A couple weeks ago the kids were discussing all the different cakes I’ve made, and my younger daughter said to me, “You’ve never made me a fancy cake.”*

“That’s because you never let her!” everyone shouted. (Which was true. She’s always had restrictions, like no buttercream, not this flavor or that texture, and no fondant, and my rules were that if I was going to do a fancy cake, then I had to have full creative license.)

“Okay,” she said, finally relenting. “This year you can make whatever kind of cake you want. Surprise me.”

Considering her love of chickens, it was pretty simple to figure out what kind of cake I’d make.

September 2022

But finding a cake to model after was a whole other matter. After a bit of digging, I found a five-minute clip of a youtube video — no instructions — that was most similar to what I had in mind, but it wasn’t much to go on. There was so much I didn’t know, like how much cake did I need to make? How much fondant? What kind of cutters? Paint colors? What size dowel rods? What about wire?

Over the course of several days, I made three different batches of cake (four, actually, because the first cake I made was too tender and I realized I needed a firmer, more dense cake that would hold up to carving) and a batch of vanilla fondant.

And then our fridge went out — cue 24 hours of chaos in which I didn’t know if I’d even be able to make the cake since I needed a large chunk of fridge space in which to store it. But then my husband ordered a new circuit board and got the fridge running by Sunday afternoon, whew. That night my husband helped me think through the construction and sketch out the various cuts (because geometry tangles my brain). 

And then it was Monday, aka The Day of the Cake. (The birthday dinner would be on Tuesday, and since I’d be working a full shift at the bakery that day, I just had one day in which to build the cake.) To say my stress levels were high would be an understatement. I spent the entire day in a focused, anxious tizz of sugary mayhem. 

I thawed the cakes, cut the pieces, and then dry stacked them and did the preliminary carving. I made the vanilla whip and the Italian meringue buttercream. I deconstructed the cakes and reassembled the pieces, this time sandwiching the lemon curd and vanilla whip between the layers.

And then, realizing that the cake layers were pretty thick, I deconstructed the cake again, split the layers in half, spread them with lemon curd, and then rebuilt it.

At this point, my younger son still had no idea what I was building. A race car? he guessed. A squirrel? 

Let’s see how long it takes you to figure it out, I said.

I dirty-iced it with the buttercream — Oh! A chicken! — and then I noticed that the butt and sides were too chunky, so I did some more carving and re-iced it. 

The cake properly iced, I popped it into the fridge and got to work on the fondant. I used leaf cutters for the lower feathers, flower petal molds for the middle feathers, and hand-cut skinny triangles for the neck feathers. 

At this point I got so absorbed and overwhelmed and sticky and covered with food coloring that I didn’t take a single photo. There were bits of fondant, cutting tools, and little dishes of gel colors mixed with vodka and paintbrushes scattered everywhere. And then when I got out the piping gel I discovered that — oh crap — it was so ancient it had discolored and I had to make a batch from scratch. (pant, pant)

Once the chicken was feathered, I settled in to paint, mixing colors, darkening, adding textures. It was both forgiving and gratifying. I sipped the latte my younger son fixed for me and dabbed and brushed the afternoon away. It was the best part. 

The tail feathers were a pain in the butt (ha). My son figured out how to adhere them to some wire, but we were running low on fondant and they were less than perfect. Plus, I stuck them in the rooster too far up on the back so it was far from anatomically correct, but oh well. This was a cake, not an actual bird. 

And what kind of fowl was it, anyway? I’d been aiming for a rooster but the tail feathers were pretty piddly compared to the real thing, and the body and neck looked more like a chicken, so: it’s a “poultry” cake, I decided. Whatever.

I stuck the cake in the fridge, taped a “do not open” sign to the door handles, scrubbed the kitchen floors, scarfed the pizza my husband picked up on his way home from work, and crawled into bed. 

When I got home from work the next afternoon, my younger son and I took the chicken cake out to visit its brethren, and to briefly bask in the sunshine atop the fence post.

Fast forward to the birthday dinner. All the presents were chicken related (a chicken necklace, solar lights for the coop, a chicken book, a chicken hat, a chicken mug) so everyone had a pretty good idea what the cake was gonna be. As per our custom, my brother’s family came over for the big reveal and everyone had to shut their eyes while I got the cake out (and my mother clucked and baw-bawked).

I made them sing Happy Birthday with their eyes closed — they could all open their eyes when we sang her name — and then, ta-da! 

All their reactions, and my daughter’s delight, made the work totally worthwhile. 

After we admired and discussed it for a bit, my daughter cut the cake. It actually didn’t look too bad inside, and it tasted better than I thought it would; the additional lemon curd had kinda absorbed into the cake making it taste all lemony, and because I was worried the cake would be dry and wanted to punch up the flavor profile, I served the cake with the leftover vanilla whip and a red raspberry sauce so tart it made my daughter-in-law gasp. Also tea and coffee. 

And now there’s a remaining feather-spiked hunk of chicken butt (that looks rather like a pineapple) in the fridge, as well as a severed chicken head reclining on a plate, staring at me with its beady little eyes every time I open the door. 

