Pumpkin butter cake with pecans and chocolate chips

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Magpies

It’s David’s birthday and I’m baking up a storm. I lay awake part of the night thinking about what I’d bake, and now I’m doing it and it is the most fun to cook when you think of it as a present for somebody you love. Last week I mentioned that I was experiencing a certain fatigue with my own tired and tiring voice, so I thought this week I’d let guest speakers do some talking and fill in with some words I never would have thought of stringing together, but thank heavens that somebody did. Today’s guest is John Donne, with a love poem. It is, of course, for David, and would be even if it wasn’t his birthday.

THE GOOD-MORROW

BY John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

It might have been written by an English poet in the 17th century, but every one of the words ring true and glow like burning coal, like they were written in my soul from me to you, except maybe the ones I don’t understand, although they convey a sort of mystery which is not inappropriate. (Still borrowing words! I bet Dylan liked Donne.) I was fascinated to read that the cartographical references in the last stanza might refer to a different kind of map than the one we’re familiar with. They might refer to a heart-shaped map that shows different worlds at once. I read this on wikipedia, so it might be nonsense, but it’s still a pleasing idea.

Pumpkin butter cake

I made a cake with pumpkin butter in it!! This means it’s a little juicier, spicier and sweeter than a cake made with pumpkin puree. It’s important to adjust the spiciness and sweetness according to your particular brand of pumpkin butter. (Although you can’t really go wrong!!) I made a crumbly topping of pecans and chocolate chips, and baked them right into the cake.

Here’s If Not for You by Bob Dylan.

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Almond ricotta and jam cake

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Magpies

Ricotta jam cake

Sometimes I get so tired of my own voice. Partly this is because I talk a lot. To any person or dog who will listen to me. Partly it’s because I write this Ordinary nonsense nearly every day, going on and on and on about whatever flighty thought flits through my brain. David, on the other hand, is a very thoughtful talker. He thinks before he speaks, in stark contrast to my constant thoughtless chatter. He said that sometimes, halfway through a sentence, he’ll decide that what he’s saying isn’t all that important, and he’ll just stop talking. As it happens, most of what he says is smart, funny, and worth hearing. So today I’m going to let him do a guest post, whether he likes it or not, and give my tired and tiring voice a rest. (She says after having gone on and on about how she’s not going to go on and on!) It’s here, at Antick’s website, and I really love it. Here’s a picture from it.

Almond-ricotta jam cake

I bought some fresh ricotta at Trader Joe’s, and there’s a warning inside that says once it’s opened it has to be used right away! I used some in a savory tart, and I had about a cup left over, so I decided to make a cake with it. It’s not a cheesecake, because it has flour and ground almonds in it, but it is a dense, satisfying cake. I also splurged on some bonne maman four fruits jam, and that features prominently here as well. Again, this is an easy cake to make, I used the food processor for the whole thing.

Here’s the White Stripes with Black Jack Davey.

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Hazelnut chocolate cherry tart

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Magpies

Hazelnut chocolate cherry tart

David showed me a story earlier today, and I can’t stop thinking about it. [David showed it to me here, on Futility Closet, where you can read the whole story much more concisely and coherently.] It concerns Michel Navratil, the last survivor of the Titanic. He and his brother, who were 2 and 3 years of age at the time, survived the crash, but had no adult to claim them after, and spoke no English, so they came to be known as “the titanic orphans.” A woman who had been in their lifeboat looked after them until the true story could be discovered. As it happens, they were the children of a French tailor who had taken them from his estranged wife, and planned to escape to America with them. He’d taken them to Monte Carlo, and then to England, and they’d boarded the Titanic under assumed names. As the ship was sinking, their father “…dressed me very warmly and took me in his arms, A stranger did the same for my brother. When I think of it now, I am very moved. They knew they were going to die.” Michel’s voice is so sweet and thoughtful, and his memories are so unexpected, yet so perfect for a child. You can’t help but fill in the story, you can’t help but wonder if the brothers were friends, as my boys are. Did they travel with their arms around each other, as my boys do? They’d already had such adventures by the time they reached the Titanic; were they scared? Were they angry at their father? Did they know where they were going? What would their life have been like if the ship had never crashed? Michel does not remember being scared. He enjoyed his time on the Titanic, he found it “A magnificent ship!…I remember looking down the length of the hull – the ship looked splendid. My brother and I played on the forward deck and were thrilled to be there. One morning, my father, my brother, and I were eating eggs in the second-class dining room. The sea was stunning. My feeling was one of total and utter well-being.” And even after they struck the iceberg, he wasn’t frightened, “I don’t recall being afraid, I remember the pleasure, really, of going plop! into the life-boat. We ended up next to the daughter of an American banker who managed to save her dog–no one objected. There were vast differences of people’s wealth on the ship, and I realized later that if we hadn’t been in second-class, we’d have died. The people who came out alive often cheated and were aggressive, the honest didn’t stand a chance.” Michel and his brother were eventually discovered by their mother and taken back to France (on a boat!) His brother died aged 43 in 1953. Michel became a professor of philosophy, and he lived to be 92 years old. But he says, “I died at 4. Since then I have been a fare-dodger of life. A gleaner of time.” A gleaner of time. Good grief.
**********
I call this a cake, but you could make it in a square pan and cut it into bars and call it bar cookies. It’s dense and delicious. It has dried cherries, toasted hazelnuts, oats, and chocolate. It’s plain in many ways, but it’s also complicated and delicious. David and I joked that it was like trail mix bars, but trail mix bars with plenty of butter and sugar in them!!

