All I really wanted for my birthday was for there to be a plan, preferably one that included good food, good cake and good friends. And Andreas delivered in full. Along with all of the above, there was breakfast at one of my favorite breakfast places in Brookline, there was shopping at my favorite little bookstore, there was a calming afternoon spent sketching in the courtyard and wandering the halls of my favorite museum, there was a lovely dinner out in Cambridge with our dearest friends, and yes, there was cake.

And now, another year begins. Here’s hoping I make it a spectacular one.

Someone recently asked what happened to all the cake baking around here and the answer is: my waistline. My waistline happened. It can’t take it anymore. As much as I love all the cake, I had to put my baking on hold for awhile to slim up a little bit for the summer.

But. There are exceptions. And one of them was last weekend with the 50th birthday celebration for my uncle slash 4th of July party we were going to.

Of course I felt compelled to bake something. My first inclination was a coconut cake, just because I think it’s awesome for summer and it was my godmother’s favorite. But then I saw this incredibly festive cake on i am baker (originally from 17 and Baking) and got the brilliant idea to combine the two.

So a coconut flag cake it was. I took this recipe for basic white cake, added coconut flavoring, and baked three layers in white, blue and red. To make the colors really brilliant, I used these food coloring gels by Wilton that you can get at A.C. Moore.

After cooling them completely, I whipped up some frosting (adding in even more coconut flavoring) and then assembled the cake. I won’t attempt to explain the assembly myself when Elyssa did it so beautifully here, and also demonstrated it on a morning show, which you can watch here.

Okay, not going to lie: this was the most challenging cake I’ve ever made. And it literally took all day. From buying the special ingredients, baking and cooling the layers, making the frosting, and of course the assembly, the total time was almost 12 hours (with a lot of down time in between the steps).

But! It was totally worth it. I presented it as a plain coconut cake, and from the outside it looked just like one.

Then when we cut in – wow! Everyone was so shocked by the brilliant colors and the flag design. And even better? It actually tasted amazing. I made it the day before and I don’t know if it was the overnight sit in the fridge or what but it was incredibly moist and soft with a very distinctive coconut flavor (but not overwhelmingly so!).

This might have to become a July 4th tradition.

Well, the Key lime cake was finally made.  Aforementioned, super-elusive Key limes were found, the cake was made, and honestly? It fell a bit short of totally amazing for me.

And I say for me in Italics for two reasons. A) Everyone in my brood seemed to really like it (I don’t tend to go gaga for citrus-y desserts… to me they’re just meh. I do go gaga for Lady Gaga, but that is neither here nor there). And B) In terms of the book, because I so gallantly skipped ahead a few recipes with my coffee cake craze, the Key lime cake was actually a step BACKWARDS, and boy did I feel it.

It’s basically your average pound cake with some Key lime juice baked in and some Key lime glaze on top. I wanted a little more pizazz. I wanted a few more fireworks. Even one firework.

And for all my hard work to find Key limes, in ended up tasting just like… lime. Where did the Key go, Melissa? Not to mention the fact that those squirmy little Key limes are a biotch to juice. They just don’t budge, the stingy little buggers. I took the photo above to demonstrate how small they really are. I could fit about four in my palm alone and I have small hands.

(By the way, no, I’m not slyly giving you all the finger in that photo. That would be my index finger, thank you.)

My final gripe with this cake is that it just didn’t photograph pretty. Not like my blueberry streusel, or even my brown sugar pound cake. I was expecting the glaze to be whiter and run down the side of the cake more, but alas, it ended up looking more like lime-y drips striping the side of the cake.

That all being said, if you’re into citrus and you’re also into cake, then you may want to give this a whirl. Who knows, maybe you’ll prove a cynic like me wrong. But just don’t fret too much over the Key limes if they’re not readily available. Regular limes would have worked just fine for me on this one.

Key Lime Cake

Adapted from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray

Ingredients

For the cake

1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 c.) at room temperature

1 c. sugar

2 large eggs

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

2/3 c. heavy whipping cream

1 Key lime

For the glaze

1/2 c. fresh Key lime juice (about 6-8 limes)

1 c. confectioners’ sugar, plus about 1 T. for dusting

1. To make the cake, position your rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Line the bottom of your pan with parchment paper, then spray sides and bottom with baking spray. This cake fits into and 8-inch square or round cake pan or, if you double it (which I did), two 8-inch pans or one tube pan.

