Baking a Cake on Bastille Day

Last night, distraught by the news of a terrorist attack in Nice on Bastille Day, I baked a cake. When the going gets tough, tough broads make lemon cake. I haven't baked in ages. But last night, it seemed like the right thing to do. To balance all that bitterness and grief with something rich, sweet and tart.

I surfed the net before settling on a recipe I could tolerate. And even then, I was adapting it in my head, unconsciously nudging it toward the sublime symmetry of poundcake—quatre-quarts—made  with a 1:1:1:1 ratio; a pound each of butter, eggs, sugar, and flour. Sturdy bread flour, not cake flour, that has no gluten to hold it all together.

I assembled the dry ingredients, and as the oven was warming, I plucked handsome lemons off the same tree where I had placed that orphaned towhee chick I rescued a few days ago. I added an extra egg for luck, three golden jumbo-sized suns glistened in the bowl. Melted butter.  The Mexican morada sugar gave the batter a faint caramel flavor.

I scraped little runnels of Meyer lemon peel into the batter, like the fine golden threads that connect us all. I jettisoned the sweet milk and substituted double the yogurt for sour cream. Alors, the yogurt had mold on the top, but I scraped it off, and carried on. I am amazed how people go off the deep end if there's a little extra spontaneous culture on their yogurt. I mean, it's already spoiled rotten. Just do a generous scrape-off and use it for cooking.

A friend sent a recipe for coffeecake. If only we could go back to a gentler time, to, say, The Koffee Klatch in Fairfax, circa 1972. The Bon Appétit recipe sounds divine. They're generally very good. Intriguing concept to brown the butter first, drive out all the water and whey, to give it a nuttier caramel color and taste. (Like ghee, but toasted).

Already I am adapting and revising that recipe in my head. I'd just use all soured milk products: buttermilk, or yogurt. No fresh milk. Why use both? What's the logic behind it? You balance the sour milk ratio with baking soda, and baking powder. Quick breads are a gaseous Alka Seltzer-laden  doughy mess that rises as the heat sets it in place. And soured milk products, besides being better for you, make for a finer crumb and taste.

A general yuppified recipe peeve I have for the Let Them Eat Cake crowd: Why use unsalted butter if you're going to add more salt to savory dishes, or cookies and cakes? What's the rationale? Who made it an inviolate "rule" is that you had to use unsalted butter? Nonsense. I get the theory (fresh vs old butter) but these days, there's little difference, cooking-wise—unless you're making chocolate truffles.

As it is, for that browned butter coffeecake recipe, you're going to fry the living daylights out of the butter, char the milk sugars and trace minerals to a crisp, and then vaporize the emulsified water, so all that's left in the pan is clarified fat. I say use whatever butter's at hand... Just remember to cut back on the salt. And buy butter you like to eat. Just don't use Crisco.         

And while we're at it, what's with the hoity-toity kosher salt? Is it a case of using iodized vs not-iodized salt? What's the rationale? I don't think anyone will be able to tell if rabbis or foreskins were ecumenically invoked. It's all NaCl, folks! Like bitter tears. Just use less salt. Always taste as you go. Ditto that with the butter.

For what it's worth, I generally argue with most online recipes. I question ratios, choice of  ingredients, order of preparation. I'm a member of the less bowls to wash up is more club. There is so much voodoo and hype around recipes—vs logic, or common sense. (My folklore prof., Dr. Dundes, would have called it the use of sympathetic magic.) It's chemistry, not alchemy, fergawdsakeses.

Do most of those internet foodies even know what they're doing? Or are they blind sheep? We can thank/blame reality cook shows for much of the hype. Ina Garten and Martha Stewart insist on using unsalted butter and kosher salt, but it doesn't blend as well as fine grained table salt. Julia Child's sidekick, Jacques Pépin—the only voice of reason—said if you use salted butter, cut down on the salt in the recipe. (Or eliminate it entirely). Not rocket science. The rule of thumb is to taste and correct seasonings as you go.

Apparently, during times like this, I seek logic and clarity. Something with discrete steps. Plausible. Logical. With a tangible end result. Hypothesis, theory, outcome. Sometimes, it manifests itself by my reorganizing decades' worth of photo files, or rebuilding my old computers. No emotion there. Unless I'm swearing because I fucked it up. Besides I've been doing that all summer long.

