Get In Line for U-PMAT Certification Class PC101: Pound Cake, Featuring Creamsicle Pound Cake. Take a Seat and Pay Attention.

Creamsicle Pound Cake, or THDAY cake. I made it for Naomi's birthday, but by the time we (I) got around to taking a picture, it no longer said HAPPY BIR. Never mind that, though--do you see how moist and lovely it looks?

Yes, The University of Pastry Methods and Techniques (Mascot: Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man) is now offering another class.  No more pussy footing about with Van Halen Pound Cake here and Sammy Hagar Pound Cake there.  Oh, no–today, it’s The Whole Enchilada.  So, sit back, pull up a seat and prepare to Take Notes.  As usual, you can pick up your certification at the end of class.

Back in The Day (being the late-ish 1700’s), pound cake was made with a pound of each of four things:  flour, eggs, sugar and butter.  They shoulda called it a Four Pound Cake, but what do I know. I wasn’t there.  At any rate, as you can imagine, this cake was dense (leavening?  Where are you, leavening?), not terribly sweet (1:1 flour to sugar as opposed to modern pound cake at about 1:1.5 flour to sugar), and not terribly flavorful (salt?  vanilla?  Hello?)  It was prolly a bit tough (a bunch of water in all those egg whites and no dairy to creamy it up a bit, not to mention whatever kind of Crunchy Colonial Flour they were using).  Gee, sounds yummy, huh?  Maybe not so much, but hey, the recipe was pretty easy to remember, right? 

The good things about pound cake were that the crumb was fine (the Cup Half Full side of “dense”), it toasted and sliced well, and the recipe really was easy to remember.  Most likely, some Renegade Colonial Bakers started tinkering with the basic recipe to lighten it up and just make it plain taste better.  These changes weren’t necessarily written down, though.  This I understand.  I generally just fling things together, myself, so I can’t fault these Intrepid Bakers for just Going For It.  At some point, someone decided to start writing down some changes.  Good for them! And good for us, too.  I shan’t be looking up all the baby steps that it took to get from Four Pounds O’ Stuff to Van Halen Pound Cake.  Let’s assume that there were many, though, shall we?  Sorry about my woggly columns; I am not Table Girl.

Original Recipe         PMAT’s Modern Van Halen Recipe
Flour             16 oz.                                        13 oz. cake flour
Sugar            16 oz.                                         19 oz.
Eggs               about 10                                  5
Butter           16 oz.                                        12 oz.
Milk               huh?                                          8 oz.
Leavening    huh?                                         1 teaspoon
Salt                huh?                                         1 teaspoon, barely
                                                                           rounded
Flavoring      huh?                                         2 1/2 teaspoons

Take a look at these changes: 

1. Reducing the flour by 3 oz, or about 2/3-3/4 cup by volume, as well as using a low protein flour reduces change of too much gluten formation.
2. Increasing the sugar by 3 oz, or about half a cup, not only makes the cake sweeter, but it also adds to the tenderness and brownability.  Yup, I’m pretty sure that’s a real word.
3. Cutting the number of eggs in half reduces the amount of water in the cake and allows for a thicker batter and less chance of gluten formation.  And do we seriously need 10 eggs in a cake?  The 5 yolks add plenty of richness and contain enough lecithin to keep the batter nicely emulsified.
4. Someone decided that it was Necessary to reduce the butter by 4 oz (1 stick) because who needs a pound of butter in their cake?  Don’t answer that.  Plus, it further lightens things up.
5. Adding the dairy keeps things from being too stodgy, allowing for better mixing and a more even rise.  Plus, the lactose further sweetens things. 
6. To get a Serious Rise, you’d have to use 3 teaspoons of baking powder.  With a pound cake, we want that nice, tight, velvety crumb, so 1 teaspoon is all it gets.  Just enough to help the Creaming Method air bubbles expand a bit during baking.
7. Salt and flavoring?  Well, they just make the cake taste better.