2. Cream butter with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy (two to three minutes), then gradually add the sugar, beating well after each addition. Add the eggs (also at room temp), one at a time, and beat well after each addition.

3. In a separate bowl, dry whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

4. Slow down the mixer and add half of the flour mixture to the batter. Beat, then add 1/2 c. of the heavy whipping cream. Beat, then add the rest of the flour mixture. Beat, then add the rest of the cream. Stop the mixer, scrape down the sides of your mixing bowl, then beat on medium high for two minutes.

5. Grate the rind of one Key lime. Squeeze out about one tablespoon of the juice. Add the zest and juice to the batter and beat for two more minute.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared tube pan and bake for 20 minutes. If doubling, bake for about 40-45 minutes.

7. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for another 10-20 minutes. This prevents the top of the cake from browning and burning.

8. Once the cake is done (when a toothpick or thin knife inserted in the middle comes out clean), cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Then remove the cake from the pan using the plate-over-pan method and flip it onto a cake rack. Put a plate under the rack to catch the drips from the glaze. Take a toothpick and poke small holes in the top of the cake to absorb more of the glaze (I got a little poke happy, assuming the glaze would cover up all the holes. It didn’t. So don’t poke too many!)

To make the glaze

9. Mix the Key lime juice and confectioners’ sugar together in a bowl until smooth (can be done by hand with a whisk or in your mixer).

10. While the cake is still warm, spoon the glaze over the cake, allowing time for the cake to soak up the liquid. After you’re done, you can reuse the glaze that pooled on the plate below the rack to further drench the cake.

11. After the cake has cooled, dust with a little confectioners’ sugar and serve. (I forgot this step. Oops.)

]]> http://www.thespottedduck.com/2010/04/12/key-lime-cake/feed/ 1 http://www.thespottedduck.com/2010/03/26/blueberry-apple-streusel-cake/ http://www.thespottedduck.com/2010/03/26/blueberry-apple-streusel-cake/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:57:31 +0000 Shelley Senai http://www.thespottedduck.com/?p=2267

I’m not even sure what to say about this cake. Everything I want to say, like “Dear god, this is the most delicious cake EVER.”  and “Forget about every other cake I’ve ever made, this one is the BEST!” pretty much just sounds like what I said here. And here. And here.

The problem is, I love cake. They all taste delicious. But the thing about this cake is, it was the most interesting cake I’ve made yet. I don’t want to say complicated. It’s NOT complicated. But it did have one extra step from last week which was the layer of stewed blueberries and apples that goes in the middle and makes your knees quiver, it’s so delectable.

This cake has a much different texture and density than the other cakes I’ve made so far.It slices thick (read: makes less cake) and is stouter and denser, but somehow it manages to remain light and extremely moist. I think it’s the vanilla yogurt that you use instead of milk, a substitution Melissa made herself when she found she didn’t have sour cream or vanilla on hand. Brilliant. The beautiful thing is, it retains its moisture for days and even though Melissa recommends serving the cake warm, I actually found that it tasted best and had the best texture a few days after it was made.

My one, small complaint is that the blueberry apple filling was very sweet. If I make this again, I might try taking down the sugar a little bit. And make sure you use a really tart apple to balance all that sweetness.

Note: Melissa calls this Agroves Manor Coffee Cake in the book.

Agroves Manor Coffee Cake

Adapted from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray

Ingredients

For the stewed fruit

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. water

1/2 c. blueberries

1 large apple (Granny Smith recommended, avoid Red Delicious), cored, peeled, and chopped

For the streusel

1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon

1/4 t. salt

3 T. cold unsalted butter, cut into pats

3/4 c. light brown sugar

3/4 c. chopped walnuts

For the cake

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (at room temperature)

2 c. sugar

2 large eggs

2 c. all-purpose flour

1 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1 c. vanilla yogurt

1. First make the stewed fruit. Put the sugar and water in a saucepan on medium heat. Stir until sugar is submerged, then add the blueberries and apple. Cook for five minutes, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring every two to three minutes. Once the mixture has become thick like syrup (about 20 minutes), turn off the heat and set aside.

