“And a Happy New Year” Salted Vanilla Bean Caramels

Yesterday, the little advertisement sidebar on Facebook tried to interest me in a retirement plan. “Man, is it confused,” I thought, but actually it was a nice change from the Weight Watchers ads and the ads for the new Dr. Oz diet that Facebook has been trying to tempt me to click on for the last few weeks. (And ads encouraging me to become an ultrasound tech. I have no idea what about my profile has suggested to the ad scanners that I’d like to go back to school to become an ultrasound tech.)

Seriously, Facebook, the only one of those ads I’ve ever clicked on was for yoga pants. And actually, I didn’t even click on it; my cat did when he stepped on my track pad. So, you would think I would just get nothing but ads for yoga pants when I logged into Facebook because it’s the only thing I’ve given Facebook any indication that I’m powerless to resist, but ‘tis obviously the season for New Year’s resolutions, most of which apparently consist of turning over a new leaf, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, exercising some will power, etc.

You would think we’d be the most self-disciplined culture in the world.

I’m not saying that those kinds of resolutions never work. Five years ago I decided to quit smoking some time around New Year’s-ish. That is to say, at the end of December, Santa left a box of Nicoderm CQ in my Christmas stocking, and I started thinking about maybe opening it on January 1st. Perhaps it wasn’t a New Year’s resolution as such because I didn’t actually take the plunge until March or something, but loosely speaking, one might call it one of the more bootstrappy-type decisions I’ve made in my life.

Mostly though, I’m a proponent of making New Year’s resolutions that I actually want to keep—things that delight the soul but that I’ve made lame excuses for why I can’t do. For example, I hoard pretty jewelry like a kleptomaniac raccoon, but I never used to actually wear it because I always thought I had to save it for a special occasion. A few years ago, I realized there wouldn’t be enough special occasions in my lifetime to allow me to make use of the collection of sparkly things I had already amassed, and if the law of mathematical proportionality had anything to say about it, was only going to get larger at a constant rate as time went on. Thus, jewelry every day. The year before last, my resolution was to skip over the songs I hate on my iPod when I’m running. I had it into my head that I would “use up” all the music I love if I didn’t also suffer through the songs that make me crazy. Like I said, lame excuses. I’m sure they have their origins in some deeply vulnerable and reptilian part of my psyche, and someday it might worth thoughtfully exploring the origins of such things, but today it’s probably okay to just say, “Those are really nonsensical and unsatisfying,” and let them go.

Last year, my resolution was to start a baking blog. Much like the whole quitting smoking thing, it didn’t really get underway until March, but I like to think of myself as a slow yet careful starter. Happy New Year, everyone, and may you make resolutions that fill your heart with light.

“And a Happy New Year” Salted Vanilla Bean Caramels

• 1 cu heavy whipping cream
• 5 T butter
• ½ tsp vanilla
• ½ vanilla pod
• 1 ¼ tsp sea salt
• 1 ½ cu sugar
• ¼ cu light corn syrup
• ¼ cu water

Line an 8×8” pan with tin foil, parchment paper, or wax paper and butter the lining.

In a small saucepan, combine the whipping cream, butter, vanilla, salt, and vanilla pod. (Would you believe I actually have vanilla pods? Poor Baker 7; Empty Kitchen 5.) Before you add the vanilla pod to the pot, split it lengthwise and scrape out the seeds with the tip of a paring knife. Put the seeds in the liquid and then drop the whole pod in as well. Bring to a boil and stir until the butter is melted, then set aside.

In a medium, heavy bottomed saucepan, bring the sugar, corn syrup and water to a boil over medium high heat. Stir until the sugar is melted, and then let it simmer until the syrup is golden, swirling the pan occasionally. Apparently you’re not supposed to stir during this step. I think it has something to do with preventing the sugar from crystalizing around the spoon, but I might be making that up. (Warning: sugar can go from lovely golden to burned mess in a matter of seconds, so don’t walk away from the pan.)

Once the syrup is golden brown, pour the cream mixture into it. It will bubble up like a science experiment—don’t be alarmed; this is supposed to happen. No safety goggles are necessary (but if you lose an eye, please don’t sue me). Simmer until the caramel reaches between 246 and 248 on the candy thermometer. (I have no trick for making this without a candy thermometer other than gauging by color and smell when the candy is caramelized. When it starts to smell like caramel, it’s caramel.)

