Category Archives: cake

Banana-chocolate chip-cranberry sauce cake

Posted on by
Reply

Banana cranberry sauce cake

Hello, and welcome to another installment of “Claire clumsily paraphrases wikipedia in an attempt to share an artist that she loves.” David recently purchased a many-volume set of Memphis Minnie CDs. So much good music! She just kills me. She, quite literally, rocks. In the past I haven’t been able to find recordings of all her works, but I’ve read her lyrics like poetry. It’s so wonderful to be able to hear them now. Let me tell you a little something about her… She was born Lizzie Douglas, in 1893. She learned very young to play guitar and banjo, and ran away from home at thirteen to try to support herself as a musician. She landed in Memphis, Tennessee, and played in nightclubs and on the street. She travelled with Ringling Brothers circus for a while, and eventually she married and recorded with Kansas Joe McCoy. In the thirties she moved to Chicago, and formed a band with drum and bass, thus single-handedly inventing rock n roll. (What? what?) She went on to record during the forties, but her popularity and her health failed in the fifties. She died in a nursing home in 1973. Her songs are remarkable. On her gravestone it says, “The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions, but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie’s songs we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own.” You do feel this way when you hear her songs! Her life was so different from mine – so wild and uncertain and vulnerable – and yet when I hear her songs I often think, “I feel that, way too.” Her words are so human and raw and honest and mysterious, all at the same time. The picture you form of her, from her songs, is of a woman who is strong and funny, empathetic but guarded, and who has been hurt and has known a lot of pain.

Here’s I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down,

I hate to see evenin’ sun go down
I hate to see evenin’ sun go down
Cause it makes me think, I’m on my last go-round

Some people take the blues, go jump overboard and drown
Some people take the blues, go jump overboard and drown
But when they gets on me, I’d rather stay ‘n go sit down

I been to the river, looked it up and down
I been to the river, looked it up and down
But when my mind never let me, to jump overboard and drown

There’s such a strange hopefulness in the lyrics, with the very blues that are bringing her down also buoying her up.

She has quite a few songs about prostitution, but I love the odd beautiful detail of Hustlin Woman’s Blues…

I stood on the corner all night long, counting the stars one by one
I stood on the corner all night long, counting the stars one by one
I didn’t make me no money, Bob, and I can’t go back home

New Dirty Dozen is a sassy, funny insult song, based on the game dirty dozens, which involves inventing increasingly hurtful insults about a person’s family, until somebody can’t take it any more and gets angry…

Come all you folks and start to walk, I’m fixing to start my dozen talk
What you’re thinking about ain’t on my mind, that stuff you got is the sorriest kind
Now you’re a sorry mistreater, robber and a cheater
Slip you in the dozens, your papa and your cousin
Your mama do the lordy lord

She has beautiful songs about rambling, about being cold and homeless, with sore feet and not enough to eat, songs about being treated cruelly by policemen and judges and doctors and boyfriends, songs about dirt dauber wasps building nests on her when she was a child, songs about superstition, even a song about President Roosevelt and a mule, she has a lovely song of admiration about Ma Rainey, she has generous songs offering shelter and food to desperate men, she has saucy, sexy songs, songs full of hunger and pain, songs full of warmth and humanity. And she plays guitar like a mother-flipper!

Here’s a small playlist of Memphis Minnie songs.

And here’s a cake that uses up leftover cranberry sauce and bananas that are past their prime. It’s rich and moist and tasty. I added chocolate chips, cause I love them, but you could easily leave them out.