2. For the streusel, dry whisk the flour, cinnamon and salt together. Add the cold butter and brown sugar.  Using your fingers or a wooden spoon (I find fingers to be much easier!), combine the ingredients. Knead and crumble until the mixture has an uneven, oatmeal-like texture. Add the walnuts. Make sure the mixture is moist throughout, but crumbly.

3. To make the cake, position your rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Line the bottom of your tube pan with parchment paper, then spray sides and bottom with baking spray. (Spray well! A chunk of my cake stuck to the middle column when I took it out of the pan.)

4. Cream butter (that you’ve brought to room temp) with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy (two to three minutes), then gradually add the sugar, beating well after each addition. Add the eggs (also at room temp), one at a time, and beat well after each addition.

5. In a separate bowl, dry whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

6. With the mixer on low speed, add one cup of the dry ingredients and beat, followed by half of the yogurt and beat again. Repeat until you have added all dry ingredients and yogurt, ending with the dry ingredients. Then beat for two more minutes.

7. Pour half the batter into the prepared tube pan. Using a spatula, spread out the batter evenly in your pan. The spoon the stewed blueberry and apple syrup and smooth out. Then, scatter about three fourths of your streusel on top. Then pour the remaining batter into the pain and smooth it out with a spatula.

8. To spread the blueberry syrup throughout the cake, take your spatula and dip it down into the cake in five or six places, angling it down, then bringing it up.

9. Sprinkle the remaining streusel on top of the cake. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a toothpick or thin knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. (I use wooden kebab skewers because I’m too cheap to buy a real metal cake tester!)

10. Cool the cake in the pan for 15 minutes. The cake may start “falling in” (collapsing in the middle (mine didn’t)) but that’s okay. Unmold the cake from the pan using the plate-over-pan method.

11. Melissa recommends serving warm but I recommend letting it cool completely before eating. And remember: big slices!

If I gave you the impression last week that everything is a-okay over here, I sort of led you astray. The feeling of “okay” comes and goes, and for the past few days especially, I’ve been in a bit of a cloud. Or maybe I was numb before, and now it’s all very real. Who knows. What I do know is that at some point last Thursday I felt good enough to get in the kitchen and bake.

It was my first time baking in well over a month and, I won’t lie, I was a bit gun shy. When you look back at my last cake (giant fail), plus an attempt at king cake that I didn’t even blog about because it turned out extremely mediocre at BEST, I was beginning to think I’d lost my touch.

That was until I made this cake: a sour cream coffee cake by none other than my current Food Network favorite, Ina Garten aka The Barefoot Contessa. It’s called sour cream coffee cake but when I took it out of the oven and sliced it open to reveal its perfectly baked-through, moist yellow center with that tantalizing swirl of cinnamon and walnuts, I (very nearly cried and) christened it: Redemption Cake.

The other thing that kept me away from baking was the fact that the next cake in the book (All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray) was a key lime cake and my half-hearted attempts at hunting down key limes (I only checked my regular grocery stores but I could have checked some other places I know of) came up fruitless (no pun intended). And I have this thing about all or nothing. If I say I’m going to make every cake in this book IN ORDER, then I’m going to do it right – or not at all. And so I sat on my hands and waited for key limes to rain down from the sky instead of doing what I love: eating baking cake!

Then I realized how flippin’ ridiculous I was being. Letting some freakishly small limes come between me and my tube pan. So I did a big thing and gave myself permission to SKIP A RECIPE. Gasp!! And while I was at it, I skipped the next one! (It was some kind of banana monkey bread thing that I just wasn’t feeling that day). TWO RECIPES! That I skipped. If there’s some sort of award for conquering your personal neuroses, I was a top candidate for it that day.

Anyways, the coffee cake. A-MAZING. No, really. I know I say that all the time but it really truly was. Case in point (and this is somewhat embarrassing but hey, I’m going with it): the cake serves 16-20 people. It was half gone by the next day and we didn’t share it with anyone. Scary, right? Just the two of us, eating for 20. Awesome. The problem with coffee cake is, it works for both breakfast and dinner. Not to mention afternoon snacks. So… really… it’s… fine?

