A Christmas Cookie

My Grandma Bernadette made the best Christmas cookies.  They arrived every December without fail, just like Santa, and I looked forward to them as much as I looked forward to Christmas morning.  She made only one kind, rolled sugar cookies, and she made zillions of them.  She stored them with great care between layers of wax paper in every Tupperware container and every soup pot she had.  It was an amazing sight to behold, that tiny kitchen overflowing with these lovely, sparkly cookies.  The most remarkable thing about them was that they were gorgeously thin and crisp.  Even as a child, I remember wondering how she got them so thin.  Every year, my Mom and I discuss this feat of cookie engineering, trying to figure out how she did it.  I was so intimidated by her skills at cookie rolling, that I have never tried to make them myself.  These cookies had to be the thickness of dollar bills.  They had to live up to my memory of them and my memory of her.  Oh, the pressure!  But I wanted to try.  I got out the recipe that my Mom wrote out for me many years ago.  The title said, "Grandma Bernadette's Famous, Thin Sugar Cookies."  She underlined "thin!" Already I was re-thinking this.  At the bottom of the recipe, my Mom put a big asterisk and wrote, "I think only Grandma can make these.  I try but it's so hard.  She was known for her beautiful handwriting and unusually wonderful, thin, thin sugar cookies!"  She wrote "thin" twice!  Also, I will tell you right now, my handwriting is not very good.  

My Grandma made cookies like she did everything in her life; deliberately, carefully and with precision.  I, on the other hand, do things with more of a reckless enthusiasm.  She worked for the school principal, I got called to the principal.  She was very quiet and conservative and I'm...well...not.  We did have one thing in common, we both liked baking.  Reading through the recipe, I was surprised to see that it called for shortening.  I haven't used shortening for years. Seemed strange, but I wanted to try and re-create her cookies, so I used it. Another crazy thing was the baking temperature for this recipe was 425 degrees.  I thought for sure this was a mistake - I cook my pizza at that temperature but never my cookies.  And the baking time was 4-5 minutes.  That couldn't be right, either. Most of the cookies I make bake for 12-15 minutes - at least.  I immediately called my Mom to see if she made a mistake when writing down the recipe.  Recipe confirmed.  I was really curious to see how this was going to go.

As far as decoration, my Grandma would put some sugar in several glass ramekins and put a drop of different food coloring in each one and stir it with a fork until it turned the sugar the desired color.  The sugar on the final cookies were always so pale, you could barely tell they were different colors, but I  always loved the way they looked - very delicate and fragile.  The only way you knew they were Christmas cookies was because they were rolled into holiday shapes.  There were no bright reds and greens, no royal icing. I resisted the urge to use more fancy decorations.  When I called my Mom about the oven temp, she had said, "Are you making the colored sugar?"  My sister Kim asked the same when I told her I was making the cookies.  It was clear tradition meant as much to them as it did to me and that the cookies were more than just holiday treats.  Baking these cookies brought them close to my Grandma's memory too.

I cut out my cookies using only the cookie cutters that had belonged to my Grandma.  I listened to Andy Williams and Gene Autry and Nat King Cole sing Christmas songs as I rolled those suckers out so thin  that I could see the recipe for pie crust printed on my pastry board underneath.  I was in the groove.  I sprinkled my pastel sugar on the cookies and in that crazy-hot oven they went.  Exactly 5 minutes later they emerged slightly brown around the edges, and triumphantly crisp.  So far, so good.  The smell of the kitchen was exactly as I remember - buttery, sugary and very much like Christmas.  I hadn't had these cookies since she passed away over 20 years ago.  I was nervous to taste them but they were perfect. Buttery, but the shortening gave them a sort of pie crust taste and texture.  They were ultra crisp and the sugar gave them a gentle crunch.  I packed them in Tupperware containers and in my soup pot between layers of wax paper.  I felt silly that I waited all these years to make them. I was happy to feel a connection to my Grandma, and glad that my Mom and sister could share in it too.  Between bites of cookie, I'm sure my Grandma would have told me that I did a good job, but that I need to keep working on my handwriting,

