Butcher, baker, candlestick maker

These last two weeks, I’ve been wear­ing my baker’s hat.  I made some lemon yogurt muffins from Mar­ion Cunningham’s Break­fast Book, a cook­book every­one should have if only for her Fresh Gin­ger Cake and Nut­meg Muffins, and then made the (gluten free) Choco­late Chip Cook­ies in Cook­ing for Isa­iah.  The lat­ter were excel­lent, and no one at work noticed they were GF.  The tex­ture was a bit dif­fer­ent, but I made them with but­ter and not the short­en­ing option (com­pletely tested & approved by the author) and they were deli­cious and toll-house-y, which is really the depar­ture point for all choco­late chip cook­ies.  And they did not make my stom­ach upset, always a bonus.

But as tasty as these things were, they couldn’t beat two real standouts.

First:  Melissa Clark’s Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake.  I love Clark’s col­umn, “A Good Appetite,” at the NYT, and I own her book.  Twice.  In hard­cover, and also on my Nook Color so I can shop from it ran­domly in the super­mar­ket when I have no idea what to cook.  I’d never made an olive oil-based cake, and I hadn’t had this winter’s serv­ing of blood oranges, so.…  I used yogurt, not but­ter­milk, an either/or option in the recipe, and though Clark calls for whipped cream on the side, I wanted creme fraiche.  And my blood oranges were a lit­tle dry and tart, so– I heated my honey-fruit com­pote in the microwave with a lit­tle more honey than called for to give it more sweet­ness and oomph.

It was gor­geous and moist and a lovely, cit­rusy, mid­win­ter cake.

And then there is Impos­si­ble Pie. Today’s been an Impos­si­ble Day, for var­i­ous rea­sons that aren’t bor­ing or unblog­gable but which, well– I just don’t feel like dis­cussing the rea­sons. So I won’t. But I did make Impos­si­ble Pie, which gets its name (so says the March 2011 Food & Wine arti­cle in which it’s con­tained) because it forms its own crust from the one-bowl bat­tery mess of dried coconut and other pantry and fridge sta­ples (um, if you keep coconut in your pantry, that is) that is totally worth mak­ing if you feel like– I need some­thing custardy-sweet and com­fort­ing.  Now.  I did tweak the recipe thusly: I didn’t have sweet­ened coconut, only un-, and I had coconut milk, so I used 1 cup coconut milk (all the liq­uid in the can and then enough of the sploogy-clotted coconut cream to make one cup in a two-cup mea­sure and 1 cup whole cow’s to fill) plus 2 cups dried unsweet­ened coconut– then every­thing else as called for.

It’s not gluten free– it calls for 1/2 cup of self-raising flour (cheat recipe here)– and the next time I make it, I’m going to try sub­bing in the basic gluten free blend from Cook­ing for Isa­iah with the self-raising adap­ta­tion of bak­ing pow­der and salt and see how I do– but it’s not so much that I think I’ll get a rumbly tummy from one slice a day.  Or two.  Maybe three?  Why not.  I deserve it.

It’s awfully good– enough to turn an Impos­si­ble Day into a pos­si­ble one, even.