1. Oh boy!

    May 6, 2013 by ms. xandra

    Tomorrow I am defending my dissertation!  This means that tonight I am a) panicking, b) into the sauvingon blanc, c) trying to commit to memory the names, party affiliations, and term dates of all the British prime ministers since 1945, because I am weirdly convinced that someone will ask me to recite them.  (N.B.: There is absolutely no reason why anyone should expect me to have this knowledge in my brain, let alone ask me to recite it, but why start listening to reason now?)

    Tomorrow night there will be either celebratory or sorrow-drowning drinking starting at 7:30 at the Bigfoot West; if you’re reading and in LA, you’re invited!

    Category Academe | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Pie pie pie pie pie

    March 18, 2013 by ms. xandra

    Oh, I have been deep in the dissertation cave for the past few months.  It is a dark cave, illuminated only by the light of my computer. It is a cave filled with monsters like the evil, seven-headed Self-doubtosaur and the haunting and spooky ghosts of life choices past. There were days when I thought I was turning into Howard Hughes. But I am clawing my way out!   I am almost there!  I ordered my fancy doctor hat the other day! I think I might have a full draft of the dissertation by the end of the week!  AND LAST WEEK IT WAS PI(E) DAY, SO I BAKED A PIE.

    In characteristic fashion, I picked the weirdest pie recipe that I could find:  Crunchy Meringue Pie, from Libby Hillman’s Lessons in Gourmet Cooking (c. 1963). The Hillman is fast becoming a favorite in my collection of strange and wonderful cookbooks because it goes back and forth between being super practical and useful, and completely and utterly whakadoodle.

    And also this little magic lady chef is everywhere, so how could you go wrong?

     

    Libby dessert

     

    And here she is again, teaching us about fortified wine:

    Libby wine

     

    BUT ANYHOW, you’re all here for the pie, I assume.   In a pleasing example of the whakadoodle, it turns out that what makes Crunchy Meringue Pie crunchy are some walnuts and fourteen Ritz crackers.  You shall not use thirteen, neither shall you use fifteen, but fourteen will be the number of Ritz crackers that you shall use.  And here is how you make Libby Hillman’s Crunchy Meringue Pie.

    3 egg whites (room temperature)

    1 cup sugar

    14 Ritz crackers, crushed

    1/2 teaspoon baking powder

    2/3 cup walnuts, chopped

    Grease a 9″ pie plate. Preheat oven to 350.  Beat egg whites till frothy, add sugar gradually until stiff (3 to 5 minutes). Combine crushed crackers and baking powder and add to the meringue with the walnuts. Spread mixture all over the greased pan.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

    This makes your bottom crust; Libby then suggests four possible toppings:

    1. Cover with whipped cream and chocolate shavings;

    2. Hull and halve strawberries, soak them in kirsch for an hour, mix them with whipping cream and spread on top;

    3. Put round scoops of ice cream around the edge, fruit in the middle, glaze on the fruit, and whipped cream on everything;

    4. Put round scoops of ice cream around the edge, fill the center with whipped cream, and top with chocolate sauce.

    I went with option 2.  It was delicious!  And, yes, crunchy.

    Pie 1

     

    Pie 2

     

    The best part of this pie story is that just as I was finishing up with making the pie, Aaron arrived home from his rehearsal, and I announced “I HAVE THE MOST AMAZING NEWS!” and he though that I had landed an actual academic job in my field, which is the rarest thing in the world.  Really, my most amazing news was that I had baked a pie.