The errant cake overran the edges of the pan, sending smoke signals out the door, which brought Himself steaming into the kitchen, all in a huff, fretting with his manspeak vocabulary of blame. I told him to shove off. It is what it is. Was I supposed to pull the raw cake out of the oven and scrub the hot oven right then and there? Never mind that the cake would collapse into a hockey puck or a black hole. And the whole point was to make comfort food during this time of terror.

Je suis Charlie, je suis Paris, avec Brussels, Bagdhad, Orlando, Istanbbul, je suis épuisé. Je suis fatigué. Je suis fatigué. And now a coup in Turkey.

The timer rang in some good news. I found myself singing:

Orléans, Beaugency, Notre-Dame de Cléry.Vendôme, Vendôme.
Quel chagrin, quel ennui, de compter toutes les heures 
Quel chagrin, quel ennui, de compter jusqu’à minuit, 
Mes amis que reste-t-il?

The cake came out golden as the sun and sweet as a child's kiss and it satisfied a small corner of the soul.

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes (photo)

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Nothing like Shrove, or Fat Tuesday pancakes for dinner, My grannie always made pancakes for dinner. We were so excited. It was Sunday morning verging on Tuesday night. No funny papers. But even still, it was exciting.

My grannie made everything from scratch. Not even Bisquick snoozed in our pantry. But you can use any quick-bread, or pancake mix and adulterate it. I like buckwheat pancake mix, if I can find it. Make some pancakes using buttermilk, oil and pancake mix, and then add way too many eggs.

If the recipe asks for one egg, add three or more eggs. You can also add a little seltzer water, or ginger ale, or anything bubbly to add a delicate airiness to the pancakes. If you're short on flour, a little added cornstarch will make crispy pancakes. 

Batter should be runny, let it sit a half-hour, or longer, to thicken up. If you’re organized, make your batter the night before. Never happens in my house. I inexplicably get the urge for pancakes at 6 pm, nearly too late. Sometimes I don’t even realize it’s Shrove Tuesday, but I have the instincts of a homing pigeon when it comes to eating authorized pancakes for dinner.

Grease a big pan with unsalted butter, let it get nutty brown for maximum favor impact, spread the pancake batter thin, like crêpes. I use a soup ladle. First one is for the kitchen god. Stack 'em up on a warm plate. You'll need to add butter to the pan for each pancake. Half a pat. Salted butter is too much. Ruins the delicate flavor.

Filling: mix cottage cheese and Greek yogurt, or sour cream, vanilla sugar, zest and juice of one lemon, OK, so spike it with maple syrup too. Spread on pancake and roll it up like a cigar and smoke it.

One year I went wild with flavored Wensleydale cheeses, studded with dried apricots, and lemon rind. They were divinely delicious, but way too heavy and boggily filling. Stick with cottage cheese and tart it up. Your waistline will thank you.

Filling no. 2: spread pancake with creme fraich or Mexican extra fat sour cream (it has a much better flavor than American sour cream) on a pancake, then smear it with good raspberry preserves. I like seedless preserves vs raspberry jam. (I abhor blueberries, but that could be a hit. Or huckleberry jam if you can find it). Roll it up. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Oui. Olé!

Filling no. 3: spread pancake with butter, really good marmalade or jam. Eat.

Deluxe edition. Drink one glass champagne, or spumante between each step, and don't forget to take a sip or two as you liberate each pancake from the pan, of course. By the time you have enough for a meal, you won't care what day of the week it is. It’s a good luck tradition to flip the pancakes sans spatula. Good luck.

Shrove it Jack!

Fat Tuesday pancakes

My grandmother always made thin crepe-style pancakes for dinner on Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, right before Lent. Sometimes the pancakeswere stuffed with a crumbled cheese mix, usually cottage cheese, then sprinkled with sugar and lemon. Not your usual Sunday morning pancakes. But very tasty. I loved the novelty of having pancakes for dinner.

Every year, without being aware that it's close to Shrove Tuesday, I find myself making pancakes for dinner. Old habits die hard. One year I decided to kick it up a notch and so I used a variety of Wensleydale cheeses, one was flavored with dried apricot filling, and another with lemon rind. Divine, but way too filling. Like lead in the stomach. But we couldn’t let all that real maple syrup go to waste, now could we? More info here.

Not sure why there's vinegar in this Welsh recipe...if the buttermilk's any good, you don't need it. Besides, lemon juice would be more flavorful—unless it's basalmic vinegar. Then, by all means, carry on.

More info on Shrove Tuesday here. And here.

Added 2/20