Using this Pound Cake Formula, I’ve made Ye Olde (Newe?) Van Halen Pound Cake four or five times now, and I’ve not made it the same way twice.  You can read about most of them on PMAT already, but the newest incarnation, and the one that I’m proudest of, I’ve been saving that one.  Introducing The Creamsicle Pound Cake!  Yes, it is so good that it deserves italics, bold and an exclamation point.  Here’s how it goes:

• 13 oz. cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt, barely rounded
• 12 oz butter at cool room temperature
• 18 oz sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom
• 1 tablespoon Microplaned orange zest
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup (2 oz) orange juice concentrate, thawed
• 1/4 cup (2 oz) half and half
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) heavy whipping cream, lightly whipped

For the Citrus Soak (I just made that name up)

• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste.  Don’t go crazy with the sugar, unless you reduce the amount in the cake by the same amount.
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup water

For The Glaze

• powdered sugar
• equal parts orange juice and half and half
• pinch of salt
• bit o’ vanilla

So that might look like a Ridiculous Lot of ingredients just for the cake alone, but look closely.  It all sticks to the basic ratio for the PMAT Van Halen Pound Cake.  Really.  I’ll show you.

Okay, so we have flour, baking powder, salt, and butter.  So far, so good. 

There’s 1 fewer ounce of sugar than in the Master Recipe.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Cardamom and orange zest?  I consider those flavoring agents, and I don’t include them in the formula.  They’re present in such small amounts (volume and weight-wise, not taste-wise) that I don’t even worry about them. 

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract=2 1/2 teaspoons, so we’re good there, too.

1/4 cup orange juice concentrate + 1/4 cup half and half + 1/2 cup heavy cream = 1 cup dairy/liquid + 1 ounce sugar.  The sugar was hiding in the OJ concentrate.  Sneaky sugar.  I found this out by looking at the back of the can.  It said that 2 oz. concentrate contained 24 g. sugar, and that’s almost an ounce, so there you have it.

And that’s really it.  Use a modified creaming method, thusly**:

1. Cream butter until smooth and light. 
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and light.
3. Add salt, flavorings (cardamom, zest, extracts) and cream until well combined
4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating about 20 seconds between additions.  Make sure your eggs are at room temperature.  If you don’t, your mixture will get curdly looking.  That’s because the butterfat hardens up (thanks, refrigerator temperature eggs) and won’t stay in emulsion with the water.  Honestly, I forgot a few weeks ago, and it happened to me.  It didn’t hurt the final cake, as far as I could tell, but it hurt my feelings.  Plus, it just looked kind of gross.  See:
   

   See, I told you it looks kind of gross.

5. Whisk flour and baking together very, very well.  Add half to the batter, barely mixing it in.
6. Barely mix in the OJ concentrate and the half and half.
7. Add the other half of the flour mixture in.  Again, just barely bring it together.
8. Whip the cream to very soft, slumpy peaks.  Gently mix into batter.  Finish by folding everything just a few times to make sure all the ingredients are incorporated.

**Assume that there is plenty of bowl scraping going on between additions.

I bake this 1t 325F for an hour-ish in a 10-cup Bundt pan that I spray liberally with pan spray and then coat with a lot of flour.  I go outside and knock the cake pan against the side of the porch to make sure there’s no extra flour lying around to gum up the works.  You don’t have to go outside, but do make sure that you knock out the loose, excess flour.

It’s done when it’s just starting to pull away from the sides of the pan, when it’s golden, lovely and well-risen, and when a knife stabbed down in the middle of the cake comes out clean.  I usually check at 50 minutes and then go another 10-15.

Let cool in the pan for thirty minutes.  Turn it out on a cooling rack, and then put the pan right back on it and turn it over again so it’s back in its pan.  Whisk together the soaking ingredients until the sugar is dissolved.  Pour it evenly all over the cake.  I even pulled back the sides of the cake a bit–gently–so the soak could run down into the bottom of the pan, too. 

The cake will seem Alarmingly Gooey.  I called my mom for moral support, and she expected the worst.  She’s a very nice lady, but she tends towards Glass Half Empty sometimes.  She did say we could just serve it in a cup.  How’s that for making lemonade from lemons?  Go, Jane!  To keep from fretting, do not mess with the cake At All until it has cooled down to room temperature.  Go shopping, or carve a gourd or something. 