    Category Food | Tags: , , | No Comments

  3. Once upon a time in New Dehli

    December 24, 2012 by ms. xandra

    A Christmas miracle:  pictures from our India trip, only a month and a half after the fact!  We were in Delhi for two weeks in October; a trip that combined a conference for Aaron with adventuring for both of us.  The trip was amazing.  The food was cheap and delicious; the city was fascinating; and our only real misadventure was the time Aaron got nailed by the poop squirter of Connaught Place (but we can laugh about this now).  It was also an overwhelming trip: so many people, so much noise, and traffic so outrageous that it makes Santa Monica Boulevard at rush our seem downright soothing. But I am so happy that we went. Highlights for me included the kebabs at Khan Chacha; the textile shopping; the Lotus Temple; our adventure in Old Delhi (we’d booked a guide in advance but there was a miscommunication so she thought we’d cancelled.  Rather than leaving us high and dry, she called up a friend of hers from the neighbourhood, and he showed us around all the old narrow streets; and then our real guide met us and took us to the spice market); our many white-knuckle rides in autorickshaws; and not getting food poisoning.  There are more pictures, that Aaron took, many of which involve me stuffing my face with various spicy foodstuffs, but below the jump are a sampling of my photos.

    (more…)

    Category Adventure | Tags: | 1 Comment

  4. Oh! The (dinosaur-related) places you’ll go!

    September 18, 2012 by ms. xandra

    Last weekend’s Dinosaur Day celebrations were a resounding success! They were somewhat more…aggressively educational, shall we say, than most past Dinosaur Days. Everyone got a commemorative button:

    I keep my button on my desk, as a reminder that every day I need to LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS.  Wasting time on the internet?  Why are you doing that when you need to go and LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS?  Working on your dissertation?  Isn’t it about time you LEARNED ABOUT DINOSAURS instead?  They had different LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS available buttons with all kinds of different dinosaurs on them, including one with a brontosaurus, which, in retrospect, I obviously should have picked instead, because it wins the Most Ironic Dinosaur Pedagogy Button award.  As we all learned, from a shocking expose that I wrote for science class in the 2nd grade,  now corroborated by the wikipedia, the brontosaurus is not actually a scientifically recognized thing.  Could it be that someone needs to LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS?

    But I digress.

    We left West Hollywood at high noon, and headed to our first stop, The Donut Man in Glendora, for the customary Dinosaur Day strawberry donuts. We also picked up some bavarian creams and apple fritters for later.  It is important to have lots of provisions on Dinosaur Day, because one never knows where one will end up. (Usually, one ends up in the desert, wondering whose genius idea it was to do Dinosaur Day in the middle of the summer, again.)

    From there it was a skip and a jump Eastward to the untamed wilds of Riverside, California, where, apart from a boy scout troop, we were the only visitors at the Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center.  The place is a garden center meets a geology museum meets a  huge gift shop housed in a barn, where everything dollar (in addition to our souvenir buttons, some of us may or may not have purchased some fossilized dinosaur poop labelled ”endangered feces”); with a collection of dinosaur eggs and weird dinosaur statues lurking in unexpected places.  Think of a small local museum that you may have gone to on a class trip in the early 1990s, with lots of dusty taxidermied animals behind glass cases, and some charmingly homemade-looking displays (it is possible this experience is unique to those of us who grew up in Bruce County and spent more than one field trip at the Bruce County Museum), replace those animals with some rocks and fossils, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the place.  Basically, it was perfect.  And, unlike at the creationist museum we visited on the inaugural dinosaur day, we actual learned some real science!  Plus the dinosaur statues were really great.

    Click to embiggen!

    And then we went for carnitas at that taco stand with the velociraptor on the roof (“over five zillion sold”), and returned home for a celebratory screening of that well-known dinosaur documentary film GORGO (which is Godzilla but British; I’ll just let you imagine how that all plays out).

    Another successful Dinosaur Day!  Until next year, remember: make every day Dinosaur Day IN YOUR HEART.

    Category Adventure, Dinosaur! | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Today’s dessert brought to you by dinosaurs

    August 30, 2012 by ms. xandra

    SUMMER!  Where has it gone?  It has gone basically nowhere, apparently, because Los Angeles is hot as blazes. Normally I leave LA in September for the cool climes of my native land, but this year I went northwards in July instead because POOR PLANNING.  Oops.

    Important things are afoot, though!

