Category Archives: recipe

Chocolate-covered candied ginger and coconut cake

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Chococlate-covered ginger and coconut cake.

Chococlate-covered ginger and coconut cake.

We watched a movie the other night because the Guardian UK told me to and because it was written by (and starred) someone I admire. Well! The Guardian UK and the writer of this film are no longer my BFFs, because it was a bad film. It was a disappointing film. And it wasn’t even an originally bad film. It was just like every other film in its genre in every way; plot, platitudes, humor, prom scene. Ugh. Here’s the message of the film, delivered with a big self-righteous group hug: It’s not okay to be mean to people who are uglier and less fashionable than you are. Not okay! If you’re pretty, you have to be nice to ugly poorly-dressed people, and they’ll be very grateful for the attention. And that’s it. This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like growling–it’s not just stupid, it’s also dangerous because it cements stereotypes of human aesthetics that are just absurd. Nobody is prettier than anybody else. Even on a completely superficial level, ideas about what makes a person beautiful have changed so much throughout history, and they continue to change so much from country to country and culture to culture, that it becomes ridiculous to need to decide that one person is more beautiful than another. And it’s even more farcical to judge a person on their sense of fickle fashion, as any of the sharp, popular kids from 80s movies will tell you. Oh, how foolish they look now! People become more beautiful as you get to know them, the more so the more you like them. It’s not the symmetricality of a person’s features or the color of their eyes that makes them appealing, even on a purely aesthetic level, but the light cast in those eyes by ideas, by emotion and wit and understanding. It’s the way that each person is different from everybody else, the way that they’re strange to you. It’s the fact that they change with every changing mood and every passing year. The fact that they’re inexplicable and new with every shifting expression. If you were to make a movie about one of the token “ugly” people in any of these popular-kid films, and focus on them to the extent that we understand their story–that we hear their jokes and see their dreams and their talents, they would become the beautiful ones. Everybody finds different characteristics appealing, and it’s so damaging and limiting to suggest that the world is some sort of non-stop beauty contest with a very narrow-minded set of judges. And I’m speaking here merely about visual attraction. Not about “inner beauty” (yes, yes, it’s a sappy cliche, but no more so than the idea that barbie dolls constitute ideal beauty.) And not about the fact that vision is only one of the senses, and not the most important sense, in determining physical attraction–not more important than touch, taste, smell, sound. Not more important than all of those. It makes me sad to think that the “pretty” people in this bad movie and, I’m afraid, in life, are popular because we’re told that they should be by dumb movies and by magazines, and we’re foolish enough to buy it. Yeah. Join me next week for my rant on the idiocy of the whole concept of popularity!

I made this cake for a client who was holding a wine tasting featuring Australian shiraz. The client (henceforth known by her actual name of “my mom”) wasn’t looking for specifically australian foods, but I thought it might be fun to find something sort of Australian anyway. So I based this very loosely on cakes made by Dan Lepard, and written about in the pages of my former BFF, The Guardian UK. I think the strong flavors of ginger and bittersweet chocolate and marmalade go nicely with the very rich and flavorful wine that is Australian shiraz, any way, whether they be typically australian or not. This turned out to be a big handsome cake, and not at all difficult to make either.

Here’s Strange, by Screamin Jay Hawkins, about the unusual woman that he finds beautiful.

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Spinach and herb hummus

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Spinach and herb hummus

Spinach and herb hummus

The memorial day parade goes right by our house. We live in a small town, so it’s a small parade, but people come early and set up lawn chairs. They line the streets, waiting, with their early morning Italian ices. The band marches by, loud and raggedy and perfect, followed by the city council members, then a small group of girl scouts and boy scouts, and then the ladies auxiliary drives by. The town’s veterans walk by, followed by a car-full of veterans of foreign wars. And then every single fire truck for miles around rattles by our house. Everybody throws candy, and my boys sit on the stoop waiting, and scramble around to pick up the pieces as they fall. This is what memorial day is about for my boys. I think they miss the bigger meaning of the day and think it’s sort of a small-scale halloween–a twin celebration that strangely combines remembering the dead with eating candy, just like halloween does. And it’s a good day for me to try to turn off that part of me that’s resistant to any kind of flag-waving, pom pom shaking show of school spirit or patriotism, that’s always been distrustful of what could easily become unthinking support for any cause, which has gotten us into too many wars in the first place. A good day for me to try to silence my inner cynic, and recognize the value of remembering, as a community, and sharing our gratitude. After all there’s something very moving about our scruffy little parade, something solemn and joyful and beautiful.