When the cake has cooled down, turn it out onto a serving platter.  If you turn it out onto a cake rack, the bottom might sink down between the Skinny Rails of the rack and then end up on the top of the stove when you use two large spatulas to move the cake from the rack to a platter.  Don’t ask me how I know this.  I Just Do. 

Once the cake is completely cool, you can glaze it.  I made my glaze by putting about 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar into a bowl along with a pinch of salt.  Then, like some kind of OCD Freak Girl, I added a few drops of OJ, and then a few drops of half and half.  Then a few drops of OJ, and then a few drops of half and half.  I whisked in between so I could check the Viscosity of the Glaze.  I was going for thick pancake batter/icing just a bit too thin to spread.  See:

This isn't the Actual Glaze, because I didn't take pictures of it. This glaze is from another iteration of VHPC, just for reference.

When I was Almost There, I added a wee bit of vanilla, and then I was There.

Refrigerate until about an hour before serving.  This cake should live in the fridge–the part that you’re not actively Putting Into Your Face, that is.

Okay, so now you can make whatever version of pound cake you want.  Try it with all vanilla and all cream.  Try it with almond.  Use different spices.  Consider using some lime aid concentrate and some coconut milk in place of the dairy.  (I just thought of that–I’ma have to do that sometime, myself).  Use sour cream in place of the milk/liquid.  Make the creamsicle one and increase the concentrate to 1/2 cup (decrease the sugar by an extra ounce, of course).  That’ll be my next variation.  And maybe I’ll add some Grand Marnier or some Cointreau. 

Take the basic formula–13 oz cake flour, 19 oz sugar, 12 oz butter, 5 eggs, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 barely rounded teaspoon salt and 2 1/2 teaspoons of flavoring–and make it your own.  You could even try a chocolate pound cake.  Bonus points for anyone who can tell me how they’d do it.  And why.  Okay, that’s it, then.  Happy Halloween, everyone, and don’t forget your Pound Cake Prowess Certification.

Look! My Name is on the Cover! or Meet Starting From Scratch

I'm so happy and proud to be a part of Starting From Scratch.

So, a few months ago, my friend Drew from How to Cook Like Your Grandmother proposed a Project.  He wanted to put together a small-ish cook book to help folks feel more comfortable in the kitchen.  As you know, that’s right up my alley, so I jumped at the chance to be a Part of Things.  It soon became evident that the scope of the Project needed to be much broader.  Being a People Person, Drew contacted some of his other friends and experts in different areas of cooking to contribute material as well.  The result:  Starting From Scratch:  The Owner’s Manual for Your Kitchen. 

When Drew sent me the finished Table of Contents, even I was surprised by how comprehensive it was.  There’s information–great information–about everything from meats to knives to canning to vegetables to desserts to nutrition to equipment.   Plus a bunch more.  All the co-authors are truly experts in their fields, and the text is very conversational yet informative.  As a Bonus, there are a couple of Unconventional Sections.  If you’re a fan of The Absurd, they’ll be right up your alley.  If you’re looking for a Dry Cooking Text, this ain’t it.  And guess what?  Drew even let me keep my Gratuitous Capitalization.  Yay!  Thanks, Drew.

Wander on over to Starting From Scratch to take a look, read about the other co-authors, swipe a free chapter and Ponder Ordering.  Ponder hard, friends.  Think of the kittens. It’ll be available on November 2.  If you order before November 2, you can get a discount!  Cool, huh?  Just thought I’d let everyone know. 

Guess what else?  The book is available either for download as a .pdf file (E-Book) or as a Real Live Hold-in-Your-Hands book (print on demand): Click here to view more details 

“Oh, how do I get the discount?” you ask.  Good question.  On the order page, ”scratch1“  is the Secret Code for getting the print on demand version, and  “scratch2” is the Secret Code for the e-book version.

Excuse me, Waiter? I Didn’t Order Chocolate Chip Mousse.

Hey, wait a minute! I thought mousse was supposed to be smooth and creamy and poofy. What's with those antlers? (Photo attribution at end of post).