    Dinosaur Day cometh!  Dinosaur Day is, of course, the holiday we invented on which we pay homage to our lost forbears, the Dinosaurs.  Traditionally, Dinosaur Day has been observed on July 16th, but because of the aforementioned POOR PLANNING, I was not Dinosaur-adjacent and unable to make the traditional Dinosaur Day pilgrimage.  However, the chief benefit of a holiday invented and observed by oneself is that one can reschedule it for any date that one deems appropriate.  And thus, Dinosaur Day will be observed this year on either September 7 or 8, just as soon as we get some details locked in.  That’s next weekend! There will be a roadtrip.  And Michael Crichton audiobooks.  And dessert.  You know, the traditional rites of Dinosaur Day.

    Another Dinosaur Day rite is the Dinosaur Day countdown, which will start tomorrow with a series of blog posts profiling Dinosaurs We Would Visit for Dinosaur Day if We Had a Million Dollars and Also a Concord Jet.

    But speaking of dinosaurs.

    When I was in Canadaland, I picked up a copy of a charming (terrifying) volume called Cookery in Colour, by one Ms. Margeurite Patton. (If you are brave, you can even get your own copy.)

    It is a British publication, and thus opens my mid-century cooking universe to include strange and wondrous new things (ie: the Guy Fawkes Bonfire Cake, which is a pile of logs made out of candy cigarettes with a marzipan effigy of Guy Fawkes on top).  For my first dip into its garishly illustrated depths, I chose something from this page, a page that begs an important question:  if you are not going to use cake as dessert, what, exactly, are you planning to use it for?

     

    While the “Pearl in Oyster” cake at the top is certain to win all cake beauty pageants, I like underachievers, so I made that one on the bottom, the one that looks like a mountain of sweaty cheese with shrivelled up brussels sprouts stuck to it.  It’s called Parame Mousse, so perhaps it hails from the French village of the same name?  At any rate, it is truly the strangest thing I have made yet.  It’s jello with cake in it.

    Marguerite directs us to do as follows:

    “Make lemon jelly using just under 1 pint water.  Allow to cool and begin to set then whisk in 4 oz. cake crumbs, 1 oz. chopped crystallized ginger and 2 stiffly beaten egg whites.  Decorate with crystallized ginger and pistachio nuts.”

    She leaves out what seem to be some key steps, like, putting the mixture in a mold to set after you fold in the egg whites.  But maybe Marguerite is writing for an audience with more advanced gelatin skills, who simply take such steps for granted.  I used a pound cake from the store and sort of eyeballed the amount of cake crumbs.  I also just threw all the ginger and pistachio nuts right in the mixture.  And the result was…weird but good!  A good kind of hot weather cake, I think, because the cake sort of dissolves into the gelatin mixture, and the egg whites make it fluffy and cool.  And it’s really quite ingenious – you can imagine a frugal housewife making this to stretch out a cake for a few extra days.  The ginger and pistachio are unusual and interesting flavour choices.  We’ve been eating this for dessert all week with saffron coconut ice cream that Aaron made, and because the ice cream is so yellow and the cake jello is so weird, every time we have some, I announce, “time for outer space dessert!” because, truly, it is like the dessert of the future.

    Category Adventure, Dinosaur!, Food | Tags: | 2 Comments

  6. Canned milk and you!

    July 19, 2012 by ms. xandra

    If there is one regret I have about having an unconventional wedding (and it is not really a serious regret, just something I occasionally think about, when I am in one of my more superficial moods) it is that we never registered, and we asked people to not give gifts, which means that I never got to ask for the one utterly unnecessary kitchen appliance that I really want to have: an ice cream maker. (DEAR SANTA CLAUS: Take note. If you’re feeling generous, I’d settle for an aquamarine KitchenAid with an ice cream maker attachment.)

    But luckily for me, I have this cookbook called Your Frigidaire Recipes, all about how to make all of your meals using a fridge as your main cooking implement. And luckily for me, said cookbook has a chapter called “Cooking With Canned Milk.” And luckily for me, said chapter has instructions for a few fairly convincing ice cream substitutes, the best of which is for a little something called Peanut Butter Cream.