Continue reading →

Chocolate-covered, raspberry-filled coconut shortbread cookies

Posted on by
12

Raspberry coconut chocolate-covered cookies

Isaac says that the worst thing about turning seven is that you’re all achy when you wake up in the morning. And I said, “just you wait till you’re forty-three and when you drop a pencil it’s not worth bending down to pick it up!” (And then I worried that I was belittling his complaint. And then I worried that he was coming down with something, because a seven-year-old shouldn’t be achy! He seems fine, though.) But I spent some time thinking about it, this morning, sitting on the couch with Clio and not getting anything done. (She’s no help, this puppy! Does she shoo me off the couch and say, “get to work!”? She does not! She makes ridiculously cute little grumbly clucky noises “ooonph, ooonph” and curls up on top of me with a big sigh so I couldn’t get up even if I wanted to!) Ah yes, I was thinking about it this morning, whilst slowly recovering from a busy weekend of I’m-too-old-to-be-a-waitress, especially in shoes that are a size too big. I’ve been feeling very stressy, lately. With stomachaches and headaches and rashes. Of course a big part of the problem is that I stress about the symptoms, I’m too aware of them when they’re there, and not grateful enough to feel better when they’re gone. Something I think about quite a bit is feeling good – a specific moment in time when you feel good and you know it. You walk down the streets of your town feeling sunny and light and happy and comfortable with yourself. You’re not hungry or tired or manic. You’re not worried about anything. The sun is shining, and it feels good to walk in a place that you know and love. It’s not a lot to ask, really – it’s more the absence of discomfort and anxiety than anything else – but it seems like such a precious, elusive feeling. It would be nice to bottle it as an elixir for the next time you have a sniffle, or you shut your finger in a door (that’s me, last night!), or you’ve got worries weighing down your heavy feet. It’s a feeling I associate with youth and springtime, but you can feel it in the winter, too, even when you’re forty-three and you don’t always feel like bending down to pick up a pencil.

I like songs about this sort of moment, and I was listening to one the other day, but I can’t remember what it is! I’ve started a short playlist of the ones I can think of, and I’d appreciate your help in adding to it! Songs about feeling good, in your neighborhood. I’ve stretched the rubric a little for some of these, but the nice thing is, listening to these songs makes you feel good!

I had a meeting with a client who asked me to make a dessert for a dinner party. (Okay, so the client was my mother and the meeting was a glass of wine in the afternoon! Before pick-up at the school! Shocking!) The party was a wine-tasting featuring Argentine wines, and the maternal client requested a dessert with coconut, raspberry and dark chocolate. So I decided to make a version of Argentine-style alfajores. These little cakes are made with a subtly-flavored coconut shortbread, sandwiched together with raspberry jam, and coated in bittersweet chocolate. They also reminded me of the empire biscuits that my scottish mother-in-law makes. I think they would make a nice sweet for a holiday party, because they’re portable – you can stuff a few in your pockets and wander from conversation-to-conversation, fully stocked!!

Continue reading →

Isaac’s Robot Cake!

Posted on by
4

Robot cake

I pretty much spent the entire day yesterday making a robot cake and blowing up 125 balloons. I consider it a day well spent, even though all of the balloons were popped within ten minutes once the party started, and the cake quickly became a headless, armless little lump of a robot. The party was wild! And noisy! And rambunctious! But Isaac had a wonderful time, slept late this morning, and then announced that he feels so lucky to be part of this family. I went on and on about Isaac yesterday, so I’ll just share a few pictures today. Here’s Isaac, wearing my shirt, blowing out his birthday candles…

Here’s a series of pictures he did for a flipbook. I just love them! I love the way his little brain works! It’s only part way done, and I’m on tenterhooks to see how it ends.

I made the cake with non-cake pans, I used an oven-proof bowl for the head, a souffle dish for the body, a small square baking dish for the feet (cut in half into two rectangles) and three cupcakes each for the arms. I used m&ms to make the control panels, and twizzlers to make the hoses, because Isaac assures me that robots have hoses. My policy is to make an ugly cake look nice with lots of candy, and make a messy house look good with lots of balloons, so that’s what we did!