First, I must start with an Apology.  Friend Freckles asked about how to keep mousse from getting all crunchy when you start folding the chocolate into the rest of the ingredients.  She asked this a Very Long Time ago.  I had every intention of writing an Amazing Post to answer her question, but then it fell out of my brain completely.  My brain is Very Small and Cramped.  Anyway, rather than Berating me and calling me mean names because I didn’t do what I said I was gonna do,  she instead employed the You Catch More Flies With Honey Than With Vinegar approach and left another comment the other day, ending with a friendly, “by the way–how’s that chocolate mousse coming?”  Non-threatening and honey-esque, yes?  Of course, my first thought was, “What is she talking about?” See, I told you my brain is small and cramped.  At any rate, I did finally remember the question,  so here I am to answer her Excellent Question to the best of my ability.  Sorry for the tardiness, Freckles, but thanks for being nice!

Okay, so what do we know about chocolate?  Chocolate is an emulsion–wee dry particles of cocoa liqueur suspended in the bunch of different fats that make up cocoa butteYou’ve heard of chocolate’s seizing, right?  Well, that’s because you’re accidentally introducing just a Tiny Amount of liquid into the now-melted emulsion.  Do you think the liquid is going to mix with the dry particles or the fat?  I’ll give you a moment.  Insert Jeopardy Theme Song here.  The dry, you say?  You are correct!  Water is hardly going to play nicely with the fat.   So now what has happened is that this Tiny Amount of water has stodged together the dry particles.  The only way to unstodge them is to add enough liquid that the particles can freely slide past each other as opposed to clumping up.  Ever added just a few drops of water to a big old pot of sugar, maybe in preparation for making caramel or something?  The sugar just clumps up and gets stupid.  Keep adding water, though, and eventually you’ll be able to stir it freely and the sugar will even dissolve.  Lovely.  Same principle applies to chocolate.

Here’s another thing we know about chocolate:  you put it in the fridge, and it gets hard.  The fats firm up to the point of Rock Hard.  So, if you start mixing melted chocolate together with some crazy cold cream, it’ll get all chippy on you.

To fool melted chocolate into playing nicely with water-based and cold  ingredients, you’ve got to take both Things We Know About Chocolate into account.  As far as the emulsion deal, you’ll want to fold in the ingredient that has more water in it first.  And that’s egg whites.  Plus, egg whites whip best at room-ish temperature,  so you won’t have to really worry about the cold factor coming into play.  As far as the cream goes, you want to make sure that it’s not crazy cold.  Yes, they always tell you to make sure the cream is as cold as possible and to stash your bowl and beater over at the local Cryogenics Lab alongside Walt Disney before whipping.  But, here’s the thing, if your cream is too cold, you’re running the risk of chipping up your chocolate.  Besides, when it comes to making mousse, I advise only whipping until barely soft peaks.  You’ll continue to “whip” the cream as you fold everything together.  If you whip to medium or stiff peaks, you run the risk of overwhipping during the folding process and ending up with grainy mousse at best and chunky buttery mousse at worst.  Yum.

To avoid Unfortunate Chippage, fold in almost-all-fat yolks first, then fold in the whites.  These have enough water in them to keep the cocoa solids from clumping up, ‘member?  Last, fold in your slightly under-whipped and decidedly-cool-but-not-Arctic cream at the end.

And that’s pretty much that, I think.  Any of you guys have any tricks for avoiding Unfortunate Mousse Chippage?  If so, do tell.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dougtone/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Sunday Suppers: Go-at Cheese and Crostini

Hello, Ms. Go-at. You don't mind if we make cheese out of your milk and bake it, do you? Na-a-a-a-a-a. Goat humor. Gotta love it.