    Sadly for you, I am in Canada visiting my ancestral home, and “Your Frigidaire Recipes” is in my apartment Los Angeles, and I forgot to take a photo of the actual recipe page, so I am just recreating this from memory (which has never gone wrong before). But basically, here is what you need and what you do:

    Take a bunch of peanut butter (2 cups? I think?) and cream it with sugar (maybe ½ a cup? Wow, this is such a helpful recipe). Then blend the peanut butter sugar mixture with water (at least a cup) until it dissolves. It will have a fairly unfortunate color and consistency, but don’t let it put you off. Then! Pour in a can or two of evaporated milk. Whip it, put it in your freezer, let it partially set, take it out, re-whip it, freeze it, and VOILA. It’s kind of like ice cream and it tastes like a nutter butter, and you probably want to eat it on your tiki-themed balcony. Your Frigidaire Recipes suggests topping it with chocolate sauce, and, yes, it’s true, you probably want to do that. I topped it with Kalhua, which wasn’t half-bad either.

     

    This froze much more solidly than I expected, but with a quick microwave zap, it was pretty close to ice cream texture. I speculate that in the 1930s and 1940s it would have worked a bit differently because, I assume, freezers maybe wouldn’t have been able to get as cold as they do now (this is pure conjecture), and it’s also conceivable that the formulation of evaporated milk and peanut butter were different (I imagine that milk with higher fat content, for instance would have frozen a little less solidly).

    Tastier than an aspic, and no less exciting!  Next time, I will make it in my brain mold.

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  7. Your refrigerator and you!

    June 27, 2012 by ms. xandra

    Part of what I love about my growing library of old cookbooks is not simply that they are full magical spells for the creation of strange and wonderful foodstuffs, but also that they are documents that tell us things about the domestic life in the past. They tell us stories that haven’t been told, because they’re stories that aren’t about Very Important Historical Events (so decreed by Crusty Old Historians), but they tell us equally important stories about how people lived their lives.

    Two of my favorite little cookbooks right now are little pamphlet sized books, written not by a celebrity chef of the day, but released by General Electric and the General Motors Company, respectively, called The Silent Hostess Treasure Book (published 1932 – and don’t worry, the silent hostess isn’t the lady of the house, it’s the refrigerator), and Your Fridgidaire Recipes (1940). These books are little recipe and instruction manuals that are designed to teach the middle class housewife how to best take advantage of her newest, fanciest kitchen appliance, the fridge.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    We take our fridges for granted now, obviously, so it’s fascinating to see how they were being pitched as a real cooking tool that could make women’s lives so much easier. They could help you save time! They could help you save money! They could make meal planning easier and could even help you cook fancy, new-fangled things! “And now,” says General Electric’s anonymous copywriter, “The electric refrigerator. Not only can it save the housewife time and energy, but it can actually work for her.” Like a helper robot.

    The Silent Hostess is an amazing little book, full of gorgeous little art deco illustrations of our glamorous housewife out at the shops in her fur stole, or entertaining guests in a drop-waist dress and cloche hat. True to the spirit of the great depression, it is pretty focused on how having a refrigerator can help you NOT WASTE ANYTHING, EVER. (Speaking of: you have seen Depression Cooking with Clara, yes? It is wonderful. Something about the rhythm of Clara’s voice when she tells you about pasta with peas can lull me into a zen-like state, so I became somewhat fixated on the show when I was stressing over my MA exams a few years ago. Anyhow, Depression Cooking with Clara is an interesting foil to the GE and GM books because she is quite clearly speaking from the position of a person who was too poor to think about having a refrigerator in the 1930s. It really is notable just how much the discourse of class is an undercurrent in these old cookbooks.)

    But with fewer trips to the market, where will we wear our mink stoles?

    Larger market orders will save you money so that you can buy more FABULOUS HATS.

