When I first saw this cake, the term that immediately came to my mind was “food porn”. It’s a giant, solidly delicious brownie smothered with salty peanuts and seductive caramel that just oozes over the edge. The kind of guilty pleasure meant to be devoured, with raw, unadulterated, dessert-loving hunger, but I’d feel a little funny bringing it home to meet my mother.
This here, is the James Dean of cakes.
I spend a lot of time mulling over the following question: If [insert friend's name here] were a cake, what kind of cake would [he/she] be?
Those of us who enjoy baking celebration cakes understand the weighty significance of this question, with its myriad of factors to be weighed. Taste is an obvious one, our goal being to avoid flavors that exercise the recipient’s gag reflex and focus squarely on those that cause he or she to roll around and salivate like a dog.
With all of my attention, love, and affection (for food, at least) directed at bread baking these days, it might seem that I’ve strayed from my first love, pastry.
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Bread school is making me feel a little challenged in the social arena these days. Setting aside my newly acquired habit of hauling many loaves of artisan bread around town, still warm from the oven from which I shoveled them just moments before and handing them out to friends, neighbors, former colleagues, and even complete strangers, I’m finding that school has permeated other parts of how I relate to those around me in a big way.
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Have you ever been so inclined as to pour 1 part Jameson, 1 part Bailey’s Irish Cream into a shot glass, drop it into a freshly drawn pint of Guinness, and then chug the concoction as it fizzes over the side of the glass, swallowing like mad to choke it down the hatch before you notice that the whole thing has curdled?
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For a little while now I’ve been hiding a big secret. It’s incredible, life changing news, and I’m completely surprised that I managed to keep on writing about avocado-mango salsa, strawberry cream tart, and the stand-alone amazingness of artichokes as if nothing else was happening all of this time.
Between the chaos of work trips, half-packed suitcases and endless hours of convention center banter, there was cake. Delicious, unapologetically rich, lavishly frosted cake.
Um, two cakes, actually.
When the weather gets warmer, there’s nothing like a nice, light dessert to round out a grilled meal.
See that picture directly above? The one with the pretty black and white cake? I made that! Me!
I’ve been so entertained all week, watching my friend Eva struggle to restrain herself from spilling the beans as she snuck around Brooklyn planning a suprise birthday party for her boyfriend Gabe. You could see the secret welling up inside her, ready to burst. She told me that by the time the day of the party came around, she restricted conversations to “Hi honey, I love you” for fear that she would let something slip. It was heartwarming and adorable.