I worked a long weekend, too, because aside from everything else, Memorial day is a holiday and people go out to eat. Lots of people. So I was too tired to cook when I came home, and we made one of my favorite quick and tasty dinners. Oven roasted french fries and hummus! I blended some baby spinach into the hummus for flavor and greenness. And I added some herbs. I used dried, but obviously fresh would be far better.

Here’s Dancing at Whitsun by Jean Redpath.

    The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow free
    No young men to tend them nor pastures to seed
    They are gone like the forests of oak trees before
    Have gone, to be wasted in battle.

    Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
    Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
    There’s a fine roll of honour where the Maypole once stood,
    And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

    There’s a straight row of houses in these latter days
    All covering the downs where the sheep used to graze.
    There’s a wreath of red poppies a gift from the Queen
    But the ladies remember at Whitsun,

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Spicy champagne mango ice cream

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Spicy champagne mango ice cream

Spicy champagne mango ice cream

Hey! It’s a funny word, isn’t it? On its own it doesn’t mean anything–it’s not much of a word, really. Given the right inflection, it can speak volumes. Are you getting someone’s attention? Challenging them to a fight? Trying to pick them up? At a loss for the right word to express the intensity of your emotions? Hey, baby, you’re not the only one. I’m a big fan of non-verbal and barely verbal communication. Sighs, gestures, expressions, ums, ahs, shrugs. I find it fascinating that they can be universal, but they have their own sort of dialect, as well, within each language and part of the world. I think of “Hey!” as being very American: brash, overeager, a bit rude, very immediate–it almost comes with an exclamation point built in! But it can be gentle as well, and poignant. As Big Bill Broonzy says

    With my arms all around you, baby,
    you know, that’s all I can say is hey

So today’s interactive playlist is HEY songs. My readers recommender friends will recognize that I’m plagiarizing my own ‘Spill post from some years ago, but, hey, it’s a good topic, and I wanted it in my collection of playlists here on The Ordinary. I’ve added some ‘Spillers suggestions from that time. My non reader recommender friends will have no idea what I’m talking about. ‘Spill? What’s this ‘Spill?

I love champagne mangoes, so smooth and sweet and almost piney. I bought one a while back, and I kept waiting for just the right moment to eat it, and as so often happens, I waited so long that the moment passed, and it was too ripe. So I made it into ice cream. I made a spicy ice cream, with cayenne and ginger and cardamom, because I love the contrast of spicy and creamy-cool. I cooked the mango with the milk, which made it taste almost like bananas somehow. I think you could probably just puree it and add it raw. I’ll try it sometime, and let you know how it goes.

Here’s your link to our interactive HEY! playlist. Add what you like, or leave a comment and I’ll try to add it when I have time.

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Thinly sliced potatoes baked with kale, artichoke hearts and pesto ricotta

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Potatoes layered with kale, artichoke hearts and pesto ricotta.

Potatoes layered with kale, artichoke hearts and pesto ricotta.

It’s that time again, everyone! It’s Saturday storytelling time. As you will no doubt recall, each Saturday we post a found photograph, a vernacular picture, and we write a story about it, and invite everyone else to write one, too. And then, in theory, we all read each others’ stories and offer wise editorial advice. Today’s picture is quite cryptic. There’s no human in this one, no subject, so you can imagine the characters however you’d like. And here it is… Send me your story and I’ll print it here, or send me a link to share, if you have somewhere of your own to post it.
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So, kale and artichoke hearts and tarragon pesto layered with sharp cheddar and thinly slice potatoes. A meal in a dish. I suppose it’s a little like lasagna with potatoes instead of pasta. It was very comforting and warm, but tarragon, artichoke hearts and sharp cheddar added some brightness. If you don’t have tarragon pesto, you can use regular old basil pesto, or you can just add some herbs as you like them to the ricotta.

Here’s Hey Hey by Big BIll Broonzy, my new favorite.

