocolate ganache and lemon butter cake with a salted caramel apple swirl. Fancy; yes. Very very me; yes.
I actually didn't think of the salted caramel apple until I saw that little American flag on the tip of my airplane that made me feel very patriotic.

It's a strange duality I'm living right now. Working lady in her high heel during the week and baking mommy with her a four year helping in his own pint sized oven mitts on the weekends. I know I'm not alone in this duality.

I so look forward to this view; it means I'm going home.  I'll let you know how the cakes turn out... And if there are any leftovers this weekend I will ship them to Elyzabeth.

Some things are meant to be together...

Some things are just meant to be together. 

Four years ago I gave up sugar** and caffeine.  Everyone knew that around 3pm I had an ice cold Coca Cola, preferably in a can, but never from a fountain.  For someone who doesn’t smoke or drink, it provided me with a vice.  The decision to give it up was a complex one.  Most of the time I don’t miss it.  But there are certain situations that call for a Coca Cola.  Like when I’m eating a juicy burger.  Or pizza.  A Coke seems like the most obvious companion.

That’s how I feel about cake and frosting.  The two were destined for one another.  Like star-crossed lovers they seem incomplete without the other.  Finding an acceptable companion for our lonely little cakes in a jar has proven to be a challenge.  In order to properly “can” the cakes, the lids have to be put on before they cool completely.  Put frosting on a hot cake and it melts.  I was hoping marshmallow would satisfy my need, but as the marshmallow cooled it also deflated.

So I decided to try something new:  a cake that could exist independent of the frosting.  What I came up with was comparable to an old-fashioned Toll House pie.  Rich with butter and eggs, and gooey with warm chocolate chips it provided me with everything I needed to feel satisfied.

Additional jars have been delivered to three willing taste-testers, so we’ll see if they find it as enjoyable as I did. 

** I managed to stay sugar free (even resisting pregnancy cravings) until Easter, when one Cadbury caramel eggs pushed me overboard.  After that, all bets were off.

 I think I need to work on my presentation. 

Delayed Gratification

Delayed gratification has never been a strength, especially when food is involved.  When I would visit friends’ houses as a kid I remember being genuinely shocked to find that there were unopened bags of cookies or chips in the pantry.  We were always lucky if the bag made it out of the car unscathed. 

I come by the character flaw honestly, though.  One year the Easter bunny left me a fabulous chocolate Easter bunny in my basket.  It wasn’t one of the cheap hollow rabbits.  This guy was solid.  Much to my mother’s dismay I decided to eat all of my other candy before touching my prized Easter bunny.  Finally, around day three I came into the dining room to find Easter basket torn to pieces and mother slowly peeling back the aluminum foil bunny skin.  I cried out, “Mommy! Mommy!  Don’t eat my chocolate Easter bunny.”  But it was too late.  In one quick move she bit off the head.  She always swore it was only an ear.  But I was there.  It was the entire head.

I understood the way my mother felt last night.  As part of my experiment with the cakes in a jar I placed one simple chocolate cake aside.  My goal was to wait an entire week before eating it.  In theory, because the cakes are “canned” they will stay fresh and moist for up to 6 months.  I knew that six months was ambitious, so I settled for 1 week.  Unfortunately, after a particularly exhausting day I snapped.  I unscrewed the top and smiled as I heard the vacuum seal “pop”.  In dipped the spoon, and out came a mouthful of moist, chocolaty goodness.

Perhaps, the next experiment should be to bake a batch, opening one a week until we reach “maximum shelf life”.  I don’t know if they will last any longer than the one I sacrificed last night.  That’s the great thing about the cake in a jar.  They are great to have on hand for weak moments like mine. 

All In The Timing...

Timing really is everything.  And when I started my first cake in a jar, my timing was off.  I underestimated the amount of time I had to prepare the cakes.  I underestimated the time it would take for them to cook.  As a result, the first bath ended up in the garbage.  It really pains me to know that perfectly good chocolate has gone to waste.

However, I rallied.  With the short person strapped into the high chair, I was able to bake a second batch.  Using a basic chocolate cake base, I experimented with a marshmallow S’mores cake, as well as a chocolate hazelnut Nutella cake.

For the first year of the short person’s life I managed to keep her completely sugar free.  I dutifully made all of her baby food, making sure that each meal covered the entire food pyramid. When she turned a year she had the requisite chocolate cupcake, at which point all bets were off.  I’m hoping that I can teach her better eating habits than I had growing up, but that’s going to mean taking a long hard look at my own eating habits.  I won’t lie.  When she started to get fussy I did toss a couple of marshmallows onto her tray to pacify her.  She played with them, but decided instead that the Toys R Us Christmas catalog that I had given her to look through/tear apart was much more appetizing.  She either has a vitamin deficiency or she’s hoping for a spot on My Strange Addiction, because the child loves to eat paper.  The sad thing is that I didn’t care, since it was keeping her occupied.  Parenting at its best.