And Isaac says his favorite song is Brianstorm by the Arctic Monkeys, so here it is!
Continue reading →

Crispy soft cornbread pudding

Posted on by
1

Cornbread pudding

When the power went out last september (I think it must have been during Irene, but it’s all a blur at this point) Malcolm’s first concern was making me coffee. We can smash the beans with a hammer! And boil water over the fire! Must…get…mom…her…coffee!! Ha ha! As if I was some kind of caffeine addict. Well, okay, I’m probably a tiny bit addicted to caffeine. But I’m not the only one! You should have seen this place by the third powerless day. An army of hollow-eyed zombies roamed the town fiending for coffee! The first day after the storm, I wandered the drizzly town, feeling very tired and dejected, but my friend Pat made me a cup of coffee on his gas stove, and my day instantly cheered. The second day, David braved the compromised roads to make a journey to dunkin donuts. And on day three, we made coffee in our own home. We bought ground beans, and boiled a pot of water on the grill. We grilled coffee! And tea! It seems like such a little thing, but the act of making coffee in (or just outside the door of) our own kitchen restored some small sense of normalcy, and made me feel nearly ecstatic. (Or maybe the coffee was unusually highly caffeinated.) It’s not just the caffeine, it’s the simple daily rite of grinding the beans and boiling the water. (Or lying warm in bed listening to David downstairs performing the ritual.) I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. I feed my boys at the same time, most days, and they’re fairly predictable in what they’d like to eat. David eats peanut butter and jelly for lunch almost every day. Anything can happen at dinner time, I like to experiment and make odd meals, as you know, but that cooking and scheming is part of the pattern of my days. I hadn’t realized quite how routinized we were, as a family, until this ten day spate of powerlessness. I hadn’t realized how much the food that I prepare and eat, and the patterns of preparing it and eating it were involved in my comfort and ability to function. It made me feel a little anxious. I worried about the boys getting enough healthy food, even though they probably ate as well as usual. And anxiety makes me want to bake, which, obviously, wasn’t an option. We had fun straying from our usual pattern. We grilled scrambled eggs and toast, which was absolutely delicious. We were more social than usual, and shared meals with friends – everybody bringing their rapidly spoiling food. But I never felt quite right. I had a constant queasy feeling. And I found myself craving solid comforting food – bread and cheese and potatoes. One day we went and bought cans of beans and jars of artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers, and I was actually very excited about the prospect of cooking them over the fire. But dusk came early and the evenings were chilly, and I lost my enthusiasm for standing in the drizzly yard dirtying pots and pans I didn’t have hot water to clean. So what did we eat? We ate grilled toast and grilled bagels and grilled scrambled eggs. We ate rapidly thawing veggie dogs and veggie burgers. We ate pasta at a friend’s house. I made salads with cans of chickpeas and hearty vegetables like carrots and olives and cherry tomatoes. We had a few bags of potato chips scrounged from the dark, cash-only convenience store, and ate quantities of chocolate bars left over from our cancelled halloween. Peanut butter and jelly. Crackers and peanut butter. All-in–all, we ate lots of good food. We lived comfortably. I’m so grateful to have my warm home back, and my working stove and hot water. I cooked up a storm the first day with power – and I haven’t really stopped since. But I think it’s good to shake things up sometimes. So maybe we’ll grill scrambled eggs and toast one morning, just for fun, but I’ll be glad for the hot water needed to wash the dishes after!

We didn’t eat this over the last ten days, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I was craving. It’s comforting and warm and crispy but soft and cheesy. It’s halfway between a sort of corn pudding and cornbread. If you’ve ever made semolina dumplings or roman gnocchi, it’s the same idea, as is yorkshire pudding and choux pastry. But this is made with cornmeal. So it happens to be gluten free! I made it twice in the weeks before the storm, with varying amounts of cornmeal. If you make it with the larger quantity, it’s more like a cornbread, and with the smaller quantity, it’s softer, more like a baked pudding. One time I flavored it with oregano, cayenne and sharp cheddar, and the next I used mozzarella, basil, rosemary and black olives. We ate it with spinach and chickpeas the first time, and with a saucy, tomatoe-y soup the next.

