Tag Archives: spice cookies

French cake a week – Gateau de pommes “A la Danoise” (and simple spice cookies)

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french-apple-cakeIn which Claire, who doesn’t speak French, bakes her way through the cake section of a French cookbook from 1962.Yesterday we shared some poems and passages about windows. “But Claire,” I heard you saying, “You know what else is beautiful? Photographs of windows, and film scenes that involve windows!” “Of course!” I reply enthusiastically. “Two things I have long loved!!” It’s true, I do love photographs of windows. I find them so inviting and mysterious, so suggestive of the story of a person’s life, and yet a little melancholy and lonely at the same time. I’ve mentioned Eugene Atget before, in these virtual pages. Many of his photographs involve windows – store windows and tenement windows – windows with the ghost of a person in them, a whirl of light that represents movement, a row of grinning dummies. atget2012_cour41ruebroca_1912-webOr simply an emptiness or a shadow, a hollow that holds the secret movements of the people who live there. Jean Renoir, Atget’s compatriot, adds movement and depth to images of Parisian windows to create a poetry of light and shadow, a shifting frame within-a-frame that allows him to play with interior and exterior space. Renoir is famous for employing a large depth of field, so that objects in the background and middle ground are just as sharply focussed as those in the foreground, and frequently he’ll use a window to frame the action, so that two stories occur at once in the shot, distinct but related. In Grand Illusion, the soldiers’ exercises in the background create a source of mounting tension in contrast to the genial conversation inside of the window, and when the camera pulls back at the end of the scene, so that we’re outside the window looking in, it casts the men as characters in the story about to unfold. In Boudu Saved from Drowning, the parlor drama on the inside is contrasted (in a gorgeous tracking shot) with the world of the parisian streets outside the window, as observed through a telescope. And this passage from Le Crime de Monsieur Lange is beautifully busy with activity in and out of windows, dividing people even as it connects them, in a drama that illustrates the power of people working together. The murder scene, seen from across a street, entirely through windows and doorways, sets the frames of windows almost as the individual frames of the film itself, in a masterpiece of life and light and shadow – a sort of love letter to the pure joy of watching a story unfold. Beautiful.

Spice cookies

Spice cookies

French cakes seem to often involve crushed cookies and cream. You really can’t go wrong with crushed cookies and cream! This particular cake combines layers of a thick apple compote with layers of cookie crumbs and butter. I misread the recipe, or, I suppose, I mistranslated it. It said “biscottes,” but I read “biscuits.” A small amount of lazy research suggests that “biscottes” are actually melba toast. BUt it was too late! I’d already made some spice cookies to crumble for crumbs. And I think it was a happy mistake, because the spice cookies are perfect with the apples!! You could probably use digestives or graham crackers with equally pleasant results. These cookies are worth making just to eat, though, because they’re very tasty, and you only use 9 or 10 in the recipe. My finished cake wasn’t the prettiest, because I don’t have a means to pipe the cream in attractive patterns, but it tastes absolutely delicious, so who cares how it looks?apple-cake-french

Here’s Listz’s Totentanz from Rules of the Game.
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Lapsang souchong spice cookies

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Lapsang souchong spice cookies

We’ve slept in a tent in the backyard the last two nights. Consequently I feel exceedingly tired and dumb as a rock. Forgive my inability to string words together to form those coherent…what are they called? Oh yes, sentences. We had a nice time, though. Backyard camping! Most of the pleasures of camping, plus hot showers and coffee when you need it. The boys told “cloud stories” with burning sticks. We sat and talked into the darkness – the boys stayed up late, we went to bed early. We all lay in the tent and took turns reading Midnight is a Place by candlelight. This is one of my favorite books ever, and it’s perfect for camping because it’s by turn cold and wet and miserable and warm and cozy…so you really appreciate all the sheets and blankets the boys lugged down the stairs and arranged in a beautiful muddle. We could look up at the stars, and listen to the screech owls and the amazingly diverse and sweet chorus of bug chirpings. In the morning we ate scrambled eggs and toasted bread on our campfire. Malcolm played with a piece of bread as though it was play-doh, stuck it on a dirty stick and said, “This one’s for mommy!” David suggested that he give it to Isaac instead, and toasted two perfect pieces of bread. We went for a hike in the wilds of the other other side of the canal and pretended that we were miles from town. The boys did front flips in the tent all day long, and we all went down for a swim in the river to cool off. And our yard still has the lovely smell of our campfire. These cookies are a tribute to that smell, and to the fact that summer is quickly turning into autumn. Our town is full of fireplaces. When you walk home, some evenings in fall, your clothes smell of fireplace smoke. And I swear some people in town burn cinnamon sticks, because the smell is so sweet and spicy. My friend Diane very kindly gave me a tin of lapsang souchong tea. The scent is wonderful! I wanted to combine that with the spicy flavor of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice to create a smoky, spicy, sweet late summer cookie. They smelled remarkable, and I loved the taste – but you’d have to like lapsang souchong to enjoy these. I used two tablespoons of tea leaves, and I ground them in the coffee grinder. The boys loved them, but the smoky flavor was a little too strong for the adults, so I’d probably use 1 scant tablespoon next time, and that’s how I’m writing up the recipe!

Here’s 5 am in Amsterdam, by Michelle Shocked, from her Campfire Tapes, with the backup cricket-singers. I had some trouble sleeping in the tent, but it wasn’t so bad being surrounded by my family, staring up at the brightening sky.
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