Here’s Take Me in a Lifeboat by Flatt & Scrubbs
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Flourless pecan chocolate cake

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Magpies

Flourless pecan chocolate cake

The other night we built a fire in the backyard, we toasted marshmallows coated in nutella (Malcolm’s idea) and then we brought out the instruments. I played ukulele, Malcolm played his real guitar, and Isaac played his toy guitar. Malcolm knows three or four chords, I can play a few chords, but I can’t remember which ones they are, and Isaac knows no chords and his guitar is untunable. What a cacophony!! The neighbors love us! Isaac wrote a little song, and this is how it goes…

I can play guitar like a rock star
I can play guitar like a rock star
Nobody does it like me

I can tie my shoe just how I do
I can tie my shoe just how I do
Nobody does it like me

I can hit things physically Like I’m in misery
I can hit things physically like I’m in misery
Nobody does it like me

I can find a word
like I have 25 birds on my shoulder…

WAIT! WHAT? Twenty-five birds on your shoulder? What? Why? At that point I interrupted his song because I was so taken with the idea of Isaac with twenty-five birds on his shoulder that I wanted to hear more about it. Why were they there? What did it mean? But I couldn’t get him to clarify, and he had already taken himself to the bridge and beyond and there wasn’t any going back. Well! First of all, it’s true, nobody ties shoes like Isaac. Nobody. Second of all, how nice is it to hear your son write a song about being good at things? It’s a confident song. It’s good to hear. So I sit here with twenty-five birds on my shoulder, writing this to tell you about today’s Sunday interactive playlist. It’s songs about being good at things. They can be vaguely boastful bragging songs, of course, but extra points for songs about being good at specific things.

This was a good cake! It was too good! It was almost like fudge. It has no flour, so it’s dense and soft, but it does have pecans, coconut and chocolate. It has chocolate on top, too, which gives it a bit of crunch, and makes it like a big soft chocolate bar. It was very very easy to make, I did it almost all in the old food processor, which seems to be my new cake-baking technique.

Here’s a link to that playlist. I need some help with this one! I’m drawing a blank. Add your own, or leave a song in the comments and I’ll add it through the week.
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Gianduja cake

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Magpies

There’s a pleasant sort of anxiety about the last week of summer vacation. We made plans to do every single fun thing we’ve talked about doing all summer long! All in one week! At the moment, of course, the boys are watching dumb cartoons, and I’m sitting in front of the computer writing about cake. (Did you ever see the Simpsons when Homer thinks he’s going to die, and he promises that if he’s allowed to live he’ll never ever waste another moment of his life? He lives, and the credits play out to the sounds of Homer watching bowling on the TV. It’s like that.) But we did go for a walk in the woods. The far far away woods. It was a big adventure. The weather was crisp and perfect, and the boys turned the walk into a search for efts and salamanders. There was a scoring system! Points were awarded! Four points for a red eft, and I can’t really remember the others. Well! The woods were teeming with efts! Generally we’re lucky to see one or two, and we saw hundreds of the tiny, unbelievably beautiful chinese-red, green-spotted, soft-skinned, dog-like, sweet-fingered little creatures. I went ahead at Clio’s pace, and stood to wait for the salamander searchers. The light was dappled and shifting. If you tried to take a picture of a boy glowing in a pool of sunshine, you couldn’t, because he’d walk into the shade and then the sun and then the shade again. The light ran over the moss and rocks and leaves like water, swirling with the shadows of branches far overhead, branches moved by a wind that felt like autumn. The earth was soft with dead leaves, which had been packed down year after year after year, and left the ground under our feet feeling hollow and sweetly, whisperingly resonant. I looked back at my three boys, bent over a stone or log that they’d moved, just for a moment. They ran their fingers through soft decaying wood and soil, wet and rich and fragrant. They bowed their heads together over outstretched hands, and David held their palms towards him as if he could read their future. They replaced the rocks and logs to their place of quiet, slow decay, and they ran to catch me up, nearly knocking me over with the force of their hugs. And so goes another summer, and I wonder what it feels like for the efts when they know that winter is coming. Do they remember their watery birth? Do they have dreams of their return to the water when the time is right?