Pour into the prepared pan. (If you are anything like me, at this point you will be filled with the overwhelming desire to dip your finger into the newly poured caramel to sample it. I beg of you, resist this urge. It will stick to your finger like burning napalm.) Allow the caramel to cool for about half an hour, and then sprinkle a little more sea salt on the top. Allow it to cool completely, then cut it into 1 inch squares and wrap each one in candy foil or parchment paper.

Recipe adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride 

“Thanks a Latte” Pecan Bars

When I woke up this morning the world looked like this. Nobody dreams of a white morning after Christmas, but during the night it snowed about 3 inches. A mere pittance of a snowfall compared to some winter storms in my life. The edge of Snowmagedden 2010 caught Pittsburgh and dropped 21.1 inches of snow on us, and the worst blizzards I remember from when I was a kid were a series of eight in a row that totaled 98.6 inches, the nastiest of which trapped us in the house for five days without any heat or electricity. So, you’d think that I would just be able to stride through the 3-5 inches that are forecasted for our area with Paul Bunyan-esque machismo, going about my day like a winter stoat, whose very architecture is designed for bounding and squirming through the drifts.

Not so. I’m a wuss about snow, even one inch of snow. So, I’m staying inside today, even though I had grand plans about going on campus to get work done. Luckily, I have everything I need right here to avoid getting that work done—books that aren’t required reading, leftover holiday cookies, and lattes from the new espresso machine that we adopted out of the cold. It was shivering and crying under our deck, trapped there by 10 inches of snow. We dug a little hole so it could climb out and lured it into the house with Canadian bacon and promises of warmth and affection forever…. Wait, no, that’s how we adopted our cat—a winter beast through and through. This morning, he couldn’t wait to get out in the snow and box it around, as if saying, “Take that. That’s what you get for trapping me under the deck all those years ago so I had to be rescued by the crazy people who now think they own me, talk to me in baby talk, and sing a butchered rendition of ‘O Tannenbaum,’ at me, replacing half the lyrics with my name.”

The espresso machine came to us from the land of balmy sunshine. It’s a la Spaziale S1 Dream, and it cost more than my car. Mr. Poor Baker saved up for it for years, and now that it’s finally here he’s drinking so much espresso he’s beginning to drop words out from the middle of his sentences. I’m helping him shoulder the burden by letting him make me coffee too. In order to help him experiment with his new curio, I have to have lattes brought to me in bed each morning. It’s a sacrifice, but, the things we’ll do for love.

“Thanks a Latte” Pecan Bars 

Crust

• ¾ cup unsalted butter, cold
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt

Filling

• ½ cup unsalted butter, soft
• 1 cup brown sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup light corn syrup
• ¼ cup all-purpose flour
• 3 cups pecans, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put foil on the bottom of a 9×13” pan. Combine the ingredients for the crust into a medium-size bowl and work together with a pastry blender or a fork. (The website I snatched this recipe from recommends using a food processor for this step. I don’t have a food processor because we spend all our money on expensive espresso machines. Empty Kitchen 5; Poor Baker 6.) Press the dough for the crust into the bottom of the pan and bake for 20-25 minutes.

In a medium-size bowl, blend together the butter and sugar for the filling. Blend in the salt. Add the syrup, flour, and pecans and stir with a spoon just until the flour is incorporated.  Pour the filling into the crust and smooth it out. Bake 30-35 minutes. Be careful not to over bake or you’ll have pecan brittle on crust rather than soft, chewy bars.

Let the pecan bars cool in the pan, and then pull out the foil and cut into bars. Serve with coffee. The “Good Morning, Gorgeous” mug is optional, unless you’re making the coffee for your significant other. Then it’s necessary.

Recipe Adapted from The Food Network

“Thirteen Ways to Please Your Man” Spicy Bourbon Truffles

Last night I went to look for a Christmas tree for the first time in over ten years. I wanted a tiny tree because I only own like five ornaments since, you know, I haven’t had a Christmas tree in over ten years. I saw these table trees at the grocery store, of all places, early in the month and thought they were perfect for me but decided to wait until I got back from visiting my brother and his family before I bought one.

A week before Christmas was plenty of time to enjoy a tree, I thought. After all, as my Dad liked to remind me when I was growing up, Christmas is December 25^th and the eleven days until Epiphany. Everything before that is Advent—a time for somber reflection and anticipation—which probably explains why all my favorite Holiday songs are slightly mournful and usually in minor keys.

Turns out, the rest of the city doesn’t agree with me or my Dad—by the time I went to get one, almost every tree in the town was sold out—not just the little ones, but all the trees. We finally found one little tree at Lowe’s. It’s a bit awkward and lopsided, but—like a particular iconic tree of yore—all it needed was a little love to turn it around.