Red Velvet, If You Please

I was one of those anti-red-velvet people.  I was always skeptical of eating what I thought was essentially a chocolate cake with an alarmingly large amount of red dye no. 5.  I mean, if someone gave me a red velvet cupcake, I would eat it, but never with the reckless abandon of, say, a vanilla coconut cake or a glorious slice of boysenberry pie.  I honestly felt that "red velvet" was just an overly sexy name for a rather vulgar dessert that disguised its mediocrity with a fancy moniker and a potentially toxic amount of food coloring...kind of like a hooker with too much lipstick whose name was Chantal or Maxine.  Intriguing?  Yes.  Delicious? Dubious!  

Last week, I was reading one of my favorite magazines, Cook's Illustrated, and they had a recipe for the perfect red velvet cake.  Hmmmm...if it's good enough for Cook's Illustrated, there must be something revelatory about it that I haven't experienced.  What I love about this magazine is that they don't just print recipes, they deconstruct them and rebuild them to make them foolproof.  They may add some crazy steps like baking apple crisp topping before putting it on the apples so that it is actually crispy instead of soggy or adding vodka to pie crust, which gives pies a tender crust but doesn't toughen it like water can.  If science merged with your Grandma, it would be Cook's Illustrated magazine.  For each recipe, the tester describes the trial and error, the failed ingredient combinations and then finally the moment of triumph where the perfect recipe reveals itself.  It's like reading a really short, suspenseful mystery novel where the main characters are delicious foodstuffs!  Like Keri Fisher, who was the recipe tester for this cake, my first glimpse of red velvet cake was in the movie, Steel Magnolias - remember the armadillo cake?  Not only was it shaped like an unappetizing animal, it was bright crimson inside. Weird!  In the red velvet cakes of yore, the color was actually a by-product of a chemical reaction between vinegar and/or buttermilk and cocoa powder.  Before red food coloring, sugar beet juice was a common ingredient to intensify the color.  So not only might there be a delicious recipe here somewhere, this dessert actually has a history.  I was taken with the idea of making my own red velvet extravaganza.  I've never had a real homemade red velvet cake and neither has anyone I have asked.  I wanted to see if it differed from the bakery red velvet cakes I've had and it seemed like a festive dessert for a holiday dinner party I was having.

I will say upfront that the cake calls for an entire bottle of red food coloring!  And contrary to my belief that red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with red coloring, there are only 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder.  There is also a whole tablespoon of vinegar in this recipe, which I learned makes the cake not only more tender, but brighter in color as well.

Mixing all my ingredients, I felt like a mad scientist.  I also felt pretty naughty using a whole bottle of food coloring.   And this cake wasn't just red, it was explosively red.  It was bloody.  I giggled, I danced around the kitchen with my spatula, which now looked like a murder weapon.  It was like a scene from CSI.  I wonder if William Peterson likes cake.

And then there was the frosting....this was the most fluffy, dreamy, cream cheesy frosting ever!  Normally when I make cream cheese frosting, I mix a stick of butter, a box of confectioners sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla and one package of cream cheese in a bowl and have something pretty tasty.  This recipe called for 2 packages of cream cheese and 2 sticks of butter!  I thought it might be super dense and way too rich, but it was so light and very yummy.  The bright white color was a lovely compliment to the dark cake, too.  So far, this was a pretty cool experiment.

I served the cake to our friends Kelly and Freddy after a dinner of lobster mac n' cheese, lovingly made by Aaron, and a salad of watercress, roasted beets, tangerines and pistachios.  My cake was celebrated, ohhhed and ahhhed over and devoured.  It was luxurious and tasted tangy and vaguely chocolately but there was a subtleness to it.  It had a taste that was all its own.  This cake lived up to it's elegant name.  OK Red Velvet Cake, you win.  I am under your spell.  You have wooed me with your brazen color and tenderness.  You have charisma and charm.  You are deceptively complex and deep.  You are also playful and a bit campy.  If you were a woman, you might wear false eyelashes, but you wouldn't be a hooker. I take that back.