Malcolm dressed as a red eft

I made this cake for a back-to-school luncheon for the teachers. And, of course, I made one for us, too, just to be sure it was edible. It’s a French-style cake, quite simple, but very tasty with hazelnuts and chocolate. I made it almost all in a food processor, except for the egg white-beating, which I did by hand. It’s a simple cake…but flavorful and pleasing. Like soft, intensely flavored brownies, maybe. Very easy to make, and very tasty with coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon or wine after dinner, like all good-hearted cakes.

Here’s Flatt and Scruggs with Wildwood Flower.

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Pistachio chocolate chip cake

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Magpies

Pistachio cardamom chocolate chip cake

Sad news about Seamus Heaney! It’s strange because I’ve been thinking about him lately. As you may have notice I’ve been semi-obsessed with mythological characters–reading about them, writing about them, reinterpreting the lives of ordinary people as if they were mythological characters, following some pattern of characteristics of all mythological characters in all cultures. Back in March I declared Heaney a poet laureate of The Ordinary, and I said this about him…

His poems seemed washed in the affectionate, melancholic light of memory, so that everything he touches quietly glows. We all cast mythical shadows in his poems, we’re all the gods and goddesses of our own creation. However humble our labors may seem, they become honorable in his words.

Probably not a very scholarly or accurate thing to say about his poetry, but that’s how it feels to me, and that’s how it fits my mood lately.

When asked to choose two poems that summed up his life’s work, he chose two with mythical overtones. In The Underground, he imagines a scene from his honeymoon in light of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed

Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.

Damned if I look back!!

This is a mild, plainish cake, with subtle flavors. A tea-cake, if you will. Good with your coffee in the morning, your tea in the afternoon, and your wine after dinner. It’s very easy to make, I did it all in the food processor in a matter of minutes. It has pistachios ground right into the batter. It’s flavored with vanilla and cardamom, and of course it has chocolate chips, because all good cakes have chocolate chips!! I made it in the French style, with whipped eggs and no extra leavening.

Here’s Seamus Heaney reading The Underground, for your song today.

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Pecan, coconut, chocolate chip cookies and Cornmeal almond cinnamon cookies

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Magpies

Cornmeal almond cinnamon cookies

Last night we watched Au Hazard Balthazar. I found it incredibly moving and beautiful, but I need to think about it more before I talk about it, so I’ll talk instead about something that it reminded me of. Which is, of course, Zola’s Germinal, which takes place in the same part of the world about 100 years earlier. Au Hazard Balthazar is the story of a donkey, a working animal in rural France, who faces abuse and cruelty at the hands of his many masters. Germinal tells the story of a community of miners in rural France whose world is awash in casual and thoughtless cruelty, at the hands of their masters and amongst themselves. Of course this cruelty extends to the animals who live with them, who work for them, and whom they eat, it’s all part of a cycle of violence and poverty and need. And this cruelty is a source of tension and anxiety in the novel, it adds to the suspense of a situation that is becoming unbearable, which is about to violently explode. Souvarine is a young Russian revolutionary who believes the entire world needs to be razed clean with blood and violence. He cares for nothing and nobody, except for a fat rabbit that has the run of the house where he boards. And she loves him, too, she loves to sit on his lap while he gently strokes her ears. It’s a scene of real affection and peace, and it’s followed immediately by a scene in which the entire town feasts on rabbits. We worry for her, for Souvarine’s friend. Just as we worry for the finches tied sightless and motionless in cages for a singing contest at a fair, and for the horses who spend their entire lives in the pit, five hundred meters below the earth. On Etienne’s first day in the pit, he’s horrified by the hellish conditions there, and his journey back to the surface is delayed by the nightmarish scene of a horse being lowered into the pit.