As Mr. Poor Baker (who managed to muster up a startling amount of good cheer on my behalf) shuttled me around from store to store, I realized that buying trees closer to Thanksgiving than Christmas must have become the norm. When I was growing up, I only had one friend whose family put up their Christmas tree on Thanksgiving. (And I thought they were whackadoodle [<3 you, Shannon]).  My family didn’t get our tree until at least midway through December.

One year, we didn’t get our tree until the night before Christmas. I had to convince my Dad to get one at all because we were living in a FEMA trailer—sixty-four by fourteen feet of fiberglass that shook like an earthquake when the washing machine ran—and he didn’t think there would be room. It took about a week to wear him down, and on Christmas Eve we went out to find one.

I told the man who was selling the trees that we needed to get a small one because we didn’t have a house anymore.  He helped us find one. He gave it to us for free.

It was shorter than I was and narrow enough to only half block the door to my brothers’ room. The only things we had to put on it were a box of glass balls from a disaster relief care package and three ornaments my mother had salvaged out of the wreckage of our basement.

Both the decorations and the Christmas cheer were pretty sparse that year. But I have such a soft spot in my heart for tiny Christmas trees now.

“Thirteen Ways to Please Your Man” Spicy Bourbon Truffles*

Ingredients

• 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate
• 4 oz. semisweet chocolate
• 2 oz. milk chocolate
• 4 T butter, unsalted or European style
• 1 ¼ cu heavy cream
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 2 T bourbon
• Hot chocolate mix
• Milk chocolate for coating (optional)

This recipe makes about 40-50 truffles.

In a double boiler, melt together the chocolate, butter, and cream. If you don’t have a double boiler, just put a glass or ceramic bowl over a pot of boiling water and melt together the ingredients in there. Stir until melted, but be careful not to let it get too hot, because the chocolate will begin to separate if the sugar in it starts to crystalize. Stir in the cayenne pepper and the cinnamon. Stir in the bourbon.

Pour the chocolate mixture into a tray and refrigerate until firm. Put a couple of scoops of hot chocolate mix or cocoa powder on a plate and sprinkle it with cinnamon. Scoop out a teaspoon of the truffle mixture at a time and roll it into a ball, then roll it in the cocoa powder to coat. At this point, you can put the rolled chocolate into mini papers and refrigerate and just serve them that way. However, if you want to coat the truffles, put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them.

Once they are frozen, melt the milk chocolate in the double boiler, take the truffles out of the freezer and drop them one at a time into the milk chocolate to coat. Put back on a tray and refrigerate until the coating is hard. Then put into individual papers. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve. Store uneaten truffles (if you can imagine such a thing) covered in the fridge as well.

*The truffles are so named because I embarrassingly admitted at a party once that I got the original recipe out of a Cosmo magazine, and one of the other guests dubbed them thusly. The recipe is so altered from the original by this point that I have been assured that I can claim it as my own without any compunctions. The name, however, has stuck.

“Pumpkin Pie for Breakfast” Apple Pie

I had pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning because nobody can tell me I can’t (or at least, nobody I’m going to listen to anyway). This Thanksgiving, like last Thanksgiving, I let myself be adopted by someone else willing to put together the whole turkey spread, and this year, like last year, I was only responsible for the pie.

I made two pies. Pumpkin was a no brainer, and I was trying to decide between apple and pecan for the second pie. I was leaning towards pecan, my reasoning being that, although I believe the majority of people prefer apple pie to pecan pie, apple is a year-round pie, while pecan is generally seasonal. There are those, I assumed, who might want to maximize their seasonal pie potential on what is really only one out of two days of the year where pecan pie seems appropriate (the other being Christmas, although perhaps if you live in the South pecan pie is more of a staple. Or perhaps I’ve just read too much Southern gothic).

When I shared this theory with Mr. Poor Baker he gazed at me with just the barest glint of betrayal in his eyes since he likes neither pumpkin nor pecan pie and, thus, has yet to discover the true meaning of Thanksgiving. So, I made apple pie instead.

I’m posting the apple pie recipe rather than the pumpkin pie recipe because I agree with Martha Stewart that for pumpkin pie you can’t really beat the recipe on the back of the Libby’s can. My crabby, cynical side wonders if this has more to do with the power of corporate branding to shape our cultural taste for food rather than anything objectively superior about the recipe, but then my cheerful, sensible side says, “Hush, can’t we just have a nice Thanksgiving?” (Also, apparently the popularity of pecan pie is due to an advertising campaign by Karo syrup in the 30s, so take that, Southern gothic.)