Forget the vanilla coconut cake, forget the boysenberry pie.  From now on, it's red velvet.  If you please.

RED VELVET CAKE (from Cook's Illustrated Magazine)

Note:  This recipe must be prepared with natural cocoa powder.  Dutch-processed cocoa will not rise or yield the proper color.

CAKE

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Pinch table salt

1 Cup buttermilk

1 TBSP white vinegar

1 TSP vanilla 

2 large eggs

2 TBSP natural cocoa powder

2 TBSP (one 1-ounce bottle) red food coloring

12 TBSP (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 Cups granulated sugar

FROSTING

16 TBSP (2 sticks)

4 Cups (16 oz) confectioners' sugar

16 oz cream cheese, cut into 8 pieces, softened

1 1/2 TSP vanilla 

Pinch table salt

1.  For the CAKE:  Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.  Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.  Whisk buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and eggs in large measuring cup.  Mix cocoa with food coloring in small bowl until smooth paste forms. 

2.  With stand mixer on medium-high, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 2 minutes, scraping down bowl as necessary.  Add one third of flour mixture and beat on medium-low speed until just incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Scrape down bowl as necessary and repeat with half of remaining flour mixture, remaining buttermilk mixture, and finally remaining flour mixture.  Scrape down bowl, add cocoa mixture, and beat on medium speed until completely incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Using rubber spatula, give batter final stir.  Scrape into prepared pans and bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.  Cool cakes in pans 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely, at least 30 minutes.  

3.  For the FROSTING:  with stand mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add cream cheese, 1 piece at a time, and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Beat in vanilla and salt.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolate Cookies

Often, I have been waking up in the middle of the night and imagining the perfect job gently floating in the breeze, around the trees, pirouetting in the blue sky as it is carried this way and that, and landing right in my lap like that feather in Forrest Gump.  My heart swells as the Alan Silvestri soundtrack uplifts my spirits and this job-feather sways to the left, then loops a few times just out of reach and right when I think it will shoot up into the infinite sky, away from me forever, it seems to change its mind in mid-flight, circles back, tickles my cheek and makes the softest, most perfect landing right on my tan Gump-like slacks.

Forrest's Momma said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."  Lately, I feel like I keep getting the crappy chocolate.  I want the scotchmallow of pure happiness or the maple buttercream of excellent luck.  But nope, it's the fruit nougat of joblessness for me.  My Momma also had a nugget of wisdom.  She said, "stop your whining and go out and play."  So instead of stewing in my chocolate metaphor, I decided to play with some.

Like most people, I love the combination of chocolate and caramel.  It's a perfect storm of deliciousness.  I found a recipe for chocolate sandwich cookies that have caramel in the middle.  It sounded so good, and also a little daunting.  I needed a candy thermometer.  Most of the time when I see a recipe that requires special equipment, I immediately cast it aside because it seems hard.  But I happened to have a candy thermometer so I wasn't going to allow myself any excuses.  The one I have was given to me by  my Aunt Frannie.  It's called the Betty Furness Thermometer Set and it must be from about 1952.  You can tell from the packaging that Betty Furness does not mess around with her thermometers.  One look at her competent face and you know that she has a roast on the table, her face on and a martini ready for her husband when he gets home from a long day smoking in his office.  She cooks in heels, too.  I'm sure of it.  She also looks like she repairs trucks.  Big trucks.  Also in heels.

Making candy is a lot more intense than making cookies or cakes.  There is science happening right before your eyes and there is an exciting element of danger.  If you don't follow the directions exactly, a disaster beyond your wildest dreams may occur. An explosion even! Do not even think of boiling the caramel (no stirring!) until exactly 250 degrees is reached. Then and only then are vanilla and butter added.  It is like a chemistry experiment.  The mixture froths and bubbles and hisses and and that delicious smell of burnt sugar and caramelized butter perfumes the kitchen.  Success!  I completely forgot I was cranky.  I felt like putting on a face and getting a martini ready for my husband.  Forget the heels, though. Betty is on her own there.

