Coconut Cake

If I am ever looking for inspiration to write about food, I need only read a few pages of Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton. Her stories are peppered so subtly with bits of backstory and setting that the reader isn't forced to digest a hunk of exposition before getting to the good stuff. And in setting a scene, Hamilton picks out details that you wouldn't think to care about, but that come together in the kind of simply crafted sentences that you dance through with little effort.

You can imagine my delight, then, upon reaching the back feature of my May 2013 issue of Bon Appetit and seeing her byline at the head of a seven-page story on home cooks of the South. Food is the engine that powers her weeklong road trip through kitchens across five southern states, but her details paint the people who cook and where they cook as much as what they're cooking.

On Day Two of the trip, Hamilton met Laurie Osteen's coconut cake in Savannah, Georgia. She introduces it to us as "glistening white" and "practically levitating under its glass dome on the counter." Later she relays the anecdote that the cake may or may not have killed the diabetic local priest. I had already set my sights on this cake; having Gabrielle Hamilton conclude that it is "worth the peril" merely cemented my decision.

I was a little surprised (and, I'll admit, pleased) to find that Mrs. Osteen's coconut cake starts with a box of yellow cake mix. When I think of home cooks, I think of from-scratch recipes on wrinkled, smudged, and splattered index cards. Shortcuts carry a stigma; they seem aesthetically incorrect and compromising in quality. But Hamilton's story sings a different tune. She praises all the incomplete scribblings, last-minute substitutions, and time-saving expedients of the unpolished home cook. These people base their creations on what tastes delicious, or what they've been eating since childhood, or what they have on hand that day, and they don't take themselves so seriously that they can't rip open a bag of Duncan Hines along the way - because time is limited, perhaps, or because you actually can't beat the taste of boxed cake.

With the yellow cake, Osteen used the back of the box only as a guide. She upped the egg count, threw in some extra vegetable oil, and replaced the water with whole milk for a richer, moister, softer cake.

I was, however, disappointed when I first learned there was no coconut in the cake itself. Can you really call it a coconut cake? I wondered. Instead, the shredded flakes joined sugar, sour cream, and some milk to form a snowy icing that was to be spread over the warm cake and allowed to seep in for at least four hours. It seemed in keeping with the laid back Southern way, leaving a cake out for hours, the sour cream-based frosting weeping into its soft, warm pores.

I suppressed my uptight instinct to refrigerate the cake and let it sit at room temperature under its glass dome for more than seven hours before I took it to a friend's birthday party. I had a piece that night, and it was delicious. But I ate more of it the next day, and the day after that, too, and nowhere along the way did the cake go in the fridge. And I swear to you, good people, that cake got better with time. 

So now we must revisit the question posed by my doubting and critical past self: Can you really call it a coconut cake?

Yes, responds my present self, enlightened by a broader understanding that gives credence to all home cooks (even the ones who use boxed cake). 

Yes you can. Now lighten up.

Apricot Cakes

When I started writing about food, I had this assumption. It's nothing I ever really thought about; it was more of a subconscious understanding of how it all went. I assumed that the more complex the recipe, the more I'll have to say about it. It makes sense, right?

Then I read this article by Amanda Hesser. She went on for pages about madeleines, those spongy little lemon cakes, elegant but so simple. There was no big epiphany on my end, but a new understanding had begun to seep in. I was slowly learning that the catalyst behind good food writing goes beyond an evaluation of the food alone. It comes from the whole experience that surrounds it, too.

I found these little cakes in the pages of my latest issue of Bon Appetit, tucked into a feature titled "Picnic in Province." All sorts of transportable delicacies posed for the shoot - olives, bean salad, goat cheese, a French baguette - and they all lay out on hardy kitchen towels and thick wood cutting boards that were weathered and stained by regular use. The cakes had their very own page. They had been piled casually in a metal tin and plunked down on long grass, all beautiful and low-maintenance. Right away I wanted to make them, and I knew I wanted to enjoy them in some re-creation of the alfresco scene presented to me. 

