Danish Salted Butter Cookies

There’s something about the dead of winter that brings me back here. It’s been a year since my last post, and this time I have little excuse for my extended absence; this time I can’t direct you to the modest chronicles of my adventures, both momentous and mundane, in a new city.

Nope, haven’t gone anywhere. I just haven’t done much baking, and when I did bake, I didn’t feel much like reflecting on it. (Sometimes you just want to make a thing and be done with it, you know?)

I have done a few things, though. In no particular order:

1. I moved for the fifth time in two years. Woah. This is the first time I’ve bothered to do that math. But don’t worry: my current roommate and I went halfsies on an area rug, so you know I’ll be sticking around for a while.
2. I started improv again! I loved it. It was terrifying and perfect.
3. I quit improv again. Eh, I’ll be back. We’re not through, improv and me.
4. I spent six months at an internship for which I have little to show, save for a few writing clips in the seatback pocket publication on all Delta flights and an unhappy habituation to the AP Style comma.
5. I baked professionally. I woke up at 3:30 a.m. five days a week; I kneaded pounds and pounds of dough, scooped hundreds of cookies, got sweaty by the gigantic oven, and cleaned a whole lot of industrial baking equipment (discovering the amount of cleaning endemic to the daily running of a bakery was, I remember, truly jarring to me). I lasted two weeks. I’ll spare you the details, but I’m comfortable using the term “meltdown” without feeling hyperbolic. Thankfully, I was able to continue working at the bakery under less extreme hours. As for the matter of baking by trade vs. baking by hobby, I certainly have my answer.
6. And a bunch of other stuff. I did standup for the first time. I phoned Norway to interview one of its bestselling crime novelists. I ate sweet potato tacos every night for roughly three months. I invited professionals in my field to networking “coffee dates” and then ordered hot chocolate. I slept with a cat. (Here’s how that one went down: I come home a little tipsy and my roommate’s cat follows me into my bedroom ‘cause she’s got a pitiful case of FOMO. I’m feeling benevolent. Come one, come all, I say, and give her unprecedented permission to curl up with me in my bed. I wake up around 4 a.m., fully sober and no longer interested in sharing my bed with any animal that isn’t made of nylon and stuffed with cotton. In fact, I’m a little repulsed. Fresh out of good will, I pull the cat from her self-satisfied nap and set her down on the floor outside my room. I mutter something along the lines of “Take a hike, sister,” and shut my door. My short stumble back into bed is probably the closest I’ll ever come to a walk of shame.*)
   
   *A “walk of shame,” for those who aren’t familiar, is the forlorn trip home after having spent the night with someone who, among other dubious qualities, lets you walk out their door the next morning without so much as a plate of sugar-dusted French toast.

Yep, I’d call it a successfully formative year. And as it came to a close, there were two takeaways—the impetus of which I cannot pinpoint exactly—that stood at the forefront of my mind:

1. If you want something to happen—if you REALLY want something to happen—you better find a way to start doing it on your own. I know, this sounds a little obvious and a lot bleak, but I’ve met enough rejection and seeming dead ends this year to understand it on a level that’s both sobering and galvanizing, depending on my state of mind. I cannot wait for a personal champion. That person is me. Hi. I’m her.
2. Bake more cookies. Really. Bake more cookies, even to the exclusion of other baked goods. Somewhere between the shock of working at a high-volume bakery and the tedium of piping frosting onto 150 cupcakes for my friend’s wedding on New Year’s Eve (right, that happened, too), my already robust appreciation for cookies was renewed tenfold. During its most intense period, my cookie infatuation was comprehensive, spanning the chewy, gooey, crunchy, oat-y; cakey, crumbly, fudgy, blobby; jammy, chew—okay, I’ll stop.     (I could go on, though. Just know I could go on.) I think what struck me was the cookie’s versatility within what I consider a very soothing, familiar process. The creamy base of butter and sugar, the imperfect mounds of chunky dough dropped lazily on the pan…it all makes my heart content. Warm from the oven and dipped in milk, these self-contained, bite-size treats are quite possibly the single greatest antidote to a really awful, no-good day. 

Highlights of my cookie bender include chocolate gingers, peanut butter blossoms, oatmeal chocolate chips, cranberry white chocolates, and double chocolate mints.

*Deep, cleansing breath.*

They were good.

And after I ate them all, I took a break. Nothing drastic, just a small breather. It’s like when you just started dating someone really great, and you get so caught up in it that pretty soon you can’t remember the last time you went a whole morning without sugar-dusted French toast.

Once my blood sugar had returned to normal levels (maybe, I wouldn't know for sure), it was time to bake my first cookies of 2016. I chose these Danish salted butter cookies. They're a good fit for January in Minnesota, as they're rather austere, both in look and taste. But this is why I love them, you see. They're nearly identical to the four-ingredient punitions I made more than a year ago, only these are flecked with vanilla bean seeds and sprinkled with sanding sugar. Really, it's the perfect cookie for a month that almost invariably finds me listless, ambivalent, and in need of easy comfort.