As the caramel cools, I start making the dough for the chocolate cookies.  I am kind of a cocoa powder snob.  No Nestle cocoa powder for me.  I love the cocoa from a Dutch company called Droste.  Their cocoa is a deep dark brown color, compared to the grayish color of Nestle, and when mixed with liquid, it turns almost black. The smell of the cookie dough is deeply chocolatey and rich with butter.

I love cutting out cookies.  Cut out cookies require so much work, but they are so satisfying to make.  There are so many steps...the dough making, the chilling of said dough, the rolling out, the cutting into shapes, the baking and, Oh Mercy Me, the amazing scent that fills your house.  And then there is the sharing.  90% of the reason I bake is so I can share it with others.  The other 10% is to bask in the glory of my creation.  No, just kidding, it's to avoid job hunting!

On thing I love about my husband, Aaron, is that he always knows the answer.  if I need to know how to spell a word, Aaron knows.  If I am not sure if my shoes are the right choice for my outfit, Aaron knows.  If I can't remember that Shakespeare quote or if I want to know, real quick, what 35 x 420 is, Aaron just freaking knows. When I was done making the cookies, I handed him one to try.  I felt like they were good, but not over-the-top-delicious.  He took a bite, thought for a minute, and suggested adding sea salt to the caramel.  It was a genius idea.  So good, in fact, that when my friend Margie asked me for an idea for a cookie exchange party, I had the perfect recipe.  We had a wonderful day making them together at her house.  We even made candies out of the left over caramel.  It didn't matter that it took us 5 hours to make 30 cookies, we were bakers and candy makers and we were using fleur de sel in our confection!  Mais oui!  We felt wild.  And we were.

I still wake up in the night and imagine the perfect job landing in my lap.  I think it's good to visualize it as something easy and light.  I also know it will come.  I have also changed my mind about the kind of metaphorical chocolates I am getting.  All the "chocolates" in my life are delicious.  Some more than others, but the fruit nougat makes me appreciate the scotchmallow all the more.  I'm lucky to have the time right now to bake.  It does not escape me that these moments are special.  I am done whining.  As Forrest said, "that's all I have to say about that."

Birthday Cake Rules!

Birthday Cake rules.  That is a simple statement of pure fact.  As I get older, my delight in Birthday Cake has not waned one slice.  Even the word combination, "Birthday Cake," has an incredibly pleasant look to it.  It makes me want to wear Birthday Cake perfume, sleep on a pillow made of Birthday Cake, and kiss my husband, who's lips magically happen to be a red velvet Birthday Cake of the most delicate crumb.  Birthday Cake should always be capitalized.  Birthday Cake is important.

The Birthday Cake of my childhood was a glorious glob of over-sweet shortening and sugar, mounded over a cake made with no natural ingredients, and likely containing some sort of kid-tranquilizer.  It left your tongue fuzzy and settled in your tummy like a brick.  It was delicious!  Well, delicious in the way that paste might have been a tasty snack in Kindergarten.  It was the crown jewel of the birthday party, where, invariably, one kid always threw up blue frosting and he was happy to do it.

Birthday Cake mesmerized children like cigarettes and bourbon mesmerized our parents.  There were so many choices.  There were cakes with cowboys and indians, princess cakes, ballerina cakes (my personal fave), horse cakes, dinosaur cakes and the dreaded, yet omnipresent clown cake, to name a few.  This was before all the Toy Story and Star Wars cakes.  This was when Birthday Cakes were generic and weird.  The scene was usually some half-assed mounds of airbrushed frosting and strategically placed plastic figures with vacant eyes and toxic paint.  Apropos of nothing, there was usually plastic shrubbery as well.  None of this mattered, we couldn't get enough.  And the cakes that had frosting roses were the most coveted.  Even boys wanted a piece of cake with a rose.

One of the best things about Birthday Cakes was that it was one of the few times that you, the kid, got to make the decision.  It was one of our earliest moments of empowerment.  Our parents, grandparents, siblings and friends had to eat the cake of our choice.  In those moments, we felt proud and grown up.  And we'd better get the biggest damn frosting rose on the cake or there would be tears and tantrums.  So much for being grown up.  Maybe next year.