    Why indeed, little Billy.

    Everyone’s favorite helper robot!

    However, in addition to providing many practical solutions for the enterprising houswife, The Slient Hostess is also absolutely frivolous and is full of special menus for holidays that I’m fairly certain nobody actually bothers observing or that nobody actually has themed menus for. Washington’s Birthday Dinner, anyone? Also included are menus for both formal AND informal teas (I think of an informal tea as when I watch a Star Trek episode in my pajamas drinking Tea! Earl Grey! Hot! in solidarity with Capt. Picard, but apparently an actual informal tea requires chopped olive sandwiches), bridge luncheons, and after theatre suppers. Well well well, aren’t we fancy.

    In terms of lavish illustrations The Silent Hostess is no slouch! Behold! Twenty-four Hour Salad and Suprise Loaf! Best surprise ever or worst surprise ever, who can say? You know, one of my favorite things from all of these cookbooks really is the recurring Stack of Wonderbread Sandwiches Disguised as a Cake. I haven’t made one yet, because I haven’t had quite the right group of Unsuspecting Guests over, but it probably needs to be my next project.

     

    And the ubiquitous ham mousse stands alone. What is going on with that celery, I don’t even know. We shall not speak of it.

     

    ANYHOW. In my adventures in vintage cookery, there has been a particularly ubiquitous foodstuff that I have been avoiding like the plague. I am speaking, of course, of the aspic, that horrific concoction of savory gelatin and unsuspecting vegetables and meats. There is really nothing I would rather not eat. But I feel like aspic was so much a part of the culinary landscape (the culinary landscape enabled by the increasing availability of Frigidaires and Science), that I would be remiss to not try one just once. If the enterprising housewives yesteryear did it, so can I.

    So I found the least offensive sounding aspic I could find. The  Silent Hostess gives you:  Golden Salad.

     

    Golden Salad 

    Add equal amount grated raw carrot to Lemon Aspic, which has been allowed to cool and thicken slightly. If onion flavor is liked, add one-fourth cup chopped raw onions. Turn into molds to chill. Unmold and serve with cooked or mayonnaise dressing.

    For the Lemon Aspic:

    1 tablespoon gelatin

    ¼ cup cold water

    1 ¾ cups boiling water

    2 tablespoons lemon juice

    4 tablespoons vinegar

    ¼ teaspoon salt

    Soak the gelatin in cold water for five minutes and dissolve in boiling water. Add lemon juice, vinegar and salt. Cool.

     

    So, “if onion flavor is liked” is obviously the best phrase in this recipe. It will not surprise you to know that I decided, on that particular day, that onion flavor was not liked, so we did not have onion in our aspic. I also switched the proportions of lemon juice and vinegar – I used 4 tbsp of lemon juice and 2 of vinegar, because I decided I would rather taste lemon than vinegar.

    Um, and also, a very lovely and kind friend gave Aaron and I a brain shaped jello mold as wedding gift, and I will be the first to admit that it has turned me into That Insufferable Person Who Always Turns Up With Brain-Shaped Things at Parties. So obviously it was going to be a BRAIIINNSSS Golden Salad.

     

    So shiny!

    It tasted fine. Really, fine. It is basically carrots in lemon vinaigrette. I probably would have enjoyed it as a non-molded salad. Aaron liked it. But there was something about it. Something about how slicing through the grated carrots made them crunch in a strangely fleshly kind of way. Something about the weird texture of the almost creamy gelatin with the crunchy carrots. Something that made it deeply unappetizing.

     Let’s just not think about this, ok?

     

    And so I have learned: Aspic! Not for me!

    Ok, I am going to hold off on the recipe I made from Your Frigidaire Recipes until next time! But you had best be excited, because it is from the chapter called “Cooking with Canned Milk”!

    Category Food | Tags: | 2 Comments

  8. How much do we love

    June 11, 2012 by ms. xandra

    1.  About the author blurbs that end “died a recluse.”

    2.  Espadrille weather.

    3.  Wandering around the neighborhood, planning which of the cute little mid-century or craftsman bungalows I would buy if I experienced a sudden influx of wealth.