Whatever. When you taste this cake, you’ll know what I mean. You’re not going to want to share with anyone either.

The Barefoot Contessa’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake
Adapted from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray

Ingredients

For the cake

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 c.) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 c. sugar

3 extra-large eggs

1 1/2 t. vanilla extract

1 1/4 c. sour cream

2 1/2 c. cake flour

2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

For the streusel

1/4 c. light brown sugar

1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon

1/4 t. salt

3 T cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

3/4 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

For the glaze

1/2 c. confectioners’ sugar

2 T real maple syrup

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and line a 10-inch tube pan.

2. Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment for 4 to 5 minutes, until light.

3. Add the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and sour cream.

4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture to the batter until just combined. Finish stirring with a spatula to be sure the batter in completely mixed.

Melissa’s note: Don’t worry about sifting, dry whisking will work fine.

5. For the streusel, place the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt and butter in a bowl and pinch together with your fingers until it forms crumbs. Mix in the walnuts, if desired.

6. Spoon half the batter into the pan and spread in out with a knife. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup streusel. Spoon the rest of the batter in the pan, spread it out, and scatter the remaining streusel on top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean.

7. Let cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. Carefully transfer the cake, streusel side up, to a serving plate.

8. For the glaze, whisk the confectioners’ sugar and maple syrup together, adding a few drops of water if necessary, to make the glaze runny. Drizzle as much as you like over the cake with a fork or spoon.

ps. I just realized that I forgot to add the glaze to the cake at the end. No matter. The redemption cake is perfect, with or without the glaze!

I also wanted to share this “behind the scenes” photo that Andreas took of me a few months ago. You can see the heights that I go to to get the shots for these cake posts!

If you walked into my house last week, you’d be quite liable to hear me audibly sigh, and say: Oh sweet potato pound cake.  How you teased me. How you hurt me. How you tricked me into thinking I had this cake making stuff in the bag. That maybe I had mastered the skills and could skip the next few cakes and move on to the really complicated, really fun stuff. No more pound cakes for me, oh no. Maybe I was like, a cake making prodigy. Maybe I needed to be moved to the advanced class?

Yeah. That sweet potato pound cake put me in my place.

And hey, maybe I deserved it.  The first few cakes were so good, maybe I was getting a bit overconfident. But… no. I don’t think I was. Okay, maybe as I was making the cake I was thinking how good I had gotten at streamlining the mixing process, how fast, how smooth everything was going. How I was going to blog about how much better I had gotten. But I was still following the directions to a tee! And that’s what kills me. That I don’t know where I went wrong.

So we started out well enough. The sweet potatoes took almost twice as much time to bake as Melissa suggested but aside from that, it was smooth sailing in the beginning. I got the butter nice and soft before creaming, had the brown and white sugars perfectly mixed in, popped the eggs in, one at a time, beating for a minute in between, just as I was supposed to. Really everything right up to pouring the batter in the prepared tube pan, mixing together the crunchy pecan and brown sugar topping, and popping it into the oven was, I’m sorry, it was perfect. I think.

Anyways. The real trouble started when I took said cake out of the oven. Oh but you should have seen it in there! It rose so beautifully, all rounded and golden on top. I was so full of hope and wonder as the oven light shone on my naive face. Then we sliced it open. And near the bottom there was a small, dark band of presumably less than cooked cake. Eh, whatever, let’s just eat it. (Not to mention the fact that A was breathing down my back with the whole “gimme da cake!” song and dance.)

Now here’s the part where I swear I tested the cake. I poked it all over the place and IT SEEMED DONE. M-dawg even warned that this cake could “fool you” into thinking it was done and fool me it did. As we ate our slices I was feeling so disappointed that the bottom of the cake wasn’t fully baked that I did the crazy. I put the cake BACK into the tube pan, reheated the oven, and baked it for about 30 more minutes (checking in periodically of course).

