I Coulda Had a V8

Dear Gumdrop-


You have perfectly described a plague sweeping the entertaining nation with your self-diagnosed (and aptly, charmingly, named) Shyness Culinaria. When did it become a point of derision to want to go all out for your friends and family? When did pouring your love and affection into dainty pinwheel sandwiches become a bad thing? I laude your Teddy Bears’ Picnic initiative and have no doubt that Pretzel adored every minute.

Personally, I suffer from a rare culinary affliction that leaves me dizzy and delirious when trying a new recipe. The more complicated, the more feverish my delirium. But when I next make said recipe, I suffer from such a debilitating malaise, it infects the dish. Cakes that rose spectacularly first time around fall flat and hard; gratins that oozed and melted so perfectly you were transported to a tiny bistro in Paris leave you stranded in a greyhound bus station in Scarborough instead.

With this in mind, I decided to forego trying to repeat my past success with Bill’s Big Carrot Cake in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking, which brought down the house at a recent birthday party. It was one of those cakes that soothe your soul to make. I’d even grated the 100-mile carrots by hand (the fact that it was only because I couldn’t find the blade for the cuisinart in the jumble that is my kitchen utensil drawer is entirely irrelevant).

So instead, I decided to make the ultimate lemon layer according to an old Cooks Illustrated circa March 2007. The recipe said it had lightened up the traditional butter cake to complement the tangy lemon curd and was crowned with billowy mounds of a modified 7 Minute Frosting with just a touch of lemon. It sounded like the perfect Spring dessert, frankly.

I started with the lemon curd since that needed to be cool enough to spread. Reading over the directions, I realized I didn’t have any gelatin (my grandmother and her weekly homemade lemon meringue pie would shriek in horror at such a thought!) and decided to use the dependable lemon curd from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contess in Paris instead. Lemon curd’s perfect balance of tart and sweet is so satisfying, I’m always devastated that it never tastes right in anything other than a lemon tart or mile-high meringue pie. It’s like having mint sauce with any thing other than lamb: it’s just wrong.

Next came the cake, which did have a lovely light texture, although I undercooked it a bit despite leaving it in for the full time given in the recipe. Since cake is just a vehicle for frosting, I didn’t worry and set out to make the 7 Minute Frosting, which I’d never made before.

So it was a little disappointing to realize it was really just a meringue you didn’t bake. It used to seem like such a magical kind of icing, calling to mind adolescent games of 7 Minutes in Heaven. Except that really only happened in the Judy Blume books I read after-school and never really to me, so I guess my disappointment shouldn’t be too hard to overcome.

Despite the few little bumps along the preparation road, the cake assembled well even if I did wind up tossing a layer that was a little raw still (it became the cook’s treat). The frosting was the sort of pure glossy white that’s unachievable with vanilla butter cream and in its complete form, it looked like a charming country cake that should come with a side of rambling old lady with a hanky shoved up her cardigan sleeve.

In the end, while IE claimed this was his new favourite cake, I wished I’d made a lumbering hunk of coconut layer cake instead. So I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to console myself (they were perfect: bursting with velvety chocolate, crispy around the edge and slightly under-baked in the middle. Absolute heaven).

Xo
Pickle