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Empanadas with greens, chickpeas and cranberries

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Kale, cranberry and chickpea empanadas

Kale, cranberry and chickpea empanadas

I’ve been thinking about the way our world changes, and specifically about the way people bring about that change. Our history as humans is a pattern of progress and change, progress and change. We’ll head blindly in one direction, unable to see quite where we’re going because it’s so close, and then somebody or somebodies will push us in another direction. With a grand gesture, with a slow protest, with a war, with a sit-in, with a newspaper article, with a violent act, with a strike, with a clear bold voice, or in a confused tangle of contradictory words.

I’ve been thinking about certain small acts of rebellion that I love, certain quiet ways that people have changed the rules. They change the world slowly, almost imperceptibly, but the change grows in widening waves. The personal becomes political and art becomes powerful.

I love to read about blues musicians from the last century, growing up in a world of poverty and discrimination and finding a way to make music no matter what the odds. Nobody hired them a music teacher so they’d understand the rules of musical theory. Big Bill Broonzy made a fiddle from a cigar box, Elizabeth Cotten taught herself to play guitar upside-down, they figured it out themselves, with the help of some friends. They sang about their lives, the way they actually were, the trains running by their door, the work they had to do, and they sang about the way they wished their lives could be. The rules they answered to in life were harsh and unjust, but in music they made their own rules, they made music the way they wanted it to sound–that was theirs.

And with books like Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird, we find a whole new world of writing, with the language people actually use, according to the rules of conversation and not those of grammar. These books are intimate and personal and real, and they describe the lives of normal people as they actually are. This small feat frightened people enough that they were all banned, at one time or another.

And, of course, I love filmmakers who make films the way they think they should be. Hollywood films have quite a rigid set of rules that dictate the way they’re made. These rules are nearly invisible to the viewer, because they’re designed to make a film seem more realistic, and because we’ve grown up with them, we’ve learned them, without even realizing. Well, I love a director like Yasujiro Ozu, who defies these rules. He sets the camera where he thinks it should be, he moves it when it needs to be moved (not very often!) he crosses sight lines, he leaves out plot points. Not to be rebellious, but because he knows how he wants his films to look. His films are mostly about middle-class families going about their lives. They seem placid and uneventful, at least compared to most movies. But in showing us the way we live, in showing us hurtful pettiness and gossip, thoughtlessness and ingratitude, he makes us think about the way we could live, the way we could treat the people around us. It’s subtle and slow, but it seeps into you and makes you notice everything differently and more clearly.

And I believe this small slow change is the most important, and that it extends to all things…not just to art and politics, but to life, which is the very heart of art and politics. We can change the world with the food that we eat, the cars that we drive, the books that we read. We change the world by struggling to understand it, by recognizing the rules that govern us as they are, and by deciding the way we want them to be. We change the world with every kindness to another person, and it’s a shame that this sounds sappy, because it’s true.

Kale, chickpea and cranberry empanadas

Kale, chickpea and cranberry empanadas

Well, I totally wasn’t going to go on and on about this today! It’s been on my mind, man. I think it’s because David and I just bought some Big Bill Broonzy CDs and they’re phenomenal, and because I’m reading this biography of Jean Vigo. Yeah. So! These are summery sorts of empanadas, I think. I made them for our anniversary picnic dinner. Empanadas make the best picnic food, because you can eat them with your hands and walk around with them, and they combine so many flavors and food groups in one neat package. I also boiled some little potatoes and tossed them with herbs and butter, and they are also a fun, if messy, picnic food. Our picnic was spoiled by dozens and dozens of ticks…a sickening tickening…but we came home and sat in our backyard and finished our empanadas, or lovely smoky, savory sweet empanadas.

Here’s Big Bill Broonzy with Feelin Low Down. Phew, what a song!

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Roasted tofu with smoky chipotle tamarind sauce