There’s more about the horse’s fall into hell, and Zola continues to imagine the horses’ dreams of the pastures and sunshine of their youth. In a book as gritty and factual as Germinal, it’s a rare flight of fancy. It’s this empathy that makes you feel more moved by the plight of the humans, and gives you hope that they will learn to be kinder to each other. If you can understand the suffering of a horse, and can sympathize with the animal, you can’t be blind to the suffering of your fellow humans, you can’t have turned yourself off and resigned yourself to the cruelty of the world. You can allow yourself the euphoric pleasure of dreaming of a day when everybody is equal, and justice reigns, and “all the populations of the earth are totally transformed without a single window being broken or a drop of blood being spilled.”

Pecan chocolate coconut cookies

I’ve been making lots of cookies, lately, so I thought I’d tell you about two kinds at once. They’re both very easy and quick. I made them both entirely in the food processor, but if you don’t have one you could make them by hand. One is a pecan coconut chocolate chip. It’s chewy and crispy and very sweet–like a candy bar almost! But irresistibly good. The other is cormeal, almond cinnamon. It’s more of a cakey cookie, soft and dense. But it has a built-in crunch from cornmeal and finely ground almonds. I said almond and cinnamon remind me of Christmas, and David said he could eat these all the year round.

Here’s Odetta with All the Pretty Horses.

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Chocolate oatmeal crisp cake

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Magpies

Chocolate oatmeal crisp cake

Yesterday I wrote a story that involved a sailor. He was partly inspired by this guy.

And I’ve been reading the boys’ cross section book of ships, which I love. This isn’t from that book, but it’s fascinating.

And there’s this epigram by Anyte of Tegea, which I also love, and which takes place by the hoary grey coast…

I Hermes stand here at the crossroads by the wind beaten orchard, near the hoary grey coast; and I keep a resting place for weary men. And the cool stainless spring gushes out.

So today’s Sunday interactive playlist is about oceans, seas, shores, sailors, ships, wrecks…Add the song to the playlist yourself, or leave a song in the comments and I’ll try to remember to add it.

Chocolate cake with coconut oatmeal crisp topping

When I started out, this was just going to be a french-style chocolate cake. Then Malcolm suggested that I add an oatmeal crisp topping, and it became something very special! Almost like brownies, but way better. Very good with coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon and wine after dinner!

Here’s a link to the interactive playlist.

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Chocolate-stuffed-cherry cake

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Magpies

Chocolate-stuffed cherry cake

We recently re-watched Exit Through the Gift Shop, a film that may or may not have been directed by elusive British street artist Bansky, and is about Thierry Guetta, who may or may not be a real person and who may or may not also be an artist named Mr. Brainwash. Is the whole film a mischievous hoax? A straight documentary? A mix of fact and fiction? I believe it is, of course, the last one, as are all films. (It’s clearly not, as Banksy claims, a re-edit of hundreds of hours of Guetta’s footage of street artists at work, because Guetta is in at least 90% of the shots.)

Whatever else it is, I think Exit Through the Gift Shop is a sneakily beautiful film. It’s clever and amusing, certainly, but underneath all this lies a warm and beating human heart. The film asks questions–literally–the characters are always asking questions, and then contradicting themselves in ways that raise more questions. It makes us think about anonymity and celebrity, about the commercialization of art, about whether or not art has any meaning, or needs to have meaning. Guetta’s art, which is dangerously similar to Bansky’s own, is seen as meaningless, but it sells for lots of money, and Guetta, like Bansky, becomes a celebrity, which seems like a depressingly empty pursuit.

The film questions whether or not there are rules, if we should play by them or make up our own, and if any of it really matters. “I don’t know how to play chess, but to me, life is like a game of chess.” Guetta supposedly took up the video camera because he didn’t want to miss anything. As a child he was away from home for the death of his own mother, and now he obsessively video tapes everything in his life so that he won’t miss it. He starts to follow street artists all over the world, amassing a prodigious amount of footage, and entirely missing the lives of his own children, and all the ways they are growing and changing all the time. He doesn’t watch any of the video, he packs it all away in boxes, for him capturing it is enough.

