guest list

 

Dear Celebrants,

It's weird, but for the first time, the Naked Ladies were late for my birthday!  They are so late, that I had given them up for lost.  I have been out under the window looking, prodding at their swollen bulbs, for weeks!  Nothing.  Last week, I stopped bothering to look- and I know you know where this is going- and today, I looked at them quite by accident, the way you might glance at an unwatched pot, and, there were the buds!  They bloomed at my Mother's a few weeks ago, right on time, and along the road at the place where there used to be a house, and in ditches, yards, and gardens for 300 miles, but the ones here, the ones I call 'mine' were late; I mean, they are late.  We will have a cake anyway, I think, to celebrate their arrival!  This cake, which I call Valerie's Vanilla Cake, because it is based on Valerie Gordon's recipe from her fine cookbook Sweet.

Valerie's Vanilla Cake

7.5 ounces of butter (if you use salted, and you can, don't add the salt in the recipe)

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 tablespoon of golden syrup (or light corn syrup, or honey, or just skip it anyway, this isn't rocket fuel!) 2 tablespoons vanilla extract (or the fabulous vanilla paste)

Beat it all up to fluffy.

2 tablespoons sour cream (or crème fraîche*, or heavy cream, or yogurt)

3 whole eggs

1/3 teaspoon salt (or not, see butter above)

Whisk the eggs and cream together, in a separate bowl.

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 teaspoon baking powder

Mix that up a bit, in a separate bowl, and then add the dry ingredients and the eggy mix to the fluffy butter/sugar in three or four alternating batches.  Once it is combined, smooth it down into a 9 inch diameter, 2 inch deep greased and floured pan.  Bake it for 28 to 35 minutes, at 350, rotating it halfway through the baking.  Let it cool in the pan, then unmold the cake and frost it, or eat it.  

I put a cream cheese icing on this one; and you can too, by beating up some butter and cream cheese with confectioner's sugar and adding vanilla.  I use a lot of vanilla, the lovely paste kind, about a tablespoon, and I am not at all measuring in my proportions of the rest, but, say 3 ounces of cream cheese, and 2 or 3 of butter, a pinch of salt, and then maybe 2 to 3 cups of confectioner's sugar?  Add the sugar in 1/2 cup increments, and stop when you think it tastes right.    

* Make your own, if you like: a video, a written recipe.

Baking, July.

 

Dear July,

I am trying to pace myself in your heat wave- this is day 4; there are 6 to 10 more!  There is no ice cream; we ate it in the pre-heat heat wave of a week ago.  We had cake instead.  Cake is brought to me today through the great and glorious technology of Modern Conveniences.  A little after the last big record shattering (and mentally scarring) heat wave of  the First Covid Year of 2020, we got a spiffing heat exchange air conditioner.  And last year, I was given a hand me down very Fancy Toaster Oven.  

This toaster oven is not at all like Old Bess, our beloved stove which runs on great gobs of propane; the emissions of which fill our well sealed straw bale house, especially when you don't want to open the door or window to let in the triple digit heat.  This Little Bess, a Bessie, really, is electric and using it does not make the red light flash on the Units of Death* meter we have in the kitchen.  It heats up in an absurdly short time, and can cook some fairly large things, like this cake!

It's adapted from a recipe from the wonderful people at Hayden Flour Mills.  Here is the original, and this is what I made today, with just a bowl and a spoon; no mixer required.

1/2 cup light olive oil (one that doesn't taste of olives)

1 cup sour cream 

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 egg

      Mix all the above in a bowl, until it isn't lumpy.  Add:

1/2 cup tortilla flour (masa harina, for instance, or use more A. P. flour, or go crazy, and add cornmeal or buckwheat flour)

1 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt.

     Mix all this until it isn't lumpy and pour it into a 8 inch, greased, round pan.  Bake it in Little Bessie, or Old Bess, or whatever you have for an oven, for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees.

Now, you can eat it as it is, or you can make a simple glaze:  In this instance, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and heavy cream until it is the right viscosity (trust yourself!).  But, this cake would be great with ice cream or whipped cream, or even whipped up ricotta!  It's what Marion Cunningham would call a "plain cake" and plain here means it is like a tee shirt, it goes with everything!

* AKA carbon dioxide monitor.

PS I almost forgot your song, July!  I know, I know; the drinking, the driving, the objectification of women, but, oh!  The euphemisms, the longing, the story; and anyway, I have not been known as the saint of San Joaquin!

Another list.

 

Dear To Do,

1.  Listen to this.

2.  Consider carefully these words.

3.  Assemble a group of photographs.

4.  Make a cake.

PS

Yes, I am sorry, you will have to register for a free account to read those words, but it won't take you that long.  If you end up extra time leftover, you can send your own condolence to insecurity!

cakewalk

 

Dear Party-Going,

I knew you were coming, so I baked a cake.  Shall we dance for it?  Like they did in the days of yore....

The shadow cast by a drawn line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Cassatt's pastels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Drawing,

 

I met an artist this summer who said (of herself ) she was "such a 19th century artist" with a little delighted chuckle at her drawing.  At least I think she said 19th, now I worry she might have said 18th?  In any event, I took it to mean that she had an affinity for drawing detail and realism.  Her drawings were convincing and filled with specificity.  Also, and this is where it gets interesting, a quietness.  How did that get in there?  I don't know.  One of her drawings was filled with people and cars, and a giant radio antenna tower, yet is felt as open and calm as meadow with a few cows.  Is this how the 21st century looks if you draw it right?

 

Which is related in the usual Dodo round about way, to the image above; of Mary Cassatt's pastel boxes.  What beautiful cylinders of color!  I have many boxes and sets of pastels, and watercolors too, and I buy little palettes of eyeshadow for the same joy in possessing the little slabs of color all in their places. 

 

Last summer, at the Georgia O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe, there were Ms.O'Keeffe's box of drawing things in a vitrine to be admired.  It was charming, and compelling, and even a bit haunted in all the best ways imaginable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Georgia O'Keeffe's pastels.

 

 

 

 

Consider the etymology of the word pastel, and ponder with me it's relationship to one of the Spanish definitions of the word: cake.  Is the because cakes are also made of paste (ground flour say) or is it that the color of cakes is pale, or is it the shape of the French drawing crayon?  The Spanish pastel also can refer to el dibujo or el color (de tono suave).  All this puts me in a mood to bake a pale cake of great detail and calm, and then to draw said cake in pastel shades, like our old pal Wayne Thiebaud, except he never made the cakes he drew, which means, if you are inclined to be competitive, you can easily win this round of who's the most authentic draughtsperson* of desserts.,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Thiebaud, Four Cakes, pastel on paper, 1996.

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Thiebaud, Pastel Scatter, pastel on paper, 1972.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*  Yes, it would have saved letters to write drafts-  vs. draughts- but isn't it fun to dabble in harmless excess?