I've never been able to roll out dough into a uniform thickness. In consequence, the thicker cookies bake to perfection as the thinner ones burn. I could've removed all the discolored ones from the shot so it'd look like I only make perfect cookies...but that would've been kind of a sad thing to do. On multiple fronts.

As much as I liked the conjoined heart/weird bat shape cookies, I simply didn't have the patience for more. And this--this!--is the beauty of the cookie. We'll take 'em fancy, and we'll take 'em blobby.

I recognize that you and I are different. Just as I cannot assume we share similar fears and ambitions, I also cannot assume that you, like me, use comestibles to fill emotional voids. But that's not going to stop me from urging you, my friend, to get your hands on a cookie. When the temps are subzero or professional efforts have proven fruitless or the thought of advocating for your tired, weary self day in and day out sounds too damn exhausting to reckon with—get your hands on a cookie. Bake it yourself, grab it from the nearest bakery, or, Christ, rip open a sack of Chips Ahoy.

Now sit down.

Pick up the cookie, dip it in milk, and eat it.

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.

Baptism By Fire

That's what my mom called it.

It was our first large-scale baking gig. It was the first time all three of us produced and delivered something together. It was 200 cupcakes in a wooden lodge lit by white lights in a backwoods campsite in northern Wisconsin.

And that last part is key. Because as it turns out, 200 cupcakes isn't too difficult. It's just short of a breeze, in fact, if you don't have to haul them over 200 miles into east jesus nowhere. That's over a mile per cupcake, people.

So let me tell you how this went.

Friday night: We bake half the cupcakes and two 6-inch cakes at Caitlin's apartment. We part ways.

Saturday, 5:15a.m.: I bake the remaining pumpkin cupcakes in my kitchen, Caitlin and Mom bake the remaining chocolate cupcakes and mix up the frostings in Caitlin's kitchen. I arrive at Caitlin's, we pack the cupcakes in carriers, put the frosting on ice, and we're out of there.

Saturday morning: We drive by Taylors Falls and long to be hiking the trails. We make jokes about calling to warn the bride and groom that we have found a new way to spend our Saturday and will not be making it this evening.

Saturday noon: We almost hit a dog.

Saturday afternoon: The road is long and convoluted, and the impending drive home is weighing heavy on us. We joke about getting there and setting out the cupcakes, then plopping our buckets of frosting next to a sign that says "Frost Your Own!" and hauling ass out of there.

Later that afternoon: We are almost there! I check the frosting and it's completely solid. Mom and Caitlin say "Take it off the ice!" I say "Nah, it'll soften just fine once we get there." Then we joke about the frosting not softening, and us plopping it next to the cupcakes with a sign that says "Do What You Will With It" and hauling ass out of there.

3:30p.m.: We have arrived, and right on schedule! Hooray for us and our planning and punctuality. We make our way through a charmingly rustic reception room and open the door to a tiny, freezing kitchen space.

3:35p.m. "It's freezing in here."

3:45p.m.: We're scrambling. We're skirting cupcake carriers, 9x13 pans, and bags of supplies. We're transferring blocks of solid frosting (that are not softening to room temperature because room temperature is actually fridge temperature) to smaller containers and microwaving them (there was a microwave! Sweet Martha there was a microwave!), then whipping them with my electric mixer. My piping bag breaks. The consistency isn't what we planned on. We may not have enough frosting. I'm afraid I cannot joke about this.

3:50p.m.: We've altered our piping to accommodate the new consistency and the looming depletion of frosting. We're flying through rounds of cupcakes and getting them out on the display table with both the swooping force and deft finesse of a (you guessed it) well-oiled machine. We have just enough time to clean up our mess and change before the guests arrive.

And this is what they see.

And now, armed with valuable experience, empowering perspective, and the comforting knowledge that we won't abandon a project no matter how badly we'd rather go hiking at Taylors Falls...

On to the next.

A Mini Mission

I hate to rob my peach tart of the spotlight so soon. Normally it would have enjoyed a good month-long reign before a new post took its place.

But today is an important day.

Today, Caitlin and I baked and delivered 50 mini cupcakes for an engagement party her co-worker is hosting. It was a modest and relatively stress-free undertaking, but its significance was not lost on us. We brought back the winners of the chocolate v. chocolate showdown from a few weeks back, and we made carrot cupcakes as well.

This was the first baking venture that we started, finished, and delivered together, and it was a (very) light warm-up for our wedding gig this October. We're getting ready to take on the Twin Cities baking scene, if for no other reason but the damn shame it would be to deprive you people of the best cupcakes in the world. It's a lame superlative, I know - but I'm not sure how else to put it. I've never had a better chocolate cupcake, not in any established bakery I've been to.

