Category Archives: chocolate

Pumpkin butter cake with pecans and chocolate chips

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pumpkin-butter-pecan-cakeIt’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

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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Hazelnut chocolate cherry tart

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Hazelnut chocolate cherry tart

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.
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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

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Flourless pecan chocolate cake

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

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gianduja-cakeThere’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

Malcolm dressed as a red eft


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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

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Pistachio cardamom chocolate chip cake

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.

    THE UNDERGROUND

    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

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Cornmeal almond cinnamon cookies

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.

    Meanwhile, however, operations were proceeding in the shaft, the rapper had sounded four times, the horse was being lowered. It was always a worrying moment, for it sometimes happened that the animal was so seized with terror that it was dead by the time it arrived. At the top, trussed in a net, it struggled desperately; then, as soon as it felt the earth disappearing beneath it, it remained petrified, and as it vanished out of sight, with its great eyes staring, it didn’t move a muscle. Today, the horse was too large to fit between the guides, and, once they had strung him below the cage, they had had to bend his head round and tie it back against his flanks.
    …
    Soon, Trompette was laid out on the iron slabs, a motionless mass, lost in the nightmare of the dark and bottomless pit, and the long, deafening fall. They were starting to untie him when Bataille, who had been unharnessed a little earlier, came up and stretched out his neck to sniff at the new companion who had fallen from earth to meet him. The workmen formed a wide circle around them, and laughed. What was it that smelled so good? But Bataille was deaf to their mockery. He was excited by the good smell of fresh air, the forgotten scent of sunshine in the meadows. And he suddenly let out a resounding whinny, whose happy music seemed muted with a sorrowful sigh. It was a welcoming shout, and a cry of pleasure at the arrival of a sudden whiff of the past, but aslo a sigh of pity for the latest prisoner who would never be sent back alive.

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

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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Mint leaf and chocolate chip cookies

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Mint leaf and chocolate chip cookies

Mint leaf and chocolate chip cookies

I think I’ll change the name of The Ordinary to Tales of the towpath. Today’s tale is my favorite kind of story, seemingly uneventful and yet somehow significant. Here’s how it all began. Last night David’s beautiful sister and her beautiful wife and their beautiful 5-week old daughter came by for dinner. After, we wanted to go for a walk, because the air was perfect. Of course I thought of the towpath because I always think of the towpath, and because the town was rapidly filling with tourists here for the fire works. At first it was bright enough…there were few trees and the way was lined with porch lights and street lights. After about a block the streetlights stopped and a tunnel of trees arched over the path, making it shadowy and dark. The boys raced into this, laughing and gleaming. Clio pulled my arm off trying to reach them, so I asked Malcolm to slow down, but he just laughed and said “You can’t catch us!” Well, obviously I can’t, but Clio can, so I let her go! (I told you this is an uneventful story!) She raced into the tunnel of dark trees, and then all three of them adventured through together: Clio of the sea-grey eyes, Isaac with the sun-bright hair, and fast-swimming Malcolm. They flew to the next island of light, further down the path, and danced in mad circles, trying to catch Clio. I walked into the tunnel of trees at my own slow pace. It wasn’t a frightening darkness, here in the tunnel, it was the good kind of darkness that transforms something well-known into something mysteriously beautiful. The branches were dark as night, but the sky reflected in the water had a lingering lilac lightness to it. Behind me walked my family with a brand new life, and ahead of me danced my life…life I had made and life that has made me. When I reached the light I caught Clio’s leash and we all went into town and got ice cream. It was fun. The end. (In literature, this is known as an Isaacian ending.)
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Malcolm had the genius idea to make mint chocolate chip cookies with fresh mint from our garden!! He wanted them to have extra sugar and extra vanilla in them, so they do. They were surprisingly delicious. I didn’t know how the mint would like being baked, but it seemed to like it just fine. Perfectly minty, if you know what I mean. I used the mint growing wildly in our garden, and I’m not sure what kind it is, but I think any fresh mint would do. I made these completely in the food processor, but you could chop the mint finely with a knife if you don’t have one.

Here’s Whistling in the Dark by They Might Be Giants, which is Malcolm’s favorite song at the moment.
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Rum cherry chocolate ice cream

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Rum cherry chocolate ice cream

Rum cherry chocolate ice cream

I may have mentioned (a few hundred times) that I’ve been reading the boys’ copy of D’aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. The other night we were talking about the myth of Prometheus and Epimethius, and I find that I can’t stop thinking about it!

The story is well-known, I think. After the warring gods have wiped out every living creature on earth, Prometheus and Epimethius are charged with repopulating the earth; they make humans and animals out of clay, and they’re granted a certain amount of gifts to bestow on them. Epimethius makes the animals, and Promethius makes the humans, but Epimethius uses up all the good gifts on the animals, and the humans are left weak and defenseless. So Prometheus, worried about his creation and sorry for mankind, steals fire hidden in a fennel stalk. He’s punished by Zeus and an eagle eats his immortal liver every single day, and Pandora is sent to marry Epimethius and we all know what that leads to!