And well, eventually I just gave up. It was midnight by that point. And I was afraid that if I baked it anymore the entire thing would be so dry that it would be rendered completely inedible. The extra baking didn’t seem to help things much anyways. The ominous dark band remained. And I mostly just feel frustrated because I thought I did everything right. (Any bakers out there have some advice? I’m at a loss.)

Anyways, uh, here’s the recipe. Maybe you’ll have better luck? I will say that the cooked part of the cake was pretty tasty and the sweet crunchy topping was amazing. I still preferred the brown sugar cake from last week but this one had a very clear sweet potato flavor which I loved. I’m just glad I didn’t send this in to work with Andreas before slicing it open! I think this is one cake we’ll keep at home.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake
Adapted from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray

You’ll need:
A shallow baking pan
A potato masher
A 10-inch tube pan

Ingredients:
About 3 medium to large sweet potatoes
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
4 large eggs
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon maple flavoring (I couldn’t find this anywhere! So I doubled the vanilla.)
1/2 cup peeled and diced Granny Smith apples (1 apple will do)

For the topping:
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3/4 cup chopped pecans

1. About two hours before mixing the cake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Bake your sweet potatoes until they have shriveled skins and very mushy insides. Melissa said this would take 45 minutes. For me, it took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for one hour. Slit each lengthwise and remove skins. Mash with a potato masher and measure out two cups for this recipe. Cool to room temperature before mixing the cake.

2. At least an hour before baking, set out your butter and your eggs.

3. Center rack in oven, preheat to 325 degrees F, line bottom of tube pan w/ parchment paper and spray sides with baking spray.

4. Cut butter into pats and shortening into quarters, cream together in mixer on medium speed.

5. Combine sugars, then add, 1/4 c. at a time, to the creamed mixture, beating 1-2 min. between additions.

6. Add eggs one at a time, beating 1 minute between additions at a medium-high speed.

7. Reduce the mixer to low speed and add the mashed potatoes, 1/2 cup at a time.

8. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.

9. In another separate bowl, combine the milk, vanilla and maple flavoring (if you were able to find some).

10. With the mixer still at a low speed, alternatively add flour mixture and milk mixture to bowl, beating after each addition and starting with a third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the milk mixture, beat and repeat until the last of the flour mixture has been added in.

11. Turn off the mixer, scrape down the side of the bowl, and then mix the batter on medium to high speed for two more minutes.

12. Slow mixer to lowest possible speed and add apples, mixing until just incorporated.

13. Pour batter into prepared tube pan and smooth top to even out the batter.

To make the topping:

14. In a separate bowl, combine cold butter, brown sugar, and chopped pecans. Mix with a spoon. The mixture will be very crumbly and course but that is okay.

15. Sprinkle topping all over the surface of the batter.

16. Bake in the oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes (huh!) before testing doneness. Then test cake and poke around in a couple of places. This cake can fool you. (You’re telling me!)

17.Cool in pan for 20 minutes, then remove from pan and continue cooling on plate.

Seriously. I have no idea where I went wrong.

I ended up being off for MLK day after all, which gave me time to tackle another cake in my great cake making adventure. Last week it was this sour cream pound cake, this week it’s this lovely brown sugar pound cake laced with crunchy pecans and topped with a cream cheese frosting. Delicious doesn’t even begin to cover how moist and perfect this cake came out.

Two cakes in and already my cake making abilities and overall baking prowess have drastically improved. I now fully understand the importance of getting everything to room temperature before you try to mix things together. I know just how soft my butter has to be before I slice it into pats and throw it into the bowl. Just how long to run the mixer to get the butter and sugar happily creamed together. These things make a big difference, believe me.

And for all you batter lovers out there, this was hands down the best batter I’ve evereverever tasted. Ever. Not that you should eat batter, yeck. Nasty habit, avoid at all costs.

After you finish baking and cooling, the cream cheese frosting comes together in a snap. Though fair warning, the recipe below made way, way more frosting than we ended up needing. I might have to whip up some cupcakes or something later in the week just to get rid of some of it. Shame to let it go to waste…

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray

You’ll need:
10 inch tube pan
Baking spray
Parchment paper

Ingredients:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup shortening
One 16 oz box brown sugar (light or dark, about 2 1/4 cup)
1/2 cup sugar
5 large eggs
3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans

Which I didn’t even realize was something that could be considered, hmm… a tad crazy? Until my new employer and I were talking this morning about cookware and she said, “Well we didn’t go all the way to the North End for it or anything…” and I had one of those moments that those of us who write publicly about our lives have from time to time. One of those brief moments of panic that, for me, goes a little something like this:

Oh no. Have I exposed too much of the crazy?

