Since I’ve been getting tons of ricotta, and we still have loads of red raspberries in the freezer, I’ve been making this cake a lot. And when I do, as long as I’ve made it correctly (ha), it doesn’t last for more than a day. In other words: it’s the perfect snacking cake.
***
There are sooooo many ways to make sourdough, and while I’ve tried (and enjoyed!) a lot of them, this is the one I keep coming back to again and again and again.
Happy weekending, friends! xo
Look what just arrived in the mail!
One of the women in my writing group co-wrote a book, whoop! Congratulations, Shirley! Each time I see the book on my desk, I grin. It’s ridiculous how proud I am, like I helped birth a baby or something (even though I did hardly anything).
I knew she was sending me the book but I thought it was, oh, I don’t know, like a mock-up or something* (probably because I didn’t read her email closely enough … which is a problem I have; just ask my mom). I haven’t read the book yet, but I love its heft — the cover is gorgeous! — and the short chapters are enticing. I’m eager to dive in.
Actually, I lie. I have read parts of it since she shared chapters with our group — and my name’s in the book to prove it, squeee! — but a book in process is very different from the finished product, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t read any of the chapters that her co-author wrote.
I have a hunch it’s gonna be a fast, fun book and a great one to share with my grandparenty friends.
*Just checked Amazon and it won’t be ready until May 3 (so I did get a pre-sale book after all, ha!), but no worries: you can still preorder it now.
***
A few months ago when one of the cooks at the bakery made a tart-sweet passion fruit curd, I went nuts for it. “It’s just from a purée that I get at the international store,” she said, shrugging off my admiration.
Apparently, one of the international stores in town (or maybe all of them? I have no idea) sells frozen bags of all kinds of fruit purée — mango, coconut, soursop, lime, blackberry, pineapple, etc — which doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but think about it for a minute: purée is just fresh fruit, but more accessible since there’s no peeling or juicing necessary. Just snap off a chunk (since the purée is frozen in thin rectangles, it’s easy to break apart and it thaws quickly) and pop it in the blender with yogurt and a banana for your smoothie, or simmer it with cornstarch and sugar for a fruit sauce, or cook it with egg yolks and butter for a curd to spread between layers of butter cake.
mango curd and cream sunshine cake
I have a few bags in the freezer — passion fruit, mango, soursop* — and I plan to stock up on more soon. Summer is coming!
*I used the soursop in smoothies last weekend. The fruit itself was disappointingly bland, but the gentle sweet flavor did bring back memories of my favorite (Guanábana) yogurt when we were in Nicaragua, so maybe that’s just how it is?
***
Check out this video about making Salers de Buron, a French cheese.
One of the people in my cheesemaking group shared the link with me (and then another friend told me this cheese was discussed on The Splendid Table podcast in an episode about saving rare foods). I find their cheesemaking methods — wooden barrels, salt on the calves’ backs — utterly bewitching, though I’m not sure how I feel about those unwashed teets….
***
Since my husband is super sensitive to smells, I very rarely use perfumes. (When I do, though, this one is the perfect blend of earthy, sexy, and exotic.) But then I discovered this gentle body mist.
My husband didn’t make any comments for weeks (months?) so it’s obviously not offensive, and a number of girlfriends have commented that I smell nice. (If I use it after my shower at night, I notice that my sheets smell like warm vanilla sugar cookies the next night.) So it’s just the thing: a light, sweet scent primarily for me that other people like, or don’t notice.
I’m on my second bottle.
***
On the train to New York last month, I noticed a girl sitting across the aisle from me had a book resting in her lap. “Is that Crying in H-Mart?” I asked. She said yes, and I asked if she liked it — I had it on hold at the library I said. And then the guy sitting behind her stuck his head around the seat and said, “I read that book — it’s good!” And then the older gentleman sitting beside him intoned, “And so begins another Amtrak Book Club meeting.”
I’m enjoying the book so far. It’s all about food (HUGE bonus points) and I’m learning, retroactively, so much about that delicious meal we had in NY’s Koreatown. (Also, when I learned that the author’s mother had a “kimchi fridge” for her fermented foods, I felt seen.)
Everyone says the book’s good as long as one doesn’t mind crying while reading, but I haven’t felt even a little bit sad and I’m nearing the end so either I haven’t reached the sad part yet or my heart’s a rock.
***
Have you seen After Life? It’s a British comedy-drama about a man struggling to go on after the death of his wife. My husband and I both loved it.