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Roasted saucy tofu

Roasted saucy tofu

I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place if everyone was exactly like me. Well, not like me, necessarily, just exactly like each other, but since I’m writing this from the confines of my own brain, that’s how I’ll imagine it. Think of the peace! The concord! We’d all have the same views on religion and politics. Would we even need politics anymore? We’d have no disputes to settle, no conflicts to solve. We’d have a natural empathy that would require no effort at all. We’d understand each other’s needs because they’d be our needs! So much nastiness in life is caused by envy and insecurity, but those problems would be eliminated. Nobody would be prettier than anyone else, or smarter, or more successful! Everybody would be equally good at the same things. Of course, everybody would be equally bad at the same things, too. So if everybody happened to be exactly like me, we’d have no buildings to live in, in fact our shelters would be ramshackle at best. We wouldn’t be able to help much if people got sick, because we’d never have been able to invent medicines. We wouldn’t have cars and roads, but we’d be okay with that because we’d all be pretty happy just walking around town. Of course we wouldn’t be a town, just a disorganized mess of poorly constructed lean-tos. And when there was a thunderstorm we would all go into a cold panic, huddled in our hovels, with no rational person to comfort us. We would all appreciate each other’s films (although in certain moods we’d be hyper-critical of them), and they wouldn’t cost much, because all of us would decide that we have no need for money. But we wouldn’t actually be able to make them, because we wouldn’t have ever invented the technology necessary. We would like all the food we made, but we’d have limited supplies to cook with, because we’d have no idea how to harvest wheat, or how to grow half the vegetables that we would love to eat if only we’d ever encountered them. And would we even want to cook anymore? Because we wouldn’t have the joy of sharing something with somebody, waiting to see if they like it, and then rejoicing when they do. And, you know, it wouldn’t be too boring at first, because all of us talk to ourselves in our heads half the time anyway. Eventually, yes, it might get a little stale to never ever have a new idea based on some experience you’d never had yourself, to never hear a word you’d never heard before. To never have a conversation with somebody that’s delightful because it’s completely unexpected and surprising. Never mind the fact that after a few nights of insomnia I’m so sick of my own damn thoughts that I could cry. Never you mind that! And we’d all get along, and it would be pleasant enough, we’d all sort of be friends. But there wouldn’t be anybody to be a special friend, to share a moment of unexpected intimacy, to charm you with their odd turns of phrase and fascinate you with their unique experiences or beliefs. There wouldn’t be anybody to vex you with their contrariness. There wouldn’t be anyone to surprise you with an unexpected gesture. There wouldn’t be anybody to love because they’re strange to you and you’ve never met anybody like them.
roasted tofu

roasted tofu

This is only the second tofu recipe ever on my vegetarian food blog! Weird, right? The truth is I only like tofu when it’s crispy, so I fry it in olive oil on the stove, but then my kitchen smells funny for days. Well, I thought I’d try roasting it. And I roasted it in a sauce made of smoked paprika, tamarind, chipotle, onions, shallots, sage…a version of barbeque sauce, I guess. I think it turned out very good. Not crispy, exactly, but with a nice texture, firm and yummy. The boys liked it, too, which was my goal in making it in the first place. The kids need protein!

Here’s Jumping Someone Else’s Train by The Cure. Again and again and again and again…

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Pistachio and tarragon tart with castelvetrano olives and asparagus

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Asparagus, pistachio, castelvetrano tart

Asparagus, pistachio, castelvetrano tart

If The Ordinary was a TV program, (and it’s only a matter of time, really, when you think about it) this would be the moment when we’d saunter, smiling and chatting, over to a book so large it’s printed in dozens of volumes. Everyone in the audience would jump from their seats, screaming, “The OED! Yay! Tell us how some random word was used in the 13th century! And the 15th century and the 18th, and, if possible, give us an example from only a few years ago!! Yay!!” Yes, it’s OED time! Your word for today is “sigh.” Why? Because for some reason I found myself sighing a lot this weekend. And sometimes I would just say, “sigh,” instead of sighing. And then I wrote a story about a ghost who always has a sigh in his voice, and who can shake the whole room with his sigh. Strange, very strange. So on Monday I did the obvious thing and looked the word up in the OED. Turns out its meaning hasn’t changed dramatically over the years. It’s always meant something close to “A sudden, prolonged, deep and more or less audible respiration, following on a deep-drawn breath, and esp. indicating or expressing dejection, weariness, longing, pain, or relief.” It was oft used, ere this, by the supersensitive overwrought poets and lady novelists. And yet, I find it a very fascinating word! Because it’s not a word at all. It’s a space between words. Like the grunts I found so remarkable in Ozu’s Tokyo story, which rise or fall and contain a million different easily readable meanings in one small sound, it’s almost more expressive than any actual word. And a sigh is so full of variations and possibilities! A sigh can indicate exasperation, sadness, fatigue, resignation, comfort, satisfaction. One small sound, barely a sound! Just a breath, quieter than a whisper. And everybody sighs, often without meaning to or even being aware of it. It’s a universal language. My favorite sigher at the moment is Clio. She’ll make herself perfectly comfortable, and then she’ll settle her head on her paws and heave a great sigh, as though she’s just taken care of some very important business and now she can rest for a moment. Even the leaves and the grass and the wind sigh, especially in poems. “Whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets.” A sigh can express longing, you can sigh for something or someone. You can sigh something away…even your life, “Sapores..sighed out his affrighted ghost, at the age..of seventy one,” or your soul, “Hundreds of martyrs sighed away their souls amid the flames.” Maybe your sadnesse is sigh-swolne, your age is sigh-blown, or your tone is sigh-deepened. I love the idea of communicating without words, with something only slightly more audible than a gesture or an expression, with something as vital and intimate as our breath. I love the fact that “Some sighes out their woordes. Some synges their sentences.”