I do, however, make some minor adjustments to the Libby’s recipe:

•  I add about ¼ tsp of allspice with the other spices.
•  I use freshly grated ginger instead of powdered ginger (1 tsp).
• I roll out the piecrust, shape it into the dish, and then freeze it overnight. (This is a trick that I just discovered to make the crust more flakey.* The jury is still out on whether I should blind bake the crust before I fill it. I didn’t this time, and the crust was just fine.)
• I mix together the filling and then chill it for a few hours before baking.
• I brush the bottom of the crust with an egg white before I fill it.

Also, in my pre-Thanksgiving shopping haste I forgot to buy enough butter, so this apple pie has a cream cheese crust. It makes one 10” double crust pie.

* Microsoft Word indicates via the green squiggly that “flakeier” might be the more grammatically cogent word to use here. And then it indicates via the red squiggly that “flakeier” is not a word. Really, Microsoft Word? C’mon, everyone knows that it’s flakier. Jeez.

“Pumpkin Pie for Breakfast” Apple Pie

Crust

• 2 cu all purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ cup unsalted butter, cold
• 4 oz cream cheese, cold
• 1 T lemon juice
• 6-8 T ice water

Mix together the flour and salt. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter and cream cheese until you have pea-size lumps. Mix together the lemon juice and ice water. Add the water to the flour mixture one tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork until the dough is moist enough to come together but not soggy. Turn the dough out onto the counter and knead 3-4 times, just until it all comes together. As usual, you want to keep everything as cold as possible and avoid overworking the dough. Divide the dough into two balls, flatten into disks, wrap in plastic wrap and chill well, preferably overnight.

Filling

• 5-6 apples, peeled and sliced
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 cu sugar
• 2 T flour
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 1 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 T butter

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Roll out your bottom crust and fit into your pie dish. Brush the bottom of the crust with an egg white to waterproof it. Put back in the fridge.

Toss the peeled and sliced apples with the lemon juice. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon and ginger. Add the apple cider vinegar and toss with a fork until the dry ingredients are moistened. (Yes, I know that vinegar in pie sounds totally weird, but it’s actually what gives this pie its distinct, old-fashioned flavor. The final product doesn’t taste sour at all.)

Add the apples to the sugar mixture and toss to coat. Pour the apples into the pie shell. Roll out the top crust. (When I do a full top crust, I like to cut shapes into it with a cookie cutter so that the steam is adequately vented out of the pie while it bakes. Also, it lets me imagine for a split-second that I might be some kind of wifely homemaker who lives a freakishly perfect and tidy existence until I remember that I’m a frantic graduate student with a buzz cut and two mismatched socks because I haven’t had time to do laundry in several weeks.)

Dot the butter over the apples. Fit the top crust over the filled pie and brush with the rest of the egg white. Bake at 400 degrees for 50-60 minutes.

Bring to gathering for all to feast on. Save at least one piece for breakfast.

“They’re not Cherries” Redcurrant Cake

Right now, at the grocery store, in this mid-sized, Midwestern town, cherries are $1.87/lb. Perhaps for people who live in places where cherries are fairly commonplace, this is not earthshattering. But when you live in a place where cherries can sometimes be upwards of $7.99/lb., if you see them advertised for anything under $4, you assume it’s either a misprint or that the whole crop is infested with the Ebola virus.

When I was a kid, sometimes when I was eating red grapes I would close my eyes and imagine I was eating cherries until I could taste the ghost of one fruit inside the other. They are probably my favorite fruit, which is saying something because apricots and star fruit and mangos make me swoon. I get giddy over papayas the color of sunrise with a little lime juice squeezed over their middles. I love peeling the leathery outside of a guava into one thin line and scooping out the slippery seeds of a passion fruit.

The one time that I had a brief fling with low-carb dieting, I missed fruit so much that luscious oranges bursting from their rinds would dance through my dreams singing softly yet persuasively about how tasty they were.

So, I googled, “Is it okay to eat fruit when you’re on a low-carb diet?” And the internet responded with a resounding, “NO!”

“Fruit is basically just sugar,” one self-righteous commentator proclaimed. “You might as well just stuff your face with candy.”

“Forget this,” I said, and I went out and ate a whole bag of oranges. And a package of Twizzlers. Because, like, they’re basically the same thing, right?

And that’s the true story of how low-carb dieting and I parted ways forever.