Both brothers have been adopted as political metaphors over the ages. Prometheus represents the human quest for knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge; he symbolizes a thinking man’s rebellion; he suggests the dangers of overreaching ambition. Epimethius is seen as slower and more foolish. Promethius is a forward (pro) thinker, and Epimethius, who uses up all the gifts on the animals is seen as a backwards thinker…he doesn’t have the foresight necessary to save some gifts for the humans.

And this is where the myth becomes especially fascinating to me! I’ve always been troubled by mythologies or religions that place man in the center of everything, as a sort of representative of god’s image and god’s will on earth. If you look at the workings of the world, of the universe, of nature, of every vast and incomprehensible concept of time, place, and space, humans start to seem fairly inconsequential. We’re part of the process, certainly, but we’re not the center of it. In most versions of the myth, Promethius lovingly and skillfully crafted the humans to be objects of great beauty, but Epimethius rushed through his work on the animals, throwing them together without foresight.

But this doesn’t fit with Plato’s description of Epimethius’ process. “There were some to whom he gave strength without swiftness, while he equipped the weaker with swiftness; some he armed, and others he left unarmed; and devised for the latter some other means of preservation, making some large, and having their size as a protection, and others small, whose nature was to fly in the air or burrow in the ground; this was to be their way of escape. Thus did he compensate them with the view of preventing any race from becoming extinct. And when he had provided against their destruction by one another, he contrived also a means of protecting them against the seasons of heaven; clothing them with close hair and thick skins sufficient to defend them against the winter cold and able to resist the summer heat, so that they might have a natural bed of their own when they wanted to rest; also he furnished them with hoofs and hair and hard and callous skins under their feet. Then he gave them varieties of food-herb of the soil to some, to others fruits of trees, and to others roots, and to some again he gave other animals as food. And some he made to have few young ones, while those who were their prey were very prolific; and in this manner the race was preserved.”

That sounds very carefully planned to me! He balanced the gifts of all of the creatures on earth so that they could live together in a sort of harmony! That’s not slap-dash! That’s not sloppy and ill-considered. Meanwhile, the humans begin to hunger for everything the gods have. And when Zeus sends down lies, deceit, scolding, despair, accusation, envy, gossip, drudgery, scheming and old age to put them in their place and make them meek and biddable once again, he finds that his actions have the opposite effect, and people become completely horrible to each other and disrespectful to the gods.

Promethius, with his foresight, can literally predict the future, so why did he let this happen, why did he bring this about? Maybe he enjoyed the conflict, or saw that it was necessary to somehow make us human, because our scheming, deceit, and gossip, and constant warring have certainly distinguished us from the animals over the centuries. And maybe Epimethius wasn’t so slow or foolish, so backwards. Because “epi” also means upon, beside, about. Maybe he was thinking of the world aside from the struggle of gods and mortals. Maybe he was wisely thinking around that, beside that, of the rest of the world, which can continue with balance and equilibrium from day to day, regardless of the torments that gods and men bring upon themselves.

Rum cherry chocolate ice cream! If you think I’ve exhausted all of the possible combinations of chocolate and cherries this summer, I’m sorry to tell you that it is not so. I’ve got a few more up my sleeve. This was a good one, I thought. I made a vanilla-rum ice cream, with just a touch of rum because too much alcohol keeps the ice cream from freezing. And then I processed some fresh cherries and bittersweet chocolate chips so that they were just sort of broken down and jammy, and I mixed this in as the ice cream was freezing. A nice fresh, juicy flavor.

Here’s Soul Fire by Lee Perry.
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Chocolate oatmeal crisp cake

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Chocolate oatmeal crisp cake

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.
17th-century-merchantman cross section
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

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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French cake a week–Tarte aux cerises

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Tarte aux cerises

Tarte aux cerises

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak French, bakes her way through a French cookbook from 1962.

What?!?! French cake a week? French cake every few months is more like it. It’s been a while. I got side tracked. But we’re back! And in keeping with the almost-forgotten tradition, we’ll talk about a French film as well as a French cake. This week’s offering is Séraphine. The film tells the true story of Séraphine Louis, a maid who has a secret passion for painting. She’s “discovered” by Wilhelm Uhde, a noted art critic who happens to be renting space in the house where Séraphine is employed. That’s the story of the film, but the film is truly about Séraphine herself; about her slow, quiet movements, about her passions and fears and loneliness. The film itself is slow and quiet, following Séraphine as she collects the materials to make paint, which is a mysterious and beautiful ritual. Séraphine is happiest outdoors, and her almost religious love of nature translates into her paintings, which are wild and vibrant and beautiful. Séraphine doesn’t paint for wealth or fame, she paints for the glory of god, and because she has to paint. She has a lush, vivid world inside of her head, and it spills out onto the canvas with a sort of ecstasy. She paints with her hands, with the power of her whole body, and the fervor of her fevered soul.

Tarte aux cerises

Tarte aux cerises

And it’s another cherry tart! This one is quite simple, just fresh cherries (and bittersweet chocolate chips, which weren’t in the recipe but which I couldn’t resist adding) in a simple crust, with a sort of “cream” poured over. Sometimes simple is best–this was delicious. I had a little bad-tempered trouble trying to piece together the lattice, but I don’t think it needs to be perfect. It’s all getting eaten, anyway!!

The soundtrack to Séraphine was lovely…deep and moving, and here’s a song from it.

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