Last week was my husband Aaron's birthday.  I had an interview across town, but was determined to make him a Birthday Cake.  He was working all day and I knew he wouldn't tell anyone at work that it was his birthday, so I wanted him to have something special.  Aaron is not into birthdays.  I assault him with his own birthday every year.  I do the birthday dance, I make up songs proclaiming his undying majesty, and I taunt him with hints of the present carnage to come.  He really wishes I would just go away so he can play Mass Effect 2.

As I was making the cake, I felt nostalgic for the Birthday Cakes of yore.  I was using Belgian cocoa powder, cage free brown eggs and imported chocolate but that distinctive smell of lardy, bakery cake-sweetness wasn't there.  Instead, I got batter and candy sprinkles all over the kitchen, I broke the cake decorating tool and I was running late for my interview.  Why didn't I just go to a bakery and get him an Ironman cake?  I started to sweat and panic.  When I was telling my Mom about the experience while stuck in traffic on the 10 freeway she said, "Oh, that's nice," and proceeded to tell me all about their neighbor's cat that my Dad found dead in front of their house.  Oh, that's nice.

Well, my interview went fine but there was no job for me.  As I was walking the several blocks back my car (to avoid the $30 valet charge) in heels and carrying 5 lbs of presentation material, I began to despair.  I had no job, my kitchen was a complete confectionary disaster, and my feet were throbbing with every step.  I really just wanted to shove my face into an over-frosted bakery cake topped with poisonous princesses and call it a day.  Just then Aaron texted that he had gotten home and saw his celebratory tableaux and was beside himself with birthday joy.  The cake, he said, was spectacular.  Although it probably wasn't as good as playing Mass Effect 2, I could tell he was surprised and delighted.  I'm glad I baked him a cake instead of buying one.  And I think I can let go of the plastic ballerinas and embrace the Belgian cocoa powder. Birthday Cakes rule, especially the ones you make for people you love.

Cake or death, Eddie Izzard asks?  I choose Cake.  With a capital C.

The Sugar Nerd Commences

Since becoming unemployed in October, I have been doing much thinking on what I want to be doing with my life.  I sit at my command station day after day, applying for jobs that never materialize and, without fail, my mind seems to turn to baking.  I get derailed from my epic job search by visions of lemon cookies; the thought of their warm, citrusy scent comforts me far better than the cold shoulder I am getting from my computer...or of raspberry buttermilk cakes that, for even an hour, would give me a sense of purpose.  I invariably jump up and check the pantry for ingredients and start mixing.  When my husband Aaron gets home, he immediately knows something delicious is afoot and he seems to forget that he just worked a 13 hour day. It is interesting to me that I am not baking because I want to eat these marvelous odes to sugar and butter, I am baking because the process of it calms me.  It completely takes me away from the discomfort of my life right now.  It unlocks nostalgic feelings of pure childlike joy.  I float on mounds whipped egg whites and dance to the music of measuring cups clanging.  I am riding a wave of sugar rapture where my only concern is making sure I don't over bake the cream cheese brownies.  Job schmob.  A little more icing, please.  Eventually I realized that I seem to be baking more than job hunting.  This could be problematic.

Some of the jobs I have applied for ask if you have a blog or website.  I am surprised by this.  I only joined Facebook this year and I think I was the last of all my friends to get a cell phone.  It's not that I eschew technology, I would just rather not be that available sometimes.  But now employers want to gauge your potential by means other than your business related accomplishments.  I felt old and tired.  I also felt I should have a blog.  Since baking seemed to be fluttering its flour-covered jazz hands in my face, Sugar Nerd was born.

I've been making cookies, pies, cakes, loafs...all with reckless abandon and a true sense of fulfillment.  I put on my vintage apron and revel in the noisy twang of beaters whirring and eggs cracking.  My pug, Owen, lays happily in his bed, also content in the flurry of kitchen activity.

I'm still job hunting, but also embracing this nearly uncontrollable urge to bake.  And bake.  And bake.