Several years ago–well, m0re than several, if you want to get technical–The Beloved and I enjoyed a lovely dinner at a restaurant in Charlotte:  300 East.  (So, I just went to their website, and an iteration of this appetizer is still on the menu.  Keen)!  For our appetizer, they brought us (because we ordered it) baked go-at cheese and baguette.  What showed up at our table was a wee log of chevre submerged in herbed olive oil and served with a sliced baguette.  The go-at cheese was Warm and Spreadable, and it was a simple but fantastic appetizer.  The Beloved and I looked at each other and said, “Heck, we can do this.“  And ever since, baked go-at cheese is our go-to easy/romantic light supper.  Along with a bottle of wine and a light salad (or not), it really is the perfect supper.  And now, I’m going to share it with you.

Of course, I’m just going to tell you the way I make it.  You may take any Liberties with this that you care to.  Use smoked go-at cheese.  Change up the herbs.  Use herbed or pepper-crusted go-at cheese.  You can even change up the oil that you use.  As with most of my “recipes,” this one is really more about the technique.  Take note, and go forth and make some of this.  You won’t be sorry.  I daresay you will be Very Happy.  You may thank me later.

Baked Go-at Cheese a la 300 East as Interpreted by Moi

• 1 log young go-at cheese–whatever you like
• a bunch of extra virgin olive oil
• kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• whatever herb blend makes you happy
• Some sort of crusty bread cut into 1/2″ thick slices

I am lucky enough to have some little Pyrex baking dishes that are only about 5″X7″.  I don’t know where I got them, but they are perfect for this.  Use whatever small broiler-proof shallow baking dish you have.  Put the whole log of go-at cheese in the dish, and drizzle on a Very Ton of olive oil.  I like to have about 1/4″ pooled in the bottom of the dish.  Don’t worry, you’ll use it up in a later step, and it’s good for your heart.  See, I care about your health.

Sprinkle on a healthy pinch of kosher salt and pepper and whatever herbs strike your fancy.  You can probably even use some kind of crazy dipping oil blend that you have in the back of your cabinet from that Christmas party from last year.

Place in the oven about 5″ from the broiler and let it go until the top of the cheese is a delightful golden brown and it’s all bubbly and wonderful.

In the meantime, toast the bread on both sides–I do this with the broiler, too, because my wee Pyrex fits alongside my baking pan.  Yay.

Once your bread and cheese are browned, take everything out of the oven.  Arrange the bread Attractively on some sort of platter, leaving room in the middle for the cheese.  Drizzle/spoon the hot, herbed oil over the bread, making sure that each piece gets its share.

To serve, use a metal spatula to place the Very Soft, Very Hot cheese in the center of the platter.  If you have any oil left in the baking dish, drizzle that on top of the cheese.  Use a spreader or knife to spread the hot cheese on the toasted bread.  You can call them crostini if you want.  Or even bruschetta.  Whatever–just make some.

Retro Refrigerator Cakes: Dirt and Zebras, Oh My!

What kind of chilled, swirly confection lives in you, old refrigerator?

So, guess what I did a couple of Fridays ago.  Give up?  Fine.  I went with my wonderful friend and neighbor, Susan, to her daughter’s third grade class to help them make dirt cake.  Here’s how that happened.  I was lounging around on the divan, eating bon bons and petting the kitties, when Susan called, asking me for my Culinary Expertise.  I quickly sat up, donning my Grown Up Chef Hat, bon bons and cats scattering to the Four Corners.  “So, what can I do for you?” I queried.  Susan told me all about the dirt cake, and she had some questions about making it.  I asked her what was in it, and she listed cream cheese and butter and sugar and vanilla and crushed up Oreo cookies.  And then, she said The Words:  Instant Pudding and CCCCOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL  WWWWHHHHIIIIIIIPPPP (read that in a really deep, really slowed down voice).  Dear Lord, is it not possible to get away from Cool Whip?  I guess the answer is a big fat NO.