I try to keep the crazy under control, where possible. I mean, we all do I think. (I hope.) But it’s a lot easier when you don’t broadcast your thoughts to keep the crazy under wraps. There’s a fairly logical explanation for it though, I assure you. See, my husband was kind enough to get me this book for Christmas that I was seriously jonesing for:

All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray

Isn’t it pretty? I just love this book. Melissa is a staffer at NPR’s All Things Considered show in D.C., and for one year, she brought in a different cake to work every Monday. (Don’t you wish you worked with Melissa?) The ATC staff would try the cakes and give her feedback and this book reflects the best of those recipes. But All Cakes Considered is so much more than a recipe book. Melissa turned this into a teaching book on how to become a really great baker. The recipes graduate from easy pound cakes to complicated layer cakes, and take you through new techniques step by step. Fun, right?

Well, I thought so. And so I decided to start working my way through Melissa’s book, cake by cake, starting at the beginning. Starting yesterday.

After reading the first chapter on Melissa’s grandmother’s sour cream pound cake, learning how you’re supposed to leave your butter and eggs out of the refrigerator for at least an hour before you use them, about how you’re supposed to center your cake in the oven as it bakes and never open the oven, not even once, not even just a peek, not even for a second, while the cake is baking, Melissa got me all jazzed up to make some cake.

But first I needed my pan. See? Totally normal and sane. And it worked like a gem. Or maybe I’m just really good at following directions. Either way, we wound up with a fantastic pound cake on our hands. Soft crunch on the outside, moist and fluffy on the inside, with just a hint of lemony flavor. I do believe Melissa would be proud.

Only small problem? We have a whole lot of it. Oh, woe is me, too much cake. So I gave some to my neighbor and some more to my nannying family, otherwise I’d eat it all and that’s really not an exaggeration for comedic effect, believe me. But now that I’m going to be making copious amounts of cake on a regular basis, I’m thinking of taking a page from Melissa’s book (figuratively) and sending those cakes into an office… specifically my husband’s office (while I’m sure it would be appreciated here at my new workplace, I think the influx of ALL THE CAKE might get a bit overwhelming for the four people residing here, two of which have teeny tiny bellies (and by that I meant that two of them are children, not  people who’ve had gastric bypass)).

So that’s my new project for the beginning of my era of exploration. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

p.s. Note the addition of new category, “cake”.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence or merely convenience, but I’ve been crushing on a bunch of different cookbooks lately. (Hmm… just in time for the holidays.) Methinks any (or all?) of these would look perfect on my new cookbook bookshelf.

First up, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. After Julie & Julia spurred me to read My Life in France, I feel as if I’ve practically read this already. Plus, not only does this classic cookbook from the woman who introduced French cooking to mainstream America and invented the television chef include all types of basic French recipes, it also teaches all the basic kitchen skills that any good cook should know!

Next, this enormous book of recipes from the late Gourmet magazine (may it rest in peace) has been taunting me from the shelves every time I step into a bookstore these days. It just looks so complete and the shuttering of the magazine makes this collection of recipes seem all the more special.

This next one needs no introduction, except to say, I just got married to a bottomless stomach with a man attached to it. ‘Nuff said.

Finally, this baking book I saw covered on Design*Sponge. I love the story behind it and the cakes look delicious! I’d love to work my way through this book one cake at a time!

Any cookbooks you’d recommend I add to my wish list?

Dancing until we were out of breath,
Eating until we were out of breath.
And yes. Of course there was cake.

Party, replete with squealing little girls,
And new friends. And the coming together,
Of two different worlds.

Then memorial after memorial,
And pictures and museums,
On the prettiest of pretty fall days.

Wherein shadows with were played,
Horses were petted,
And sno-cones gnawed to oblivion.

All in all the most superb of weekends.