Here’s Comfort Ye from the Messiah, performed by Paul Elliot and the Acadamy of Ancient music, which is (I think) the version I grew up with. It’s so warm and calm.
Continue reading →

Pumpkin blondies with chocolate-covered ginger

Posted on by
Reply

Pumpkin blondies

I’ve mentioned in the past that my fun-o-meter might be broken. I’ve told you how things that I’m supposed to find fun make me anxious, and things that many people think of as chores are my favorite things to do…every….day. On my ideal day we’d go for a hike, write or draw a bit, listen to music, make a nice dinner, go for a walk around town, watch a good movie. Nothing fantastic, but we’d do it together, and we’d all be in good moods and get along with each other (this means you, boys!) Nothing makes me feel like getting out the old fun-o-meter adjuster like a holiday. I like holidays, but I don’t anticipate them as eagerly as I once did. You can never quite match that childish zeal, and sometimes it makes me feel a little sad to have lost it. Isaac is a living manifestation of Halloween excitement. He asks me every morning how many days are left. He plans his costume, wears the bits we’ve already made, changes his mind about what he wants to be. He draws zombies and skeletons and ghosts. He’s sad that we don’t have more Halloween decorations, and he spent an afternoon cutting them out of paper and hanging them in the windows. And he wants to carve pumpkins, lots of pumpkins. I’ve been thinking about pumpkins, this morning, and I think they might be my golden ticket back to Halloween glee. I can’t really get excited about trick-or-treating. I love making the boys’ costumes but I’m anxious that I won’t get them done on time, or they won’t look right. But pumpkins…lately I’ve looked on pumpkin carving as a messy and slimy task. But today I realized the error of my ways. I love pumpkins! I love everything about them. The way they taste, the way they smell, their color, the word, “pumpkin.” I love how mythological they seem – they can replace a horseman’s head or they can become an enchanted carriage. And I love the idea of souls and spirits…this time of year is so rich in the remembrance of souls, so joyful and awe-ful. A jack-o-lantern is a pumpkin spirit, smiling out at you with fiendish glee. It’s the ingis fatuus that leads you across dry fields of middle-aged disillusionment to the vibrant, glowing, slightly frightening, sweet, morally complicated, highly anticipated night that is Halloween. I can’t wait to carve one!

I thought these pumpkin blondies turned out very tasty! They’re a little softer than a normal blondie, cause of the pumpkin, but they make up for this (not unpleasant) attribute with taste. I spiced them with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, and I added chocolate-covered-ginger, which contributed a lovely chewy little bite. I added a handful of chocolate chips, too, because you can never have enough chocolate!

Here’s Mikey Dread’s spooky Pre-Dawn Dub.
Continue reading →

French cake a week – Quatre-quarts

Posted on by
1

Quatre-quarts

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through a french cookbook from 1962. I seem to have gotten into the habit of talking about a french film as well as a french cake each week! I like that idea, so this week will be no different. The last few weeks I’ve spoken about films by Agnes Varda, and I’ve been thinking since about films by certain female french filmmakers, and about the significance of writing about them in the context of a food blog. For some, like Agnes Varda, it became important to have a new language of film – a language created by women…a new way of looking at women and showing their lives, a new rhythm to the film, a new way of asking questions instead of providing answers. 35 Shots of Rum, by Claire Denis, is a beautiful, mesmerizing film, with engaging actors and a glowing underwater light. And it feels, to me, as though it fits in this tradition of telling a story in a new way, not following accepted rules and expectatations. If you watch the trailer, you won’t get an idea of the pace of the film, because the nature of a trailer is to show big, punchy dramatic scenes; in 35 Shots of Rum, all of the important decisions and conversations happen when we’re not watching. What we see is compelling shots of every day life – buying a rice cooker, cooking rice, eating dinner, going to work, riding home from work. The drama happens on the edges, and outside of our view, but we feel more intimately connected to the characters, and care about the drama more. It’s also a very quiet film, and as I love silent moments and expressive gestures, I’m a big fan of this scene, which has, quite rightly, gotten a lot of attention. It’s a nearly wordless scene, full of grace and power.