We decided it would be best if we didn’t try and stay friends.

So, Ebola virus aside, I’m plowing through these cherries while I have the chance. I bought two bags last time I was at the grocery store because I was going to bake something with them for this blog. But then I ate them. All.

Luckily, I also bought these redcurrants at the farmers market this week. I had no plan for them when I bought them—I didn’t even know what people do with fresh currants—I just thought they looked beautiful all tangled together in the sun. I picked at them for a few days, sprinkling them in fruit salad, etc. and then I decided to try baking them into this cake, which is tangy and delicious and has a lemon sugar crust.

“They’re not Cherries” Redcurrant Cake 

Lemon Topping

• 2 T melted butter
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• Zest of half a lemon

Mix together the ingredients for the topping and set aside.

Redcurrant Cake

• 2 cups cake flour
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 10 T unsalted butter, softened
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup sour cream
• 1 cup fresh redcurrants

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9” or 10” spring form pan.

In a medium-size bowl, mix together the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer until it is smooth. Beat in the granulated sugar a little at a time for about 2-3 minutes until the mixture is fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. (You don’t want to add them too quickly or you’ll deflate all the little bubbles in the butter you just worked so hard to create, so pour the egg into one side of the bowl, start the beater in the other and let the egg get pulled up into the batter.) Mix in the vanilla.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture. Beat until just blended. Add ½ of the sour cream (1/3 cup). Beat until just blended. Add the next 1/3 of the flour mixture. Beat until just blended. Add the rest of the sour cream (1/3 cup). Beat until just blended. Add the last of the flour mixture. Beat until just blended.

Fold in the redcurrants. Pour the batter into your prepared spring form pan. The batter will be thick and fluffy. Spread it evenly into the pan. Pour the lemon butter topping onto the batter and then gently stir it with a spatula so that it’s swirled through the batter but not fully blended.

Bake for 40-50 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting.

“Say ‘Thank You’ and Get Over it” Blueberry Pancakes

Recently, I’ve been struggling with a shoulder injury that started as something so small as to be basically ignorable and then gradually spread all the way down my left side into my SI joint. It became bad enough that I finally went in to health services to get it looked at. Six weeks of diligent physical therapy later, I’m finally starting to feel better. I’m probably still a ways from being completely rehabilitated, but at least I’m beginning to believe there is an end to the pain instead of just skeptically going through my exercises, motivated by desperation rather than faith in the cure.

Having an injury sucks. However. Dealing with chronic pain for the first time in my life has made me realize—probably also for the first time in my life—that my body is mostly freaking awesome.

I, like many, feel ambivalently towards the corporeal aspect of my existence in this world. For starters, I’m not sure I’m entirely willing to commit to the idea that there is such a thing as “my body,” which is apparently why I can never be an astronaut. “They won’t shoot you into space,” Mr. Poor Baker tells me, “unless you’re willing to make the ontological commitment to physical reality.” So, there’s that little irritation.

But on a less metaphysical and I expect more widespread level, I have also yelled at my body for not being skinnier/stronger/healthier/taller/less knock-kneed/more graceful/equipped with a smaller nose. I’ve said things about it I wouldn’t say about the bitchiest, meanest girl on the block.

Yet, in its defense, if this is the only time I’ve had to manage any kind of lasting injury in almost three decades, it’s actually done its job in this world pretty darn well. And so, I think I just need to say “thank you” and get over it. And there is no better way to say “thank you” to your body than to make it blueberry pancakes for breakfast. (Okay, lunch.)

“Say ‘Thank You’ and Get Over it” Blueberry Pancakes

This recipe makes about 9-10 pancakes, and they are, hands down, the best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had. No lie.

• 1 ¼ cup flour
• 2 T sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• ¾ cup honey-flavored Greek yogurt*
• ½ cup milk
• 1 egg
• 3 T vegetable oil
• ½ cup fresh blueberries
• Butter
• Brown sugar

* I use Greek Gods yogurt. My mother says this yogurt has spoiled her for all other yogurt, and I’m inclined to agree with that sentiment. If you use unsweetened yogurt, I recommend increasing the sugar in the recipe by 2 tablespoons. 

Heat up a skillet or griddle on medium to medium-high.

In a medium-size bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a liquid measuring up, fill to the ¾-cup line with Greek yogurt. Pour milk on top of the yogurt up to the 1¼-cup line. Add the egg and oil and whisk together. (You can, of course, measure all these ingredients out into a bowl, but why dirty more dishes?)

Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and whisk together until smooth. Add a little butter into the hot skillet, and then scoop about 1/3 cup of batter per pancake into the pan. While the bottom of the pancake cooks, sprinkle the top of the batter with fresh blueberries. The pancakes are ready to be flipped when you can see the bubbles in the batter start to pop. Flip over and cook another 30 seconds or so until the blueberries start to sizzle.

I don’t serve these with syrup. Instead, I just put some butter on them and sprinkle them with brown sugar and more fresh blueberries. No syrup–I know it sounds crazy, but try it. Seriously.

“A Hundred Visions and Revisions” Summer Fruit Crumble

I’m lucky to be the daughter of a writer because I never labored under any illusions that writing was easy. I knew from the very beginning that good writers are not the ones who write a perfect first draft but rather are the ones who are willing to throw great chunks of the first draft away. I saw that the heartbreaking, exhausting work of revision is never comfortable—that good writers need to be willing to tear their writing apart and sit in the middle of the mess until all the fuzzy, disrupted connections start to form again, clear in new ways. Better ways. I saw that one needs to gather up those tiny fibers of ideas with a calm hand and be confident that enough twisting will yield a thread strong enough to weave with. I already knew that sometimes the floor of one’s study needs to look like this.

But knowing that doesn’t stop T.S. Eliot from going through my head as I shuffle strips of paper around and back again across the carpet. I can’t have the fan blowing. I can’t let the cat into the room. So I listen to him scratch at the door (the cat, not T.S. Eliot), and I sit and swelter as I murmer to myself,

In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Once, I was talking to my students about cutting superfluous fluff out of their sentences. One of my students asked me, “But what if once you cut all the fluff you realize you didn’t actually have anything to say?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Or even any words of reassurance. I guess his question might have hit a little too close to home.

And, so, I also guess that when it comes down to it, a good writer has to trust that she has something to say–that something important or poetic or solid or significant will grow out of the fragments all over the study floor–because it’s the only thing that can give you the courage to make the mess in the first place.

“A Hundred Visions and Revisions” Summer Fruit Crumble

Filling

• 5 cups chopped fruit (I used strawberries, rhubarb, blueberries and peaches)
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 T fresh mint, chopped
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3 T tapioca meal or cornstarch*

*I have been out of cornstarch for a couple of weeks, so I’ve been grinding tapioca pearls in the coffee grinder to use as a thickener. The pies I made on the fourth of July had mixed results, but the tapioca worked pretty well in this crumble, so we’ll call it a draw. Empty Kitchen: 4; Poor Baker: 6

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Put the fruit in a medium size bowl and sprinkle with the lemon juice and mint. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, tapioca or cornstarch, and cinnamon. Pour over the fruit and toss to coat.

Crumble Topping

• ½ cup flour
• ½ cup old fashioned oats
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup brown sugar, packed
• Pinch of salt
• ½ cup (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter

In a medium-size bowl, mix together the flour, oats, brown and granulated sugars, and salt. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender and two knives until coarse crumbs form.

Grease a baking dish (either 8×8 or 9×7). Pour fruit mixture into the baking dish and sprinkle the crumbles on top. Bake 40-45 minutes or until the crumbles are crunchy and brown.

“Terribly Inefficient” Blueberry Pie

A few days ago, an article was published in Slate Magazine defending the inefficiency of the university. The author, Siva Vaidhyanathan, is responding to the ever-growing push to run universities like businesses—schools like Vaidhyanthan’s (UVA) and my own are hiring presidents based on their promises to minimize costs and maximize results rather than on their commitment to education, their knowledge of the academy, or their own credentials as scholars.

When this happens, the humanities and other theoretical liberal arts are the first departments targeted as dead weight, unable to justify the immediate relevancy of their abstract and archaic principles and practices for today’s bustling, progressive age. And apparently we need to ditch all that dead weight if we’re going to gather enough speed to move forward.

I’ve labored under this specter of insecurity myself the past few years as I’ve evaluated my decision to aim for a career in academia in spite of the overwhelming number of voices clamoring to tell me that I and all my ilk are idiots of the highest order. In another, imagined life for myself I’m a social advocate and activist, doing ground-level grassroots work to fight injustice and improve quality of life for all people. But in this life, I’ve chosen to believe in the value and significance of slow, muddy change.