    3.  6:00pm-8:00pm, the most lovely time to be outside on a Southern California evening.

    4.  8:00pm-9:00pm, the most lovely time to be on my balcony with a drink on a Southern California evening.

    5.  10:00pm-11:00pm, the most lovely time to sit on the sofa with a cat on your lap drinking herbal tea while watching British period dramas about plucky young women sent to spy on the Germans in Vichy-occupied France.

    6.  Sally Go Round the Roses.  The original, by the Jaynetts.

     

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  9. I invented this dessert for you.

    May 28, 2012 by ms. xandra

    So the other day my friend says to me “I had this dessert at a restaurant and it had malted whipped cream and it was amazing.”  And, because apparently I now consider every mention of delicious food to be a CHALLENGE, I think to myself “allow me translate this concept into molded dessert form.”

    Et, voila:

    Do not be deceived by the terribleness of the picture which was taken with my phone because I couldn’t find my camera even though my camera was right there on the dining room table the whole time!  For, truly, this dessert is a revelation.  Eating it is like seeing an Esther Williams movie for the first time.  It is like the first taste of a Manhattan made with the fancy cherries that cost $7 a jar at the fancy store instead of cruddy ol’ maraschinos.  It is probably like whatever is going on in the mind of our dog when he sees a tennis ball bound across the room.  It game changing and paradigm shifting and HERE IS HOW YOU MAKE IT!

    1.  Take your whipping cream.  500mls.  Add a whole bunch of malted milk powder.  And also some sugar and vanilla.  (BUNCH and SOME are very technical cooking measurement terms.)

    2.  Whip it.

    3.  Chill it.

    4.  MEANWHILE, dissolve 2 (heaping) tablespoons of agar agar powder in, like, 3/4 cup of water (ish), along with some more vanilla and some more sugar.  Bring this to a boil on the stove and then let it simmer until the agar agar powder is all dissolved.

    5.  Remember that you accidentally bought a bulk-sized box of packages of malt balls that one time because you need them for a cookie recipe and the closest grocery store to your house happens to be a bulk store that only sells in industrial sizes.  Pour two pacakges of Whoppers into the whipped cream and gently stir them in because WHY THE HELL NOT.

    6.  Fold the agar agar liquid into the whipped cream.  This will make some of it melt, which will make you worry, but don’t worry!  It will actually be ok!

    7.  Pour the whole mess into your awesome jello mold.  Oh, also, you should probably oil the mold first, just a wee bit, with some vegetable oil, to facilitate de-molding later.

    8.  Chill overnight.

    9.  Serve to friends, bask in glory!

    Yum yum yum!  This turns out so well:  it’s creamy and light and fluffy and tastes like a solid slice of vanilla malt.  You could easily do this with gelatin, and, in fact, gelatin might work better because it doesn’t need to be boiled in order to dissolve (you must boil agar agar; some people may or may not have learned this the hard way).  But I’m kind of digging the agar agar these days because gelatin, as versatile and awesome as it is, is kind of gross if you pause to think about it too much.

    Ok, stop thinking about it now.

    In unrelated news, let us all be sad that these Russian grannies only came in second in the Eurovision song contest.  But let us all be glad that they exist!

    (Things get real at about 0:39.)

    Category Awesome, Food | Tags: | 3 Comments

  10. Academic developments! Personal life developments! Cake developments!

    May 5, 2012 by ms. xandra

    It has been a busy couple of months.  Many developments!

    1. Academic!

    I was very unexpectedly awarded a fancy fellowship, which means that a) I don’t have to teach next year and b) I will FINISH my dissertation next year. This is wonderful, but also daunting, because the job market remains a disaster, and because I really enjoy some of the little material perks of being a student (mainly the cheap bus pass, to be honest), but I am also feeling ready to move on to the next adventure. And getting this fellowship has made me feel so much more optimistic about whatever that next adventure may be: it was extremely validating, and made me realise that, impostor syndrome be damned, maybe I actually do do good work. It has helped immensly with the Positive Attitude 2012 campaign.