This cake! It’s really just a pound cake, in the traditional sense, in which you have equal parts eggs, butter, flour, sugar. You measure the eggs, and then measure everything else to be exactly the same. It’s got no leavening, no salt, no vanilla. It does have a bit of lemon zest. It was very delicious, with a lovely dense but light crumb. We ate it with a compote made of apples, blackberry jam and cassis and some whipped cream. And it was nice the next day with coffee. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, I’ve provided some measurements that should work!

Here’s some music by the Tindersticks, accompanying the opening scenes of 35 Shots of Rum.

Continue reading →

French cake a week – Gateau vatel

Posted on by
Reply

Gateau vatel

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak French, bakes her way through the cake section of a French cookbook from 1962. I’m woefully behind with my French-cake-a-week series! Last week I didn’t make a cake at all, because it took us all week to eat David’s birthday cake. This week, I did make a cake, but I’ve been so distracted by little Clio that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it. So here we go! In honor of little Clio and the Frenchness of the cake, we’ll begin today by discussing one of my favorite movies, Cleo From Five to Seven, by Agnes Varda. Varda was a member of the famous Nouveau Vague, and, in fact, Godard and Anna Karina appear in the movie in a sweet little film-within-a-film. The film tells the story of two hours in the life of Cleo, and is very nearly filmed in real time. It seems very simple…Cleo is a pop star, and the progress of the film follows her day-to-day activities. But she’s waiting for news about her health, and everything she sees and hears, every conversation she has, takes on significance and weight. In the end, she meets a stranger in the park, a soldier from the Algerian war. They connect on a simple human level – they’re kind to each other – and though you’ve only known Cleo for a short while, you can tell that this connection will change her.

All of the recipes in my French cookbook are cryptic and brief, but this was the most perplexing of all. It calls for hazelnuts, and tells you to peel them, but that’s it. The cake has very little flour, so I assumed the hazelnuts should be ground, which is what I did. Otherwise you’d have a sort of hazelnut omelete! As it is, the cake is very nice. It doesn’t have any butter in it, so it’s quite light and simple, but it has a pleasant sponge-cake texture, and the subtle, unmistakable flavor of hazelnuts.

Here’s Sans Toi, from Cleo from 5 to 7.

Continue reading →

Semolina cake with bananas and coconut milk (and banana-pear chocolate chip bread)

Posted on by
3

Semolina banana cake

The first film I ever made was called The Real World. It was about seven hot strangers living together in one house – O! the drama that ensued! I’m joking of course. My first film hit the streets several years before MTV’s seminal reality show. It was, in point of fact, a three-minute in-camera-edited powerhouse of a film. A young man walks down a long, brick path, holding a blue jay feather. He’s obviously delighted with it! He encounters a very tall couple dressed in evening clothes – dressed all in black, and wearing top hats and veils. He shows them the feather. They laugh and point. He feels foolish and drops the feather. And that’s pretty much it. Exeunt omnes! To this day, I find it heartbreaking when somebody is happy about something or proud of an achievement, and they’re teased or belittled. Nothing so sad as deflated enthusiasm! Last night we started watching the documentary Marley with the boys. (So far so good). Malcolm was very impressed and he wanted to wear my Bob Marley shirt to school today. He was so excited about it that he wore it even though it was picture day, and he wore a button-down shirt over it, which he planned to remove with a flourish once picture-taking had ended. I met them after school on this grey and drizzly day. Malcolm looked as dapper as ever in his tweed cap and plaid skater’s jacket. After about half a block he said, “I’m never wearing this shirt to school ever again! Everybody teased me! They said it was a girl’s shirt!!” Ouch. He didn’t seem that upset, but I felt like crying. We caught up to some friends of theirs. Isaac said, “Everybody teased Malcolm’s shirt.” Their friend said, “What! That’s Bob Marley, he’s the coolest guy ever. He wanted peace! Anybody who teases you for wearing a Bob Marley shirt is an idiot!!” Huzzah! I felt like crying all over again, and giving their little friend a big hug! I think we should invent a super hero that travels around the world being glad to see people, and noticing when they’re proud, and giving them little pats on the back for their achievements, and admiring their treasures.