Even though it’s occasionally didactic and cliché and (disturbingly) crass, it gets away with it because there’s a rawness to it, and a simple beauty and warmth, that has me still thinking even months after I finished watching all three seasons. It’s not every day there’s a show that delves deep into grief and makes me laugh even as I tear up and makes my husband appreciate me more. (The woman [Kerry Godliman] who plays the wife is spectacular.)
This same time, years previous: how we homeschool: Jane, the quotidian (3.30.20), Asian slaw, for-real serious, the art of human rights, the quotidian (3.30.15), Good Friday fun, braided bread.
Over the weekend, we celebrated my dad’s 70th birthday.
Friday, the day of his birthday, everyone gathered at our place for the birthday supper: pot roast and potatoes, roasted carrots (I had to make them twice since the first time I made them a couple days before, we gobbled them all up), baked corn, peas, rolls, pickled beets (from my mom), and applesauce (from my sister-in-law).
After supper, there were a couple small gifts, and then my husband set up the monitor for the main event: my brothers and I had emailed dozens of family and friends, inviting them to send in a video of themselves wishing him a happy birthday and, if they wanted, to share a memory or something they appreciate about him or learned from him, and then my brother compiled the messages into a half-hour long birthday movie.
The video was both simple — just people saying happy birthday and talking for a minute or two — but also stunningly beautiful: over 80 well-wishers represented, together representing a broad cross-section of his life from different states and periods of life to his various involvements and interests. Some people read poetry and sang songs. Some read from their notes or sent in written messages or were recorded via Zoom (and with my brother’s help). Some blew party noisemakers or held up happy birthday pictures and cards or filmed themselves working in their sugar shack, shouting their happy birthday wishes over the noise of the boilers: We hope your day’s as sweet as ours! Among the things that people noted (again and again) were: Dad’s love of nature, his readiness to help anyone anytime, his gift for teaching, his hospitality towards immigrants and refugees, and his commitment to his family, his peace work, and his passion for supplying us kids with firewood from his property.
Then, the cake! My niece had offered to make a cake, and then I got an idea for it — which she liked — so we decided to work on it together.
She made the cakes — a chocolate and a vanilla that she made into a checkerboard patterns — and the fondant top and fungi.
Together we made the caramel vanilla whip filling (she made the caramel sauce from scratch) and the vanilla and chocolate Italian meringue buttercream. She fashioned the axe out of rice krispie treats (smooshed around a wooden spine that my younger son made for us) and fondant.
We assembled the cake at my house over the course of several days, and we did the final assembly together before the supper. My husband cut a piece of plywood for the base and wrapped it in brown paper. We scattered pinecones and pine needles around the log, as well as pieces of kindling and a whole kindling bundle that Dad had given us (along with the many loads of firewood I already mentioned). We hid the cake in the downstairs bedroom until it was time for the big reveal.
We didn’t know how the axe would hold up, but it turned out it was sturdy enough for him to take a couple whacks at the cake with it. It wasn’t sharp enough to cut through the cake’s fondant top, though.
The next day, my older son and daughter-in-law arranged a hike.
Except they just invited Dad — they told him they wanted to take him on a hike that morning — but what my dad didn’t know was that the rest of us were coming, too. My son stalled him in town, and then when they arrived at the trailhead, the rest of the family (minus our van — we pulled in a couple minutes after them) was there to surprise them.
I think the biggest surprise, though, was that my mom, the never-hiker, came, too. Dad was like, What?!?! You’re here?
It was a perfect family hike — about a half hour to a lookout and then back down to the river for lunch. My brother’s family provided sandwiches, veggies, and chips, my mom made the cookies, and I brought s’more fixings.
The weather was like a whole other character at the party: enthusiastically cold, sunny, and windy for most of the hike, but then when it was time for the picnic lunch, it went apeshit on us. The sky turned dark, the wind picked up even more, and — BOOM — a freak snowstorm.
It was wild! I couldn’t stop laughing at us all eating our sandwiches huddled around the fire in whiteout conditions.
On the hike back, it was like it was like we were in an enchanted wood. The snow had transformed the whole forest into a misty wonderland. It felt magical.
By the time we got back to the cars, the snow was mostly gone.
This same time, years previous: update from the north, the quotidian (3.29.21), teff pancakes with blueberries, absorbing the words, wuv, tru wuv, on being together: it’s different here somehow, the boy and the dishes, cream puffs.