Asparagus pistachio castelvetrano tart

Asparagus pistachio castelvetrano tart

I think of this as my splurge tart. I spent more money than I should on castelvetrano olives and pistachio kernels, (yes, I’m a lazy spendthrift) and asparagus, which doesn’t seem to be getting any cheaper no matter how far into spring we get. So I decided to put them all together in one tart. I made a sort of frangipane of pistachio kernels, but I added asparagus and spinach, too. I wanted it to taste very green. And asparagus and castelvetrano olives are lovely together, juicy and fresh.

Here’s Dolcissimo Sospiro (I think it means “sweet sighs”) sung by the remarkable Montserrat Figueras
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Dense dark chocolate and raspberry cake

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Chocolate raspberry cake

Chocolate raspberry cake

David and I took a trip today to the towpath we used to walk along when we first met, the place where we first intentionally spent time together, where we first kissed, twenty years ago today. Twenty years! It seemed as though the same old fellow in the same straw hat was riding on the same tractor and blocking the narrow winding road. It seemed as if the same birds were nesting in the same places. Of course it couldn’t have been the same birds, but it was probably their descendants, singing lustily in the vivid, shifting new leaves, so hard to see clearly, like memories or heralds along the path. Twenty years! I must admit I felt a little overwhelmed, to think about how much our lives have changed. To think about the people we were then, and how shy and uncertain I felt. I was afraid of long silences, but almost more afraid of speech–afraid to disappoint or be disappointed. It’s strange to think about how comfortable silence is now, and how full of promise, because I love talking with David and I have never been disappointed when he spoke. And to think of all the nonsensical ideas I’ve prattled about in twenty years, and how he’s come not just to tolerate this, but to anticipate it, and then to discuss it so intelligently that he makes my nonsense make sense. Almost as if he’d given it some thought, as if his thoughts had been wandering on the same strange roads. It boggles my mind that a person can spend twenty years so closely bonded to another person: sharing the same food, watching the same movies, listening to the same music, raising the same children, dreaming in the same bed, and it’s never boring, it’s constantly surprisingly wonderfully euphoric, in a glowing, peaceful sort of way that’s actually impossible to describe. And then the boys! So like us–so strange in all the ways we’re strange (poor lads) and so beautifully strange like just themselves and nobody else on earth. Twenty years ago we had long lazy days stretching before us, we had nowhere to be and not much to do. In my fading memory, my worries seemed so slight and easily unravelled. We filled the days up with each other, and now we have responsibilities and worries and decisions, which I can’t imagine getting any easier as we grow older. But we have one another to face it all with, we’ll take it on together. Well, I feel more grateful than words can say, so I’ll stop talking now.

This is sort of like a flourless cake, because it’s rich and dense, but it does have a tiny bit of flour in it. It also has almonds, lots of chocolate, raspberry jam and framboise. You could replace the framboise with chambourd, or any other fruity liqueur that you like. And you can use any kind of jam you like–you can experiment with different combinations!! Of course you should eat this with raspberries, but we gobbled all of ours down before I could take a picture, so the strawberries agreed to stand in for them.

Here’s Listen to Me, by Buddy Holly.