So, I was heartened to see this reminder in Vaidhyanathan’s article:

You didn’t get polio in your youth because of research done in the early 1950s at Case Western Reserve University. California wine is better because of the University of California at Davis. Hollywood movies are better because of UCLA. And your milk was not spoiled this morning because of work done at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

These things did not just happen because someone saw a market opportunity and investors and inventors rushed off to meet it. That’s what happens in business-school textbooks. In the real world, we roll along, healthy and strong, in the richest nation in the world because some very wise people decided decades ago to invest in institutions that serve no obvious short-term purpose. The results of the work we do can take decades to matter—if at all. Most of what we do fails. Some succeeds. The system is terribly inefficient. And it’s supposed to be that way.

UVA reversed their decision to replace a president who believed in the benefits of investing in long-term research, scholarship, and education with a president who had a snappy sales pitch. I very much doubt that my own university is going to follow UVA’s admirable example, although I’m encouraged by the number of voices that are meeting on campus today to protest the appointment of a president whose public history does not indicate that he will value the contributions of slow research.

My dad was here visiting over the past week, and we got into many a conversation about the state of the world and everything in it. He and I didn’t always agree, but I realized (or perhaps I’ve always known) where my long eye—where my willingness to suspend the easy answer—comes from. I made this blueberry pie for his birthday because he doesn’t like cake. And because he also kicks against the myth of efficiency, understanding that “forward” is only one direction.

“Terribly Inefficient” Blueberry Pie

Makes 1 ten inch blueberry pie

Crust

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• ¾ cups unsalted butter (1 ½ sticks)
• 5-8 T ice water mixed with 1 T lemon juice
• Zest of one lemon

In a medium-size bowl, mix together flour, salt and lemon zest. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or two butter knives. Add in the lemon water one tablespoon at a time, tossing dough with a fork until it comes together when you squeeze it, but it doesn’t feel wet or soggy. (I’ve said before, but I’ll say again, the trick to excellent, flakey pie crust is to make sure all your ingredients are cold as can be. Also, don’t over-handle or overwork the dough.)

Separate the dough into two balls, one slightly larger than the other. (The slightly larger one will be your bottom crust.)

Flatten the dough into two disks on two pieces of plastic wrap, then put in the fridge to chill while you prepare the filling.

Filling

• 6 cups blueberries
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 2 T candied ginger, coarsely chopped*
• ¼ cup cornstarch
• 1 egg white

*If you’re wondering if I put ginger in everything I bake or cook, the answer is basically “yes.”

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and cornstarch. Add the blueberries and toss to coat.

Roll out the bottom crust. To keep your crust even and round, you want to roll in a circular motion, keeping one end of your rolling pin in the center of your circle. (Imagine you’re drawing a circle with a compass.)  Put the bottom crust in a 10” pie dish and brush with an egg white. (I wrap the crust around my rolling pin to get it in the dish. You can also roll it out on parchment paper and just flip it upside-down over the dish as well.) Spread the blueberry filling evenly in the dish. Roll out the top crust the same way as the bottom crust, cutting out shapes if you’d like. Put over the filling and pinch the edges together to seal. (If you don’t cut out shapes from the top crust, make sure you cut slits into it to let the steam out.) Brush the top with the rest of the egg white.

Bake 50-60 minutes until the top is crispy and brown.

“Five-year Anniversary” Strawberry Mascarpone Crepes

What is it about the way Anglo-American societies prioritize multiples of five when it comes to wedding anniversaries? Is it because we all learn to count by fives in elementary school? Because we think in base-10 and it’s easily halved? Because, as Jungian numerology would have it, there is something about the number five that is beautifully synchronic with being human—five appendages, five senses, five fingers on each hand? A couple’s fifth-year anniversary is apparently their wooden anniversary, and to celebrate ours, Mr. Poor Baker and I are spending the weekend in a log cabin in the woods. (Actually, I didn’t know the fifth-year anniversary was the wooden anniversary until I googled it just now, so really the fact that we’re staying in a cabin in the woods on our wooden anniversary is nothing but a happy coincidence. Synchronicity? I think so.)

We don’t leave for the cabin until tomorrow even though our anniversary is today—at least the anniversary for our first wedding—so, I mostly just ran errands this morning, including a trip to the farmers market where I did at least get strawberries to make a fancy anniversary breakfast. (Which we didn’t eat until well past noon). I won’t say that Mr. PB married me only for the food—I’ll just say that before I came into his life he was living off espresso and peanut butter.

Sometimes I find it kind of amazing that we managed to get ourselves married at all. I always swore that I wasn’t going to get married, and my husband didn’t really talk about himself as the marrying kind either. When he first said to me, “I think I could marry you,” I meant to say no, but instead I said, “Okay,” and then decided I’d better go with it before my brain could catch up with my obviously stupid mouth. Like a marriage of yore, we barely knew each other before we jumped the broom.  I guess we got lucky, because it turns out we actually kind of like each other after all. Or maybe our mouths knew something our obviously stupid brains didn’t.