The end result were several jars of beautifully baked cakes.  I was almost giddy when I heard each lid "pop", insuring that they were properly sealed.  The Nutella satisfied my need for icing and the marshmallows were gooey-goodness.  I still need to experiment with cake recipes and how to keep them from falling as they cool.  But I have to say that despite the fact that I didn’t get the laundry folded or the pile of mail on the dining room table sorted, I did go to bed last night with a great feeling of accomplishment...Elyzabeth

The finished product.

The section of the Toys R Us catalog that I feel fairly certain was eaten by the Short Person.

The first...

I'm not sure how I learned to bake. I am one of five kids and my mother's idea of

gourmet cooking is chicken breasts covered in Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup.  
Wait! No! Her favorite dish is spaghetti with cottage cheese and in fact, two of 
my sisters still eat it in their own homes. Unlike my wonderful mother who 
curses at the can opener, I feel a sense of calmness when I bake. Yes, Elyzabeth 
is right, I do tend to get a little "Top Chef-y" but that's just because I'm 
classic type A personality and that is my idea of calm.

I've known Elyzabeth since I was a 21 year old front desk girl at the Peninsula 
spa in NYC. The most glamorous and expensive spa and I showed up everyday in 
crinkled khakis.  That tells you a lot about me.  In that crazy city Elyzabeth 
and I  somehow found one another; me with my short dyed red hair and Elyzabeth 
with her cascading long real red hair. Together in NY we "babysat" in Jersey for 
the Sopranos,  we laughed about the blind-date she had with Chewbacca, and vowed 
to stay friends when I left New York.  We did.  Years later I stood next to her 
as the maid of honor at her wedding. I am reminiscing about NYC because it was 
in my tiny Manhattan apartment (where my arm span was as wide as my kitchen) 
that I baked my very first banana bread.

Last night was also a night of firsts.  I made my first cake in a jar for our 
first dinner party in the first home my husband and I have bought.

Vanilla bean cake with cinnamon apple streusel swirl.

Every last bite was scraped out.

...Marisa 

 

 

Before going in the oven.

Overflowing with goodness.

Why We Bake

In a strange way, reinventing yourself requires you to revisit who you once were.  Yesterday, I spent the day in New Orleans.  It was a business trip that was filled with fun, adventure and a couple of hours of free time to enjoy walking around the French Quarter in solitude.  New Orleans holds a special place in my heart.  Everywhere I go there is a special memory: Jackson Square where my mom would let me tap dance as a kid; the wooden toy store my dad and I loved to visit; the sidewalk where my husband proposed.

It’s where, before marriage and diapers, I could spend hours completely content to be alone.  There isn’t much time to be alone these days.  But yesterday was a reminder that I still know how.

Baking is also a reminder of my old self.  When I was in grad school with deadlines looming, I often baked.  It was advice given to me by a writer-friend who explained that baking allowed you to enjoy the completion of a creative process.  And it’s true.  However, baking is about more than just completing a process.  It allows us to both literally and figuratively feed ourselves and others.  The next day I would pack up my goodies and deliver them to my classmates, who were always a grateful audience. 

Marisa and I both love to cook.  Marisa’s menus are of the Top Chef variety, while I tend to lean more toward simple home cooking. So today Marisa and I are going to bake our first cakes in a jar.  We are in two different kitchens, in two different states.  When they are finished we will pack up our cakes (that’s the joy of “canning” a cake) and mail them to one another.  After all, food is meant to be shared.

** Come back tomorrow to see how they turned out.

Curvy Girl's Guide to Reinvention

Marisa and I have been friends since we were both living in rent-stabilized walk-ups in New York City.  Since then we have watched one another build careers, get married, have kids, gain weight and lose weight. Now we are both in our 30’s, with houses and car seats, standing at the proverbial crossroads. 

In times of crisis we have both been known to treat a pint of ice cream as a single serving container.  Who hasn’t?  (No really, who hasn’t?)  But this time, we’ve decided that instead of eating our way to a solution, we are going to bake.  To be more specific, we are going to bake cakes in a jar.  Why?  Because they are fun, they have a shelf life of 6 months (so you can always have one on hand in case you’re feeling rejected/hormonal/celebratory/hungry), and they beg to be eaten with a spoon right from the jar.

Once upon a time, back when we had answering services instead of cell phones, Marisa left me a message saying that she had an opportunity for us to make $100 cash on the 4^th of July.  I just needed to meet her on the corner of Broadway and 87^th Street where a white van would pick us up and drive us to New Jersey.  Where in New Jersey, she wasn’t sure.  I agreed even though it went against everything I was taught about getting into cars (or plain white vans) with strangers.  But we were using the buddy system.  What could go wrong?

The story has a happy ending.  We got paid.  And fed. And delivered back to Broadway and 87^th Street without compromising our virtue.

That’s what this adventure feels like right now. The big white van is waiting.  I’m not sure where it’s going to take us, but I bet there will be a good story to tell when it’s all said and done. 

So hop on board.  Follow us as we navigate marital changes, geographic changes, and career changes, all while trying to reinvent ourselves…one cake at a time.