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Collards with artichoke hearts, olives and capers

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Collards with artichoke hearts, olives and capers

Collards with artichoke hearts, olives and capers

Isaac carried his new superhero to school today. He’s made of bright pink pipe cleaners (the superhero, not Isaac.) His name is eel man. Isaac started telling me a story about how eel man made a giant ball of electricity and threw it in the ocean and then… “Is eel man a good guy or a bad guy?” I asked. Turns out he’s both. “Ah,” I said, “So he’s morally complicated.” Yeah. He’s good when he thinks it would be fun to be good. Well, we got back to the story, but it had changed a little. I could hear the little wheels whirring in Isaac’s head. “Wait, I’m talking to mom, and she’s actually listening to me.” Suddenly eel man’s exploits seemed a little too dangerous for all of the innocent bystanders who might be bobbing in the waves of eel man’s ocean. In the new ending, eel man cuts the nets of fishermen to free the fish. Which proves how well Isaac knows me, but is also morally complicated, if you think about it too much, because now what will happen to the poor fisherman and his imaginary starving family? Everything is morally complicated if you think about it too much! And I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s good to think about it too much, and try to find some sort of balance that helps you navigate waters made choppy by giant balls of electricity. I’ve been reading my new biography of Jean Vigo. His father took the nomme de guerre Miguel Almereyda, and anagram for “there’s the shit.” He had a hard life, he had plenty of reasons to be angry at the world. His family abandoned him, and as a teenager he found himself sick, alone and starving. He was imprisoned several times as a boy…once for “borrowing” money to pay rent, and once for attempting to blow up a pissoir, although he was so worried about hurting innocent people that he bungled the whole effort. He was sent to prison none-the-less, where he was kept in solitary confinement and semi-darkness and abused by sadistic warders. He found comfort and friendship amongst the anarchists, communists, socialists and syndicalists, and he found an outlet for his passionate anger at society. It’s so strange to read about this world, so morally complicated as to be contradictory–so appealing and flawed, so concerned with organizing and yet so chaotic. We meet violently angry pacifists, militant anti-militarists. They started a newspaper and words were their weapons. Their ideals changed subtly all the time as the world about them changed, and they spoke with complete certainty and passion about each changing belief. Their words were so effective that they were received with fear and distrust as if they had been actual weapons. Almereyda found himself in and out of prison, sentenced again and again for articles that questioned the system, that encouraged strikes by workers and soldiers. Everything fell apart with WWI. Everything changed in ways that were beyond Almereyda’s control. But it seems that he and his friends still struggled to make sense of it, they continued to write about it, they tried to ensure that the changes that came with the war were good for the people, for the workers, for the poor. And many years later, his son Jean would make films that celebrated revolution and anarchy, but glowed with love for all people and reverence for all life, and these would be feared and banned, too. But they would live on as a testament to the power of word and image, to the revolutionary power of art. It’s a funny old world.

Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love collards! I’ve never treated them quite like this, but I thought it was delicious. Collards have a textural assertiveness that went perfectly with the bright sharp flavors of capers and olives. This was very simple to put together. If you added some beans to the dish (white would be nice!) and served it with rice or pasta, you’d have a quick meal.

Here’s Rebel Waltz from The Clash
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Dense apple cake with almond toffee and chocolate chips

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Dense apple chocolate chip cake

Dense apple chocolate chip cake

Welcome to The Ordinary on this rainy Sunday morning! David bought a few new-old CDs recently, and I’ve been knocked over the head by how wonderful some of the songs are. Two blues compilations, and lots and lots of Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly!! Who knew? I mean, I sort of knew, but I had no idea. So sweet, and rocking, and generally amazing. So this week’s Sunday interactive playlist is songs that are new-to-you that you’ve been enjoying recently. I don’t hear much brandy new music these days, because I don’t listen to the radio all that much or watch TV ever. But I do love to discover old music that I hadn’t known existed. It’s like when you realize that there are bright yellow, red, and blue birds singing noisily in the trees above your head, and they’ve been there all along but you never noticed. So new new songs, or old new songs…anything you’ve recently discovered that is making you happy lately.

This cake was something of a surprise!! I added raw apples to the processor, and whizzed them up. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, and it turned out really lovely. Dense and delicious, almost custard-y, but there’s only one egg in here. I added almond essence, because I’m adding that to everything these days, and I added chocolate chips, because I always add them to everything! Always! I also added some salted almond praline, crumbled up, which gave a nice crunchy salty texture to the soft cake. Anyway–a very simple, satisfying cake.

Here’s the link to the playlist. As ever, it’s interactive, so feel free to add what you like, or leave a song in the comments and I’ll add it for you.

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