I’m so taken with this idea…the idea that capturing or creating a moment is sufficient, and that making it viewable, let alone sharing it or exhibiting it, is not a necessary part of the process. It put me in mind of Vivian Maier, a photographer whose work was recently “discovered.” during an auction of the contents of a storage locker that proved to contain a massive hoard of negatives.

Maier had lived in New York and Chicago, and she created a remarkable collection of gorgeous street photographs that she never developed. The images are strikingly beautiful…the focus is uncanny, the blacks are rich and dark, the subjects are full of humor and sadness. She has beautiful images of children on the streets and looking through windows, images of lovers and workers and parents and elderly people going about their day. Maier was a nanny but I don’t think she had a family of her own, and it’s strange to think about her capturing the passage of time in other peoples’ lives, the progress from childhood to old age. She was never a celebrity, never recognized or acclaimed in her lifetime. She became poor and, I imagine, lonely.

Her street photography lies in stark contrast to Guetta’s manically hyped shallow “works” and even to Banksy’s street art. But it seems as though they’re all asking the same questions and all deciding that there are no answers but it doesn’t mean they should stop asking, or that we should stop trying to capture moments as they fly by, though we can never catch time as it passes. The attempt may be futile, but that doesn’t mean it lacks value.

Chocolate-stuffed cherry cake

Well, I’ve said it was my summer of cherries, and here’s another example. We were playing with our new cherry pitter the other evening, and Malcolm invented the method of stuffing the pitted cherries with chocolate chips. Genius! The boy’s a mad culinary genius! Of course I had to take it all a step further and pit and stuff some cherries and then bake them into a cake. I made a very simple cake, with ground hazelnuts. This is similar to clafoutis, of course, but it really is a cake and not a custard.

Here’s Tonight the Streets are Ours by Richard Hawley from Exit Through the Gift Shop.
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Fresh cherry chocolate chip cookies

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Magpies

Fresh cherry chocolate chip cookies

“When are you going back to school?” asked the bartender, calling over her shoulder from across the bar. “NEVER!” I replied, with an evil laugh. Of course she wasn’t talking to me, she thought I was somebody else, some bright young woman with her future ahead of her who will be going back to school within the month. Everybody is going off somewhere…to school; to a new, real, job; to a trip abroad. And I’m just sitting here, sitting. I’d like to go back to school, but it would be frivolous at my age; I should get a new real job, but I don’t really want to, if I’m being honest. I’d love to go on a trip abroad, but I’ve got kids and a dog and no money. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not great with change, and I’m genuinely content with things the way they stand. Sometimes, though, it’s discombobulating to take a step back and see how many decisions have already been decided–almost without me knowing I was making them. We own a house, we have as many children as I ever wanted, I can’t imagine ever leaving this town. Of course we have dreams, we talk about doing something else. We’re just about ready to launch our back-up plan of moving to Provence and raising goats and writing children’s books. I’m thinking of moving to Uraguay to form a film collective with whoever has been making the beautiful films I’ve seen from that area. I fully intend to move to Barcelona and become a secret street artist. I’d like to be a polyglot troubadour like Manu Chao, and gallivant to Brazil and Algeria to make huge wine-filled dinners with scores of fascinating friends from all over the world. It’s only a matter of time, really, before I travel back in time to 30s or 60s Paris, to make movies with Renoir or Godard. Just one or two things to put in order, first, and we’re off.

This is my summer of cherries! I’m cherry-obsessed. I’ve always been a raspberry fan, but I have to admit, this summer I’m very nearly ready to declare the cherry as my favorite fruit. I’m especially obsessed with the combination of cherries, almonds, and chocolate. So I warn you in advance I’ve tried lots and lots of combinations, and I plan to tell you about them all! ALl of them! I thought it might be fun to make cookies with fresh cherries. The cookies turned out very soft, like little cakes. But tasty–fresh and juicy.

Here’s Manu Chao with Denia. We’ve been playing this album for Malcolm lately, because I think Manu Chao might be a satorial soul mate for our Malcolm.

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Out of the Ordinary

extraordinary food from an ordinary kitchen

Category Archives: cake

Pumpkin butter cake with pecans and chocolate chips

Almond ricotta and jam cake

Hazelnut chocolate cherry tart

Flourless pecan chocolate cake

Gianduja cake

Pistachio chocolate chip cake

Chocolate oatmeal crisp cake

Chocolate-stuffed-cherry cake

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