A (little) Break from Cake

I'm the punchline to a joke I don't even know. Almost everyday for the last two weeks I've been lugging home large cake boxes from school. Filled with.... you guessed it. Cake. Roulade, Chiffon, Angel Food, Sponge, Genoise, Genoise Mousseline. Towering layer cakes and mammoth rectangular almost-cakes filled with creamy mousse to make tiramisu, charlottes and bavarians. It sounds like both a dream and a nightmare, right?

On one of these recent afternoons, I shoved my cake box deep into the fridge and pulled out a bunch of vegetables. I grated and sliced until I had this:

Resulting in this:

This is my current favorite sandwich. Something to calm down my crazy sweet tooth.

Start with:
Pita bread
Hummus

Slice: 
Avocado
Radish
Cucumber

Grate:
Carrot
Beet

To Dress:
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Salt
Pepper

I like to toast the pita and then spread with hummus. You can eat this sandwich open-faced, or if you don't mind a delicious mess, stacked. Build layers of vegetables, starting with flat slices of cucumber and radish. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper as you go. Near the end of the vegetable layering, drizzle a generous amount of olive oil and balsamic vinegar (lemon juice would do, too). And if you have any salad greens, place them on top. Then, eat your vegetables! You will be very full. Then much later, you can have a piece of cake.

The Road to Birthday Happiness is Paved with Cake

Last Friday was Peter's birthday. Naturally, I made him a cake.

He requested something with pistachios or almonds. The field was open wide. When I have a special cake to make, one book I really love is Sky High: Irrisistible Triple-Layer Cakes, by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne. Birthday cakes should be grand. They should make the birthday boy or girl look at you wide-eyed as if to say, "This is for me?" You sacrifice a bit of elegance for wonderment. The French may not approve, but I say go for the triple-layer cake if you want to make someone feel special.

This one was not just impressive, it was delicious. A pistachio butter cake with layers of marzipan and apricot preserves is covered in a bittersweet chocolate ganache. As you can see, I hastily sliced into the cake (we were so anxious to try it), so excuse the crumbs. It was even better on the second day.

p.s. Wow. I had no idea this cake had been around the food blogger block a few times. You might have seen it on Smitten Kitchen or Leite's Culinaria. Recipes are posted on both sites.

Petits Fours Day

I think I know where my sweet tooth came from. Like a psychotherapy patient stretched out on a couch, a memory of poring over the Swiss Colony catalog with my Great Grandma Vi suddenly came to me. I remembered my absolute obsession with their Petits Fours– the precious scale of these miniature layer cakes seemed ordained by fairies. For Christmas, Grandma Vi would order me a box of chocolate covered toffee, which of course I'd devour, but I always yearned for the tiny cakes.

In class, we are in the thick of the cake module. Sorry–I completely skipped over breads! I'll return to that soon, but first, check out the results of our Petits Fours day:



A Petit Four is the French word for a bite-size dessert. The term dates back to the 19th century. It means "little oven," because petits fours were once baked at the end of the day using residual heat left in a wood-fired oven. Petits Fours are most often thought of as little cakes, but they can be any kind of diminutative sweet, including cookies and pastries.  

My petits fours are the Tiffany blue rounds topped with candied orange peel and almond.

I was delighted to see my classmates' artistry shine through, just as it did with the rainbow of tarts. We all started with layers of frangipane cake, baked in sheet pans, then cut into very small circles or squares. We made a sandwich of cake layers with raspberry or apricot jam. After this basic structure was assembled, we were free to experiment with color and toppings. Our only requirement was to make seven identical petits fours using a non-"vulgar" color. The French don't do fluorescent orange, so pastels were it. 

Like oil painters, we tinted white fondant frosting with food coloring, trying to get just the right shade. I struggled for what felt like an hour to arrive at the perfect Tiffany blue. Once the desired color was mixed, we poured the fondant over each cake, covering it completely. And after the struggle of working with fondant came the fun part–decorating. Some of my favorite toppings were candied violets (seen above, on the purple petit four), finely crushed pistachios, candied orange peel and chocolate glaze.

These tiny cakes were beautiful, but a lot of work. I daydreamed about tea parties while I steadily decorated mine. I pictured a lace-covered table, blue-green hydrangeas and tall milk-glass cakes stands dotted with petits fours. Mismatched china, a silver pot of strong Earl Grey tea, and a stack of linen napkins. No need for Swiss Colony. Now I know how to make my own tiny cakes.

Not in Kansas Anymore

My Dorothy moment came and, just as quickly, went. The moment when I realized that I am living in a city like no other. Isn't it strange how you can spend time in a place without absorbing it? I've been renting an apartment, going to school, and exploring as much as I can of New York during my free time, yet I didn't feel its magnetic pull until a few weeks ago.

It was the earthquake that started it all.

I didn't actually feel it, but I felt the city's reaction to it. A seismic shake, just a few seconds long, and an entire population is abuzz. The way that news travels through this town is electrifying. Everyone has a story, everyone has a perspective. Imagine it. The earthquake was but a preview of the hurricane hysteria to come.

Eerie and empty, 6th avenue the Saturday before the storm.

Thank god Hurricane Irene wasn't a catastrophic event. I know there are communities still suffering from its effects and I couldn't be more grateful that my particular spot on the map was spared. But when I think about the days leading up to the storm, I cannot believe how anxious I was. It's this city. It sucks you up in a gritty tumbleweed of collective anxiety and fear, with just a tinge of excitement. 

The day before the hurricane hit I was at the store, among a hundred others, buying food I could eat (and also stomach) if there was no electricity or gas. Peter overheard a couple arguing about a can of garbanzo beans. She insisted they could make a meal out of them; he said she was crazy and reached for a bag of Doritos (we had had a similar argument in the aisle of Gristedes just the day before).

The day of the storm I spent baking. I took the train to Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, before the entire MTA system shut down, and I baked brownies, fruit crisp, clafoutis batter, cheesecake, bundt cake and more for a photo shoot scheduled for Monday. Optimism. Yet what else can you do? The chef I was working for had a living room full of gorgeous produce that would surely perish if we didn't laugh in the face of Irene and proceed as scheduled. So bake, we did.

The night of the storm I took a taxi back to my apartment and waited. And waited a little more. The sky was so calm and the empty streets beckoned. Plus there was a Red Sox game on and we had no TV. So Peter and I ventured out, with just a few pre-storm hours to go, and we had a slice of pizza from Ben's, then holed up at Professor Thom's to watch the game. While walking home the rain started to come down in sheets. A few blocks from the apartment, I ducked into the last bodega open and bought a six-pack of beer. Then home to bed and whatever the next day would bring. 

The storm roared through town in the middle of the night. For hours the window panes rattled and dark shadows from reeling branches darted across the bedroom walls. I didn't sleep very well at all. When morning came, the lovely trees around the park stood tall and the streets were nearly dry. 

Of course New York survived. It's been through much, much worse, after all. Yet for a moment, I really felt it. I got swept up in the city and it's surge of neurotic energy. For the rest of the time I'm here, I can no longer avoid it. Hello, New York. You've got me.


p.s. For a glimpse at how eerie and beautiful the empty streets were during Hurricane Irene, check out this short film.