Ah, the power of suggestion.

I didn't have to wait long. An annual Memorial Day picnic brings a group of us to an open field of grass by Lake Calhoun, always an arm's length from hot dogs, sangria, and plenty of guac. This year, there'd be little apricot cakes, too.

There are all kinds of baking experiences. There's the adventure, where everything is new, the motions feel unnatural, and you have no idea if things are going to work out - but you're not too worried about it, either. There's the obligation, where you've made a commitment to bake a certain amount of something for a certain amount of money. It's work, and it's stress from start to finish, no matter how well you know the recipe.

Mid-morning on Memorial Day, I embarked on my favorite baking experience of them all. It's the kind you sink into; the kind where, although the recipe is new to you, the process is so familiar and the movements so second nature that your mind can let go a little. I've never baked with apricots. But how many times have I creamed butter and sugar til they're pale and fluffy, beat in eggs and flavoring before adding flour and salt at intervals? This is the kind of baking that slows my heart rate and brings me into balance. It's spiritual baking.

Bon Appetit was right: the little apricot cakes really were perfect for a picnic. I tied them up in a flour sack towel and carried them out to the lake where we munched our summertime food under an overcast sky, waiting for the rain.

But what I remember most about the cakes happened long before we had our feet in the grass. It was back at home when I stood over the cooling rack and grabbed a cake, still a little warm, to try for the first time. I met the light, tender crumb with a breath of lemon; the darker, chewier base; and the tart, slippery apricot embedded in the cake. It all came together with a force that literally drew my hand to my chest and swept my eyelids shut. This wasn't for effect; there was no one around to play for. And I don't think it was just the bite I was reacting to. It was the culmination of such a simple recipe, such easy baking, and the very moment when you discover how much can come of it.

A Baker's Birthday

I spent the better half of my birthday, and the day before it, in the kitchen. That may sound kind of sad, depending on your own relationship with kitchens. But it just couldn't be avoided. When you're a baker, you make your own birthday cake. 

Okay, I can't speak for all the bakers. If I did this day in and day out, maybe I'd let someone else make it for me. Likewise, if I weren't quite so controlling, I could maybe let someone help. But it's more than that, I think. Baking a classic two-layer cake from start to finish was like my birthday gift to myself. I wanted to take my time. I wanted to get to know this cake. I wanted to own it. And I'm a little bit controlling.

This is a chocolate sour cream frosting. No butter, and the only sugar comes in the form of a bit of corn syrup. The frosting is sour, but it turned out to be pleasant in concert with the yellow cake. If I make it again, I'll replace some of the sour cream with more chocolate.

By 4 in the afternoon, we were properly acquainted. Then I made pizza.

In the past year I've gotten into homemade pizza. I had this one go-to recipe, not because I had any particular allegiance to it, but because I'd never bothered to search for others. Then I came across an article on the secrets to incredible homemade pizza in Bon Appetite. It starts with a no-knead dough of flour, yeast, salt, and water that rises for 18 hours. Yes! Eighteen! And that's pretty much the extent of it. The rest is the little things, like heating your olive oil with garlic cloves; turning your oven to its highest temperature and letting it heat for an hour before baking, then turning it to broil before the pizza goes in; using two types of cheese and crushed canned tomatoes; and finishing each out-of-the-oven pie with black pepper, sea salt, and red pepper flakes. It's intensified the way I feel about pizza, and it's quieted my affections for my favorite Minneapolis joints. Why go to Lola, Black Sheep, or Pizza Nea when I have in my possession the secrets to the smashingest pizza yet? It's a powerful feeling.

The food was incredible. And while the process was long, the final result was so simple: a few people around a table, eating blistered, misshapen pizza and drinking champagne. By cake time we were warm and rosy-cheeked from the food and the heat emanating from the kitchen. But as it goes with birthdays, the cake is cut and a slice is had by all, room or no room.

Okay, that may not be how it goes for all birthdays. But for a baker's birthday, surely.