So…we had some overripe bananas. I’d just made a sort of traditional banana bread last week, with pears and chocolate chips. It was delicious! I don’t have a picture, but I’ll give you the recipe anyway. I wanted to try something different this time. So I mixed semolina flour into the batter, which gave it a lovely texture – large crumbed and dense, but light and delicate at the same time. And I flavored it with cardamom and ginger. And I added a half cup of coconut milk, which gave it a lovely creaminess and flavor. There’s no actual coconut in the cake, so it’s quite a mysterious and subtle flavor.

Here’s Bob Marley with Rastaman Live Up! Don’t be afraid of the wolf pack!
Continue reading →

Cornmeal beet cake

Posted on by
1

Beet and cornmeal cake

I was up all night! Usually when I say that, I mean that I was up most of the night, but that I got a few hours of sleep towards dawn. Not last night!! No sleep at all! I’m tuckered. I’m likely to spew uncommonly inarticulate gibberish, if I try to put a sentence together. And I’m late for work, I have a long day ahead of me, sadly, because it’s a chilly, rainy, perfect-for-napping day. So I’ll just share a few things that I like.

One is this poem by Basho

Awake at night

Awake at night–
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

One is this photo of a Parisian kitchen by Atget. I love to look at this and try to figure out what’s in all the little bags and tins, and imagine the life of the people that cook here.

And finally, this recipe for a cheesy cormeal roasted beet cake. I felt like a warm, soft comforting meal, the other night, so I made this slightly odd dish. It’s savory, a little sweet, soft, slightly crispy, and delicious. The boys liked it too. We ate it with a tangy tomato sauce, but any kind of sauce you like would work here.

Here’s Lose this Skin, by the Clash, which was in my head all night. I love it, but it’s a doozy when you can’t sleep.

Continue reading →

Chocolate Covered Cherry Cake

Posted on by
1

Chocolate covered cherry cake

I’ve told the story in the past of how, when we were 23, David came into the ice cream parlor where I worked and ordered chocolate and cherry ice cream. Since that time, the poor fellow has been fed some combination of chocolate and cherries for every single birthday, valentine’s day, anniversary, back-to-school-night, groundhog day… Yesterday was no exception. But as I was thinking about it, maybe it’s sort of a metaphor for marriage. (Hold tight, folks, and fasten your seat belts, it’s an extended metaphor!!) You’ve got your basic ingredients. You know you love them, more than any other flavor ever, and part of the reason that you love them so much is because they work so well together. And the ways that they can be combined is endless and as surprising as you make it. Because each individual flavor is distinctive and variable – bitter, sweet, soft, melting, warm, cool – and when they come together to form a whole, it’s their contrasts as much as their similarities that make them so pleasing. I owe David so much, over all the years since we were 23; he’s made me more happy, more human and more sane. He’s taught me so much about art and music. He has such a beautiful and unique way of looking at the world – really looking – he sees shapes and colors and patterns and beautiful things that I would pass by obliviously. I feel so lucky to have him with me to puzzle through life. And year after year my way to thank him for all this is a combination of flavors that are good on their own, but work wonderfully together.

This cake, for his birthday yesterday, was supposed to call to mind a chocolate covered, rum-soaked cherry. It has layers of rum-cherry-chocolate chip cake interspersed with layers of cherry preserves and rummy chocolate mousse. And the whole thing is topped with bittersweet chocolate ganache. For some reason, although the cake batter was pinkish (because it had cherry jam in it) it took on a greenish tint upon being baked. Possibly because I have aluminum pans? It was a comical surprise that we took in stride, and carried on valiantly eating large pieces of cake.

Here’s a 23-year-old Johnny Cash singing I Walk the Line. I wonder what kind of ice cream he liked?

Continue reading →