“Five-year Anniversary” Strawberry Mascarpone Crepes

Makes 8 filled crepes

Crepes

• 2 eggs
• ½ cup water
• ½ cup milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 2 T melted butter

Heat a skillet over medium-medium high heat. In a medium-size bowl, whisk together the eggs, water and milk. Whisk in the flour and salt. Whisk in the melted butter.

Pour about 1/3 of a cup of batter onto the hot skillet, and then picking up the skillet by the handle tip it in a circle until the batter covers the bottom of the pan. Allow the crepe to cook until the edges start to crisp and curl, then flip it and cook on the other side for about 30 seconds. Keep warm on a plate in the oven until the entire stack is done. (The recipe makes about 8 crepes.)

Filling

• 2 cups strawberries, sliced
• 1 T granulated sugar
• 4 oz mascarpone cheese
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 3 T powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Powdered sugar for dusting

Sprinkle sliced strawberries with granulated sugar and set aside.

In a small bowl, beat together the cheeses with a hand mixer. (Or I suppose your stand mixer if you’ve got one—la de da—Empty Kitchen 3; Poor Baker 5). Beat in powdered sugar. Beat in vanilla and mix until smooth.

Spread a heaping spoonful of the cheese filling onto one side of the top crepe on the stack. Fold it in half. Fold it in half again and set aside on a plate. Repeat until all the crepes are filled, then spoon the strawberries over the top and dust with powdered sugar.

Here’s to many more.

“The Longest Novel in the English Language” Mocklava Cookies

Two posts in two days! One might think I’m preparing for a party. Or paying homage to Saint Honorius, patron saint of bakers and confectioners. Or, one might ask, what is she hiding from in the sweet sweet folds of that delicious butter pastry?

That, ladies and gentleman, is the longest novel in the English language. It’s longer than Ulysses. It’s longer than War and Peace. It’s shorter only than Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which I will never ever read.

I’m on page 360, and Clarissa hasn’t even absconded with Lovelace yet.

Finishing Clarissa is one of my goals for the summer, but I put it off just a little longer in order to make something for “A Lot on Your Plate’s” cookie bake-off. The idea behind the challenge is to make an elegant but quick and simple baked good, but I’m interpreting quick and simple in relative terms—like mocklava is to baklava as Pamela is to Clarissa. This recipe was of about medium difficulty since I made the puff pastry myself. But, it was a heck of a lot easier than real baklava, and if one used store-bought puff pastry, it would be like Shamela easy.

“The Longest Novel in the English Language” Mocklava Cookies

 Pastry

• 1 sheet puff pastry, thawed

or

Mock Puff Pastry from Scratch

• ½ cup butter, cut into pieces and frozen
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup ice water

This is basically a piecrust that is rolled and folded a couple of times. Like piecrust, it’s most successful when everything is kept as cold as possible.

In a medium-size bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or two butter knives until you have pea-sized lumps. Add water one tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork. You might need a tablespoon or so less or more of the water depending on the humidity in the air. The dough should come together when you squeeze it, but feel dry to the touch.

Gather the dough into a ball and then flatten it on a piece of cling wrap into a vaguely rectangular shape. Put in the fridge for about 20 minutes. Lightly flour your rolling surface. Roll the dough out into a rectangle (about 10×25 inches or so). Fold the dough into thirds like you’re folding a letter, turn, and then roll out again. Repeat three or four more times. If the dough starts to get too soft or sticky (difficult to work with) put it back in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes until it firms up. Either way, refrigerate or freeze the dough for about 20 minutes before you roll it out for the filling.

Filling

• 1 ¼ cups chopped walnuts
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Pinch of allspice
• ½ tsp lemon zest
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 3 T melted butter
• ¼ cup honey

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, mix together the walnuts, cinnamon, allspice, and lemon zest. Add the melted butter and stir. Add the honey and stir. Add the lemon juice and stir.

Roll out your puff pastry into a 10×25 inch rectangle (or unfold if using store bought). Spread the filling evenly over the dough, leaving about a 1” lip along one long edge to seal the roll. Starting at the opposite long edge, roll the dough up into a log. Slice into quarter inch rounds. Space the rounds evenly on your baking sheets.

Bake 20-25 minutes until the pastry is brown and crispy.