Let me stop for just a minute and let you guys know how great Susan and her family are.  We are so thrilled to be their neighbors we can hardly stand it.  Susan is funny and fun and smart, and she accepts my strange working-in-my-jammies job and is generally fun to hang out with.  Her lovely husband, Chuck, is wonderful too.  We hang out over there in the evenings sometimes, enjoying Adult Beverages and talking and laughing and laughing.  And Jackson, their son, is going to help us with our Scary Halloween Extravaganza.  We’re going to wrap him up in tea-dyed cheese cloth so he can Wreak Havoc on our Haunted Trail as a mummy.  It’s going to be Awesome.  Jackson is a Very Good Sport.  Sophie is delightful.  She reminds me of myself as a kid, which is kind of a fun thing.  She has a great sense of humor, and she loves our kittens.  When we go Away for a weekend, she and Susan come over and play with the chill-ren and make sure they are fed and happy.   They also have a big muddy, slobbery dog.  His name is Howard, and he is a Piece of Work.  We like him a lot, too.  So, everyone  understand this:  just because I hate Cool Whip doesn’t mean that I don’t love The Hansens.

Now, back to Gentle and Loving Ridicule.  There was a whole Episode on the phone wherein butter melted in 4 seconds in the microwave.  Four seconds?  Really?!  Out of the fridge?!  What kind of Mutant Microwave are these people using?  That explains the gentle glow they give off at night.  At any rate, I told Susan I’d be right over, so I slapped on a baseball hat and wandered over to their place.  Turns out,  it wasn’t butter that melted.  It was margarine.  A very different animal, and one I Fear.

This whole dirt cake deal involved creaming together some cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar and then folding it together with an Instant Pudding/Cool Whip death duo.  Then, that gets layered in a Vessel (they suggest a clean flowerpot.  We used a bowl) with crushed chocolate cookies and Gummi Worms.  Then, you chill the Whole Deal and scoop it out, worms and all.  Yum?  Well, I think it could be Yum, but I’d make a chocolate mousse for the goo and some homemade chocolate wafers instead of using every form of hydrogenated fat known to man.  I guess there is some strange satisfaction to be had from making Dr. Mengele’s Death Cake, but at the moment, it escapes me.

Anyway, we mixed up our chocolate goo and headed off to Sophie’s school.  I had The Best Time there.  ‘Member that I used to be a Special Education Teacher?  I fell back into my role pretty smoothly.  In someone else’s classroom.  At one point, a little girl in a pink shirt raised her hand and I actually Called on Her.  Oops.  After that, I tried to sit on my hands and let the lesson go where it would.  I did gravitate to some of the more squirrely children in the classroom.  I enjoy the squirrely ones.

Here is a Reasonable Facsimile of the Dirt Cake we made.  Of course I didn’t take any pictures.  Remember, I ran over there In Haste to save Susan from the industrial strength killer microwave.

Do click on the picture and read the caption over at flickr. The last sentence made me laugh and laugh. You'll see why.

So then, yesterday, I wandered over to The Daily Spud.  There’s a giveaway going on right now.  If you live in the Ireland-ish area, you could win tickets to a Keen Chocolate Festival.  If you don’t live in Ireland-ish, you could win a book on chocolate.  Anyway, she posted a recipe that is basically just a chocolaty-buttery ganache with Digestive Biscuits mixed in.  You chill the whole deal and then just slice off slabs of the stuff.  I know, right?!   It’s like a DIY Gourmet Kit Kat bar.  This confection put me in mind of what I refer to as Zebra Cake and what others refer to as Nabisco’s Famous Chocolate Wafer Cake.

I first heard about this cake when I was a kid reading a Judy Blume book.  I can’t remember if it was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret or Deenie or what, but I do remember that the parents had gone out, and Our Herione was home alone with a box of wafer cookies and a can some sort of Pressurized Whipping Cream.  She made the cake by stacking the wafer cookies together with whipped cream until she had a Log O’ Cookie.  Then, she swirled the whipped cream attractively all over the outside of the log.  It ended up looking like an albino buche de Noel.  In a good way, of course.  This scene has stuck with me for probably thirty or so years:  whipped cream layered with chocolate cookies.  Oh, hooray; yes, please!

I didn’t get around to making one of these guys until years and years later.  I searched high and low for the Special Cookies (search high–they’re usually on the top shelf at the grocery store.  Sometimes they’re on one end or the other of the cookie aisle.  Sometimes they live with the ice cream cones and stuff.  You’re welcome.) and some whipping cream and I just Went For It.  After all, it’s not like it was rocket science.  It’s cookies and whipped cream.  I’ve seen folks make them so they look like Schema for Cake, but I prefer them in log form.  I’m not going to give a recipe for this stuff–I trust that you’ll all be fine.  I will suggest that you can flavor your whipping cream however you’d like.  You can even change up the cookies.  I’m thinking that ginger snaps might work quite nicely for a Thanksgiving Treat, thankyouverymuch.