    2. Personal life!

    A few months ago, I was thinking about what Aaron and I have and how it’s awesome. We have a home together. We have a family together (a family of furry beasts that mainly regard us as a source of food, but a family nonetheless). I feel happy and at home with him which is not something that has every happened before with a dude.  And that is why, the night before I left for my research trip to London, I decided that it was time to make an honest fellow out of him. That is why, as Aaron paid for our goodbye-for-now dinner at my favorite restaurant, I sent him a text message that said “I think we should get married.” And because I had spent the past year having existential crises (oh, there were tears), every time the m-word even came up, Aaron LAUGHED AT ME and asked if it was a joke and I was like, NO, ACTUALLY.

    (N.B.: I never intended to propose via text message. I had this vintage valentine kicking around with a picture of a fox on it saying “YOU’RE FOXY, VALENTINE” and I was actually going to write a note on it and leave it on Aaron’s pillow before he drove me to the airport the next day. But because we were subletting my office to cover rent expenses while I was away, and all my stuff was in storage, the valentine was inaccessible, thus foiling my ACTUAL ROMANTIC plan.)

    (N.N.B.: Also, on our way to dinner that night, traffic was terrible, and Aaron observed that it looked like they were filming something, and I said (charmingly), “Well, it better be something amazing. It better be…Batman.” And then when we were leaving the restaurant, the streets were lined with patrol cars that said “Gotham City Police” on them, because, actually yes, they were filming Batman. And that is the best part of the story of when I proposed to Aaron.)

    So then I went away for a few months and we kept it all a secret because we don’t like fusses, and then I came back, and then we planned a wedding, and on April 7th, we got hitched at Fork in the Road statue that we went to see on our first date! And Aaron wore seersucker, and there was a cake with dinosaurs on it, and it was PERFECT!

    Here we are, being charming and weddinged.  Or, rather, one of us is being charming:

     

    3. CAKE!

    Hey, look what I have found for you! It is a recipe for a cake that generates its own sauce. It is from a 1956 pamphlet called FUN WITH COFFEE! I bought Fun With Coffee at Bonnie Slotnick‘s, my favorite book store in the world, when I visited New York in March.

    This cake is called a Mystery Mocha Ring. It is accompanied by a photograph of Sherlock Holmes, to remind us that it is, in fact, mysterious.

    You will need:

    1 pkg. Butterscotch cake mix (I used chocolate, because the store was out of butterscotch)

    2/3 cup brown sugar

    2/3 cup sugar

    5 tbsp cocoa

    1 and ¼ cups strong, cold, coffee

    1 quart coffee ice cream

    What you do:

    Prepare cake mix as directed on package. Spoon evenly into well-greased 10-inch ring mold. Combine brown sugar, sugar and cocoa and sprinkle over cake batter. Pour coffee over all. Bake in moderate oven, 350 F, 50 to 60 minutes. Invert at once onto large plate, preferably with a ‘well’ to receive sauce that forms during baking. Fill center with coffee ice cream. Serve at once.

    Upon first glance, this recipe makes no sense. You make a cake mix, you put it in your cake pan, and then you pour the sugar/cocoa mixture on top of the raw batter (and this recipe generates a large amount of sugar/cocoa mixture), and then you pour coffee on that, and then bake, and then what? Thus the mystery, I suppose. The end result, however, is a miraculous, self-saucing cake. The sugar, cocoa and coffee melt into chocolate sauce that somehow seems to work its way to the bottom of the pan and pours itself all over the top when you de-tin it. And because the thing is about 900% sugar, the ice cream actually cuts the sweetness. I slept poorly all week after baking and eating this, probably because it is made completely out of sugar and caffeine, but IT WAS WORTH IT!

    Category Adventure, Food | Tags: | 6 Comments

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