October 2012

Hurricane Strudel

Well, the Frankenstorm is raging outside; in an effort to stave off cabin fever (since I’m now officially stuck home tomorrow as well), I decided to take on some projects. I replaced the buttons on the vintage cape I bought last month. And I made strudel. And I cleaned my house. Thankfully, I made strudel before I cleaned – this is not an un-messy baking project.


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Whiskey Cake and Gumdrops

Reason #5,000 I love James Beard: his whiskey cake recipe ends “I like to pour an extra half cup of whiskey over the cake.” I also love that this dense, boozy, fruit-and-nut packed brick is called a “cake.” Really, in modern baked good taxonomy it is probably closer to the “quick bread” phylum than the cake one. James Beard’s recipes and original cookbook, though, hark to a time when baking was more primitive and the primordial soup of “Sugary Things” had not yet separated into sharply defined branches. Well, maybe it had in France. But not here in ‘Murika!


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