Thank you, Judy Blume, for introducing me to this particular heaven.

You’ve made it this far; now it’s time for the Tie In.  I prolly should have taken care of that way up at the top, but I didn’t want to start with a Thesis Statement.  So, here we go.  That we can enjoy (or not) Dirt Cake and Zebra Cake rests totally on the advent of refrigeration.  Once the refrigerator made its appearance in homes, recipes for “icebox cakes” proliferated.  Cakes that really weren’t cakes at all–layers of gooey, crunchy and creamy that came together in the chill of the refrigerator to make a Spectacular Dessert.  As an aside, Jell-o also got a big boost when refrigerators started popping up in everyone’s kitchen.  Here is a Most Excellent History of the Ice Box Cake for your enjoyment and edification.

So, do you have any favorite, or infamous, recipes for ice box cakes?  Better Than Sex Cake, perhaps?  Better Than Robert Redford Cake?  I’d love to hear all about it.  Bonus points for use of Gummi candy of any kind.

Updates from the Front Lines

Friends, I have missed you.  Now, I’m back(ish), so I want to let everyone know what’s going on in the land of PMAT and PCO and Life in General.

1)If someone offers you free kittens, run away.  Quickly.  It’s a very good thing that we love them and don’t mind eating ramen noodles and sand.

2)I finished all my linking stuff.  Hooray!  I will now quietly accept all of your Congratulations………….Thanks.  My web guru is feverishly working to get Pastry Chef Online online in its New and Improved Form.  I’m pretty excited, and I hope everyone will like the new look.

3)I’m a co-author!  I contributed some material to my friend Drew’s new book, From Scratch, and he introduced me on his wonderful blog, How to Cook Like Your Grandmother.  Go see!  When the book is Out, there’ll be a link over here if you’d like to pick up a copy.  I think you should, of course, and not just ’cause I wrote some of it.  It’s a comprehensive guide to the basics.  I think you’ll enjoy it.  Hats off to Drew for all his hard work in herding the Unruly Contributors and editing like a Champ.

4)I made another iteration of Van Halen Pound Cake a few days ago for Uncle Ray’s 93rd birthday Celebration.  I call it “Cinnamon Cream Pound Cake.”  On account of it has about 3/4teaspoon of cinnamon and a cup of lightly whipped cream.  It was G.U.D. Good.  You should probably go ahead and make one now.  Use 3 sticks of butter and 2 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla plus the cinnamon and the cream–and if you have some, use some brown sugar along with the white for a total of 3 cups or 19 oz.  Everything else is the same.  I’m considering making it with the two-stage method at some point, although if it were any more tender than it already is, it might Kill Me with Deliciousness.

5)Since I last saw you all, my Best Friend Who I’ve Never Met, Linda, has turned into a friend In Real Life.  How cool is that when that happens?  Linda is a wonderful pastry chef who works at a keen country club in Lynchburg, VA.  She came down to stay with us a couple of weeks ago, and we had the Best Time Ever.  We laughed and talked and ate and drank Adult Beverages and had a fire in the fire pit and took a nap on Saturday afternoon.  Not together, but still.  I also gave her a Blogging Lesson, and I expect her to write Amazingly Informative Posts.  Here’s her blog (I don’t think there are any posts yet, though):  The Accidental Pastry Chef.  Do check back occasionally, because you won’t be disappointed.  She really knows here stuff and is one of the most creative and funny people I know.

And now, I’m off to talk to my web person so I can let everyone know What’s Happening with the Site.  Before I go, here are some videos for your Enjoyment.  You’re welcome.This one is for my mom–she adores Brian May.

Here’s one of Adam singing One Republic’s Come Home.  Lovely.

And here’s my boy singing Time for Miracles.  Yay!