To be fair, maybe a certain amount of quality-sacrifice is inevitable in mass production.

Or maybe we're just better at this. :)

On a not-so-side note, my mom turns 58 today. She couldn't stick around to bake the cakes with us, and it's weird to bake cupcakes for not your mom on your mom's birthday. So Mom, this is the best I can do: imagine the most luscious dark chocolate sponge topped with a perfect button of pillowy bittersweet chocolate...

And a heart on top, 'cause we love you like crazy.

Chocolate v. Chocolate

Mmmm.

I'm currently authoring a series on healthy eating for work. It's been interesting and (sort of) fun, but the books are for beginning readers, and they're about - well, healthy eating. Which I am all for, but - suffice it to say that writing this post is like sinking into a cushy chair after a full day on foot.

Now, I come with exciting news. You know the whole dream-turned-obsession-turned-inevitability of co-owning a bakery one day? (See post 1, The Reason I'm Here.) Well, we're inching in the right direction. We are slated to bake for a small party at the end of this month and a full-blown wedding at the start of October (so much for baby steps). Are we ready? I'm not sure, but we're doing our best. For instance, we decided it pertinent to settle on a basic chocolate cupcake recipe. And that we did.

The contenders: Dark chocolate cupcakes made with sour cream and regular chocolate cupcakes made with buttermilk. Which would claim victory? It was anyone's guess.

That's the dark chocolate/sour cream on the right and regular chocolate/buttermilk in the orange. Look at them, sitting together in perfect harmony. Aw.

But we meant business. Caitlin, Shawn, and I sampled each cupcake without any frosting to distract. After we scrutinized their physical appearance, we sniffed them, popped them into our mouths, and chewed (more accurately, mashed them against our tastebuds) with our mouths open - you know, to let the oxygen in. At least that's what I did. What I'm saying is, this was serious.

And the vote was unanimous. The winner was richer, moister, and denser. There was no question! We high-fived (or maybe I just wish we had...) and whipped up some celebratory frosting.

Now for the icing on the proverbial cake: we were riding on that feeling of great satisfaction that comes from, you know, getting things done, and we decided it was time to purchase the domain name for our future bakery AND set up a business email account. So we did all of it, right then and there, and we are now the proud owners of --

Maybe it's too soon. Give it a couple weeks. (I've got to do something to keep the five* of you coming back for more.)

*That's not a self-deprecating understatement. It's entirely accurate. And slightly self-deprecating. On an unrelated note, what do I need to do to get noticed around here?!

So, there you have it. We've found our chocolate cupcakes, we've purchased our title, and some custom-designed business cards are in the works. Shit's about to go down, folks.

What's that? I never announced the winner of the cupcake battle? Now really. Is that necessary? Come on, people.

It actually may be necessary. I introduced the regular chocolate cupcakes as the ones "in the orange," but this one here is a dark chocolate/sour cream cupcake - the winner! But you knew that, right?

Red Velvet

My my, it's been a while.

For the record, I didn't lose steam, or interest, or my camera -- indeed, I got a job. Now I spend 7 hours a day editing and writing at a children's book publisher. My life has changed quite drastically since my last post some three months ago. Instead of reading about Julia Child, I'm reading about Clydesdales. Instead of learning French, I'm learning about box jellyfish. And instead of writing this blog, I'm writing books about weasels, salamanders, and cheetahs. It's a joy, really - but my time in the kitchen has taken a hit.

But today I re-entered the baking realm with purpose and zeal. I would make red velvet cupcakes for the first time, by request of my co-worker who is moving down south for grad school. I'm glad she asked, because I've never given much thought to red velvet cupcakes - I didn't understand the fuss. So I set aside the afternoon to discover the red velvet cupcake for myself. My roommates were opportunely out of the house, and the space was my own. I began.

Red velvet cupcakes are simply mild chocolate cupcakes with red dye. Here I sift cake flour with cocoa and salt.

The food coloring is whisked into the buttermilk before it's added to the mixture. The recipe I used calls for 1 tbsp of dye, but you don't need nearly that much.

I saw a few red velvet recipes that call for vegetable oil, and lots of it. Good for denser cupcakes, but I opted for none at all. A baking soda/vinegar solution is added at the last minute so the cupcakes rise, light and airy.

The minute I was done making the cream cheese frosting, I grabbed a still-warm cupcake and topped it slowly, carefully. I may have been alone in the kitchen with no spectators to judge my artisan craft, but that's no excuse to half-ass a frosting job. We all deserve to eat something beautiful, with or without company.

And it was beautiful. And it tasted beautiful. And now I see the lure of a homemade red velvet cake. There's glamour, lust, and opulence in that halting combination of deep red and creamy white. Red dress with white pearls? White dress with red lipstick? Satin sheets with white pillows?

Or perhaps what you see is a moist red house with cream cheesy shutters.

Will miss you, Ellen.