The end.

*Other fancy cakes: Game of Thrones Dragon Eggs, Snowboarder Mountain, Snake, The Wood Carver (my niece did much of this one)

This same time, years previous: red velvet cake, currently, Friday mishmash, the Chicoj coffee cooperative, leap year baby, potatoes and onions.

Quotidian: daily, usual or customary;
everyday; ordinary; commonplace

Note to self: fajita cuts of beef are much better grilled than oven-roasted. Just sayin.

Raclette cheese, skillet-melted and then poured over roasted potatoes,
be still my beating heart.

A thank-you gift.

Working breakfast: grits and greens, and an iced, brown sugar latte.

For the homeless shelter: mashed potatoes (plus meatloaf, green beans, corn, and cookies).

Lunch munch.

Now working front of house as well as back.

The goat shed delivery.

Team Dog.

Team Pig.

Preg testing.

Home blood tests: they’re so new that the vet has never even seen one. (Yay, Emma!)

This same time, years previous: noticing, perfect pita, the quotidian (2.26.18), the quotidian (2.27.17), old-fashioned molasses cream sandwich cookies, homecoming, my new superpower, the quotidian (2.27.12), what I said.

I’ve got a new bread for you, friends! Introducing 100% hydration bread, otherwise known as pan de cristal, or glass bread.

I discovered this bread via a video put out by King Arthur Baking Company, and then promptly proceeded to make it four times in less than a week. After the first bake, I had the recipe memorized — and I still do. It’s very, very simple, feels like magic, tastes delicious, and makes everyone extremely happy, and, because I want you to be happy, too, here you go! 

This bread is the perfect weekend side project, something to do when you’re knocking about the house watering plants and paying bills and organizing the shoe shelf and talking on the phone with your mom. In other words, you gotta be home but you don’t need to be fully present.

And then — and this is the best part — at the end of the day you have fantastic fresh bread to go with that pot of soup you’ve been simmering on the stove, and any leftover bread will make great cheese-and-ham breakfast sandwiches, which are, in case you didn’t already know, the perfect counterpoint to a steaming mug of hot coffee. 

Sold yet? Good.

Let’s get on with it.

100% Hydration Bread (Pan de Cristal)
Adapted from the King Arthur Baking Company.

500 grams warm water
500 grams bread flour
¾ teaspoon yeast
2 teaspoons salt
olive oil, a couple tablespoons 

Measure the water, flour, yeast, and salt into a bowl and stir well. The dough will be the consistency of muffin batter. 

Drizzle some olive oil into at 9×12 pan and smear it all over the bottom and sides. Pour the dough-batter into the pan. Cover with plastic and set the time for 20 minutes. 

for the folds:
Bowl Fold (1): When the timer dings, wet your fingers with water and gently lift the edges of the dough up, folding it back over itself to make a squishy dough puddle.

The dough will be loose, almost impossible to handle. No worries! Set the timer for another 20 minutes. 

Coil Folds (4): When the time timer dings, wet your hands and lift the dough from the middle and then lay it back down, kinda folding it over itself. Turn your hands 90 degrees and repeat the process. Cover and rest for another 20 minutes.

Do this coil fold three more times, letting the dough rest for 20 minutes between folds; I make tally marks to keep track.

By the final coil fold, the dough will be satiny-smooth, boingy-firm, and only barely wet.

Tips: 
1. Oil the underside of the plastic wrap to keep it from sticking to the dough. This won’t fully work, but it will help.
2. Place the pan of dough in your oven on the “bread proof” setting. 

After the final stretch-and-fold, cover the dough and let it rest for 80 minutes, at which point the dough will have poofed to fill the entire pan. 

to shape the dough:
Heavily flour your work surface and gently — don’t deflate the dough! — dump out the dough. Flour the dough and cut it into desired shapes: loaves, baguettes, squares, fingers. (Squares are my favorite.)

Carefully scoop each piece of bread onto a sideless, parchment-lined cookie tray. (If all your trays have sides, flip them upside down.) 

At this point the instructions say to let the bread rest for two hours, uncovered, at room temperature, but I’ve experimented with baking the bread after only a 20-minute rest and couldn’t detect a difference. And when I have let the bread rest the full amount of time, I haven’t noticed the dough changing over the course of those two hours. So do what you will.

for the bake:
Place a pizza stone in your oven and preheat to 475 degrees. Use your sideless cookie sheet as a pizza peel to slide the piece of parchment paper with the bread onto the stone. Bake for 15-30 minutes, depending on the size of the bread and how dark you want it to be. Repeat with the remaining bread. 

Serve the bread fresh, and store any leftovers in a plastic bag. On Day One, the crust is crispy, almost like a cracker, the inside and soft and airy, and the bread itself feels impossibly light. On Day Two (and beyond), after being stored in a bag, the crust turns soft and chewy, which I love.

This same time, years previous: perimenopause: Hillary, age 51, baked pasta with harissa bolognese, the quotidian (2.24.20), homemade pasta, steer sitting, doppelganger, lemon cheesecake morning buns, peanut butter and jelly bars, birds and bugs, bandwagons.