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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Rum cherry chocolate ice cream

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Magpies

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.
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

French cake a week–Tarte aux cerises

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Magpies

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

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.

Continue reading →

Almond tart with plums, peaches, cherries and chocolate crisp topping

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Magpies

Plum, peach, and cherry tart

I’ve been trying to write a story. I like it so far, and I think about it a lot. I dreamed about it two nights in a row, which is a nice feeling, because when you wake up the characters seem very real and complex. At this point, you’d think I could just write it all down in a rush, and get it finished. But for some reason I haven’t done that. I know it will come out as a completely different story depending on the exact time that I sit down to finish it, and that thought is giving me pause. I don’t think it will hurt the story to marinate for a bit, anyway. As long as I can keep all the pieces in my head, and not let them all scatter like marbles from my addled mind.

ANYWAY…the subject of this week’s Sunday interactive playlist is storytelling songs. Songs that tell compelling, funny, or otherwise entertaining stories, with lively appealing characters. As ever, the list is interactive, so add them to the list yourself, or leave a comment, and I’ll try to add them through the week.

Plum, peach and cherry tart

In other news, it’s yet another way to combine cherries and chocolate. This time they meet in an almond crust, in the company of sliced peaches and plums, and under a topping of sliced almonds (and chocolate chips.) I took some time to arrange the plums and peaches in a pretty pattern, but of course you couldn’t see them at all under the crisp topping! Silly. You could try putting the topping under the fruit, rendering it no longer a “topping,” but it was nice this way, and at least the peaches and plums were evenly distributed.

Here’s your interactive playlist so far.

Continue reading →

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.
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Trifle with black currants and cherries and almond custard

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Magpies

Cherry and black currant trifle

Isaac just walked into the room with a tear-stained face and said, “Do you want me to run away?” Such has been our morning that I didn’t say, “Of course not, darling.” I didn’t even laugh. He wants to go fishing, desperately. And despite the dodgy ethics of a vegetarian fishing, we’ll take him, but first he has to write in his summer journal. It’s torture, I tell you! He drew a brilliant picture of himself imagining himself fishing. I said, now write about what kind of fish you want to catch. How can he be expected to know what kind of fish he might catch? He’s incensed at the absurdity of the situation. (Has he read Mcelligot’s pool? Of course he has.) I said, write about how angry you are that I won’t take you fishing…it’s okay to write about being angry. He burst into tears and said he didn’t want to write about me being mean. And now that he’s done trying to physically wrestle me from my chair and is yelling “I HAVE TO GO FISHING,” from a slightly greater distance, I will tell you that it strikes me as funny that I don’t want to go fishing at all, but I do want to write. What seems like a horrible punishment to him is my idea of a good time. He can maybe imagine a little polluted pool leading to the sea, and all of the strange and wonderful fish he might catch there, and I can imagine a tepid tide pool of my mind, cluttered and messy, holding every little thing that floats on shore. But maybe I’ll follow some bright silvery ideas into the waves, whole schools of well-organized shinily nimble words, and they’ll lead somewhere cool and quiet, with an underwater glow and an echoing resonance. And I’ll capture them all, somehow, without doing them any harm, and I’ll be able to take them and share them with others. “If I wait long enough; if I’m patient and cool, Who knows what I’ll catch in McElligot’s Pool!”

Isaac is finished raging and writing and talking about fishing like some kind of shot glass-sized Ernest Eemingway. And now the story is done and I have a promise to keep. We’ll head to the creek, and I’ll stand up to my ankles in cool water and watch the boys splash through pools of sunlight and shadow. They’ll catch minnows and water-strider spiders, and I’ll write a story in my head with all of the words swimming around there, and when we leave, we’ll let them all go, the fish and the words, and they’ll swim away into the shadowy depths.

