Buche De NOOOOOOOOO!

Dear Pickle:

Well, you’ve done it now. You’ve discovered a real culinary insecurity. I have made a rolled sponge cake exactly once. It was a good fifteen years ago and I don’t remember what exactly went down – but I do remember it did not end well (in fact, I think it became a trifle. Which is the destination point for many failed culinary attempts. Can make you feel handy and thrifty, but never like a hero. Sigh.)

With a few more years under my belt and a lot more confidence in the kitchen, I really thought this wouldn’t be a problem. I chose what looked like a good Martha recipe, a gingerbread roulade. I can’t find the recipe online and, really, it’s just as well. At first things were going well. Indeed, I was very proud of myself when I wrapped the cake up in the towel to shape it. It smelled wonderful and gingerbread-y and it was nice and high and I thought my cake-y karma was changing.

Ummm, maybe I should pay more attention to my Protestant roots and forget the Buddhist stuff. Did you ever have a granny who said ‘Pride goeth before a fall’? Yeah. Because SOMEBODY over here forgot to put icing sugar on the towel. So when she unrolled this 'perfect' cake to fill and ice it, it stuck. And cracked. And – boo-hoo. Sigh.

The Brown Sugar Buttercream gave me a hard time too, but this I could handle. A few years ago, I made (I swear to God this is true) FIVE wedding cakes in one year. All with Italian meringue buttercreams. This is why there was no cake at my wedding. :) So when my buttercream was lumpy, I just knew it was because my butter was too cold. Heating one cup of the bump icing in the microwave for 30 seconds and then beating it back into the bowl smoothed it out and made it gorgeous. I may have actually screamed out “THIS S*#& IS AWESOME!” despite having been alone in my kitchen with two babies sleeping upstairs. I didn’t even care if I woke them at that moment.

Alas, the 'awesome s*#&' had to go into dry, cracked, uninspiring cake. The gingerbread kinda drowned out the delicate brown sugar flavour - not complementary as I had expected.

I think I failed this one. Even my dad didn’t have anything nice to say, and that’s how you know when you’ve failed. Pride goeth before a fall indeed. Ya got me. Wish me better luck next time! (I kinda hope there’s another roulade challenge coming from you some day. Because you can bet I won’t be making one spontaneously, and I should probably get back on the horse before a real phobia develops.)

Sigh,
Gumdrop

Roll With It

Gumdrop,

Having seen the non-edible fruits of your Halloween labour, you are entirely forgiven for your tardy post. Mom duties and Gourmet grief must be honoured. I have to admit that I was always more of a supermarket checkout reader of Gourmet. Its stunning covers were a handy calming device when a 600-item customer was a head of me in the 10 items or less lane.

While waiting for your post, I’ve been contemplating the next challenge, bemused by the options available to me. Should we humour your inner-hippie and bake some ancient grains bread? Maybe it was time to return to pastry and bake rustic apple tarts?

But then two things happened: First, my mom came over for dinner and brought an old stand-by: a strawberry jellyroll. It was a bold move on her part because dear old mom has had a terrible run rolling those darn sponges. The last few attempts have been dry and cracked, like feet in summer after a few missed pedicures. This time, she managed a moist cake, but it still had a lot of cracks. I was disappointed to learn that she used store-bought jam, not my aunt’s homemade jam filled with plump berries. Then again, this is a woman who, as a schoolgirl, traded her homemade cake for store-bought cookies.

The second thing that happened was I came across this drool inducing article during my daily epicurious visit and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of brown sugar buttercream ever since.

So while it’s too early to challenge you to a bûche de noël, I hereby issue the next challenge as a brown sugar buttercream roulade. The degree of garnish fussiness is entirely up to you!

Enjoy,
Px

In Morning (sic)

Regretfully, due to technical difficulties, will have to post this without pictures for the time-being. It cannot wait a second longer! May need to fire live-in Tech Support which may be awkward on account of the marriage certificate and all.

Dear Pickle -

The mummy cupcakes are SOOOOOO CUTE! The fact is, this is why every child needs a cool aunt. I can't believe there were no Halloween baked goods in our house - I was too busy making costumes and endless autumnal dinners (that the kids don't eat). I didn't even have time to make myself a costume and just went as 'harried chick'.

I know I'm unforgivably late with this entry, but on top of Halloweening, I have also been in mourning for Gourmet magazine. Up 'til now, I'd been listening to all the stories about the death of print media with a certain devil-may-care imperviousness ('Denver Post' closes? Ooooh, sad. Oh look, 30 Rock is back - and there's a cupcake in the fridge!) But this sad passage one hits a little too close to home. I've been reading Gourmet for a good twenty years. Yup. Apparently I must write a will, before I croak in a La-Z-Boy. It was a kind of aspirational lifeline for a girl in a tiny industrial town where 'gourmet' meant you made your Jell-o salad with FRESH fruit instead of canned. Yes, it was impossibly snobby and almost impenetrable at times - I remember a lot of stories about the meats of Eastern Hungary as eaten on authentic stagecoach tours or how to prepare 'Chicken Liver Veloute with Quails Eggs and Pickled Starfish'. And when I went through my looooong vegetarian phase, I'm not sure exactly what I kept reading for. But read it I did. My bit of a girl-crush on the elegant and spicy Ms. Ruth Reichl may've helped boost me over the hump. I've got a huge collection of back issues, some even older than I am, which I refuse to throw away. Much to the chagrin of my garage-cleaning hubbo. But someday, someday, I'll have the time to cook my way through them.

However, I must admit that my subscriber copies have been sitting for longer and longer in their sterile plastic wrappers. I'd get the magazine, take a glance at the impossibly gorgeous pear on the cover, and then it'd end up sitting there. Dejected. Raw (i.e. - uncooked from). And then the next issue would arrive, piling on top of the second dejectedly. I can't immediately remember the last time I actually whipped something from the pages. My near-daily epicurious.com habit means that I must've made a few of their things recently, but even then it seems that most of the recipes I pull up to actually make are from the younger, somehow more in step with me 'Bon Appetit'. It's definitely a more user-friendly mag, packed with loads of recipes and using ingredients you can find. Without going to Hungary.

So I am sorry, Gourmet. I guess I was part of the problem. I will miss paging through you and being an armchair glutton/tourist. But I don't have enough money or time for all the things you asked of me - I don't purchase Cadillacs and I am not sure I am up to creating a Chicken Liver Veloute.

Instead I hope to keep blogging with my much-more-punctual blog-mate (more punctual than ME, that is, not more punctual than Gourmet, which always arrived on time.) Pickle, I am SO proud of you for making it all the way through this coffee cake dance marathon! I agree, making dough is something that ought to fit so easily into our lives, because the steps aren't difficult or time consuming, even for this particular monster-piece recipe I assigned us. In fact I managed to squeeze it in before hopping a cross-country flight. The relaxing steps of mixing and waiting, kneading and waiting, shaping and waiting - they all fit in well around wrangling a baby and packing a suitcase (then a suitcase for the baby.)

Although all three boys in my house went nuts for this, I have to say I found it kinda 'meh' in the final balance. It was a little dry, a little too danish-like for my liking. Because I am not a fan of the danish. Undoubtedly there are good ones in the world, but most that I've encountered have a dry staleness that belies their calorie count.

Plus we've already discussed that I have a large-ish hippie streak in me, a part that wishes to live in a commune and grow sprouts for a living. Bread-baking brings this alternate personality too close to the surface already. So making the bread into this kind of ornate lazy daisy shape threatened a full-on breach of the hippie bit I would much rather keep buried. Until next Halloween, maybe. Should I dress up as a hippie? ;)

x
Gumdrop