Trifle! Why trifle? Because I made Malcolm two birthday cakes, and we couldn’t possibly eat all the cake. So for some reason it made sense to take some sweet thing we couldn’t possibly eat all of, and add lots more sweet things, and make it even bigger. Yes it did. I soaked the cake in rum, and then I added some black currants that I’d simmered in sugar till they were almost like a jam (you could just use black currant jam, if you don’t happen to have a black currant bush in your backyard.) I poured almond custard over all of this, then I added lots of fresh cherries and globs of whipped cream. Globs!! It was really tasty!

Here’s Tread Water by De La Soul
Continue reading →

Almond cake with chocolate and fresh cherries

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Magpies

Almond cake with chocolate and cherries

Isaac is miserable about having to write a summer journal entry, so in solidarity I’m writing one, too.

July 11, 2013.

This morning I cleaned the bathrooms for the first time in a few weeks. I thought about time passing. A baby screamed outside the window with that sound that could be crying or laughing, and from behind a closed door Isaac made the same sound. I thought about how summer used to last forever and now it flies by; I know it’s a clichéd thought, but that doesn’t make it less true–it might make it more true. Our summer days are the old-fashioned kind, nothing planned, but long and busy. They race by in a flurry of periods of activity mixed with spaces of inactivity, but they’re not particularly eventful, and maybe that’s why it’s hard for Isaac to think of anything to write about. It honestly doesn’t feel as though we have time in our days for notable events, that’s how full they feel. I thought about how Camus said “Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter,” and about how he died in a car crash with a train ticket in his pocket, for a train ride he could have been on. I know about these things from wikipedia and some dumb website that collects people’s quotes, and I wonder if Camus would have had any respect for these because obviously it means people are trying to understand everything, on some level, or if he would have been depressed by them because he said, “what we ask is that articles have substance and depth, and that false or doubtful news not be presented as truth.” I remembered another time that I’d cleaned the bathroom, and I’d made a humorous quip about how scrubbing a toilet if two little boys live in the house is sisyphean and leads to existential despair, and I’d wondered if Camus had ever had to do it. And I think that this quip was proof that I’d gotten Camus completely wrong my whole life, and I wonder why that was. Because I’d read him in high school French class, and I don’t speak French at all? Because I speak precious little English, either? Because I’d read him in high school and I heard what my teenage self needed to hear? Maybe I have it all wrong now, because I’m forty-four and I’m hearing what my middle-aged self needs to hear. I thought about this quote “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” which is not despairing at all, but completely hopeful, and I claim it for The Ordinary, and I apply it to all things–to getting out of bed in the morning and deciding to wake up and live, to embracing the long littleness, to scrubbing toilets and listening to the boys bicker and scream and laugh, over and over and over again, to all the beautiful tediousness of our long, busy, uneventful days. Isaac just finished his journal entry, and he said that tomorrow he’s going to write, “Yesterday in my summer journal I wrote about writing in my summer journal, and next day I’ll write about how I was writing in that summer journal about writing in my summer journal, and in that summer journal I was writing about a river!”

Almond cake with chocolate and cherries

We have so many vegetables now, from the farm, and I bought so much fruit from the store that I have a ridiculous sense of hopeful anxiety. I know what I want to do with all of it! But we only eat so many meals a week, and I don’t want any of it to spoil! I got myself a cherry & olive pitter for my birthday (thanks, Mom and Dad!) because it seemed like such a fun, frivolous item and therefore perfect for a birthday. So now, of course, I had to use it! I bought a big bag of cherries, and Malcolm and I pitted a bowlful. I made a batter of ground almonds, with almond and vanilla extract. I added chocolate chips, and I whizzed half in the food processor to break them down so they melted right into the batter. I made this in my big old french cake pan, but you could make it in any largish cake pan. Everybody liked it!

Here’s Everyday by Yo La Tengo.

Continue reading →

Out of the Ordinary

extraordinary food from an ordinary kitchen

Category Archives: dessert

Gianduja cake

Rum cherry chocolate ice cream

Chocolate oatmeal crisp cake

Chocolate-stuffed-cherry cake

Trifle with black currants and cherries and almond custard

Almond cake with chocolate and fresh cherries

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: