Well, Anali and I met for coffee. So it wasn’t really a rally of food bloggers, or even a very large meeting of Boston-area food bloggers. But what we lacked in quantity, we made up in quality conversation, covering topics from physical therapy, to the intersection of journalism and blogging, to sitemeter (Lisa knows WAY more than I do, but she inspired me to come home and fool around with my stats…), to our mutual love of Volkswagens. Lisa, who writes Anali’s First Amendment (go check it out now! go on! I’ll be here when you get back…) and I have been playing email tag forever (my fault) about getting together for coffee, and she suggested The Spotted Apron, a bakery that’s recently opened on Cambridge Street in Boston, just before the intersection with Charles Street. What a great place, especially in light of the three chain coffee stores nearby– Au Bon Pain, Starbucks, and Finagle A Bagel. Fortunately, this bakery was doing land-office business– there was a constant stream of people coming in and out, and all the different things I tried (there and to go) were well worth the visit. They’ve got pastries and bread, but they also have good looking salads, sandwiches, and panini.
As my digital camera is on the fritz, I bought a disposable one and have to have the photos developed– I hope them come out alright. (I felt so retro, winding the frames forward and everything!) I’ll post a real overview once the photos are developed, but in the meantime, please check Lisa’s site to read about her take on the place. I am sure the people at the bakery were wondering why the heck we were taking so many photos, inside and outside the store. And I’m sure that the fellow behind the counter who boxed up my to-go items was wondering if we were journalists or something, which might explain why I got such a ginormous and carefully arranged bag– I am sure they wondered even more when we both spent more than five minutes outside after leaving, taking pictures of the front door, the store front, the street view, etc. I will post one substantive thing about the place now, along the lines of “you learn something new every day”– they have an open-ish kitchen, and we were both entranced by the sight of one of the bakers scraping the peel from fresh ginger root with a spoon. I’d heard that was the best way to do it, but I was skeptical until today. It looks like it works like a charm– the baker just trimmed off the tough nubbins with her knife. And it’s a good thing it seemed to work so well– she had a ton of ginger to peel!
1. Dorie Greenspan continues to succeed– the chocolate ginger cake/bread I made for my brother’s birthday was an enormous success.
2. My ever-reliable camera, an SD100 Elph bought 5 years or more ago, has given up the ghost– we think the sensor’s on the fritz. But, I was starting to want more than it could do, and it’s only two months until my birthday. Fortunately, my brother in law, the serious photographer in the family, has already suggested a replacement.
3. Finishing up a big brief at work. Not likely to have much to say in the next week that is unrelated to standards of review and standing. Ugh. Standing is NOT a sexy legal issue– nor is federal preemption. Makes my eyes roll back into my head. But, I still think I will wrangle 30 pages out of the issues.
I made the ugliest birthday cake today for our head paralegal. I baked a 1997 Joy of Cooking sour cream fudge cake, but the bottom layer stuck a little when I tried to get it out of the pan, so I had to glue it together with frosting. The top layer was fine, but when I tried to frost it this morning, the butter in the cream cheese frosting was too soft, and the whole mess just dripped down the side, and wouldn’t stay in soft billowy folds.
So… creative disguise to the rescue. I colored the rest of the frosting a pretty pink, and put just enough on the sides to create a sticky surface. The frosting was fine on top, so I then took the bottle of pastel starry sprinkles and tossed them at the sides of the cake, rotating it all the while, in the hope that the stars would disguise the truly awful frosting job I’d done.
Fortunately, I seem to have succeeded. Our paralegal was happy to have a homemade cake, and liked the flavor of the frosting so much that she asked me if there was any more, by any chance. (There was– I had put the remainder in tupperware to bring with me just in case.) And the boys teased me about the pink color of the frosting– but as the paralegal’s a girly-girl, pink was the only choice.
Hooray for extra frosting and sprinkles, the baker’s equivalent of Julia Child’s old standby, chopped parsley!
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Papa BLC bought me a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking From My Home To Yours” after he saw I’d borrowed the copy I’d bought for a friend of ours. And boy, am I glad he did. I have previously indicated by general disinterest in baking, but Ms. Greenspan’s recipes could change my mind– because they WORK. This is the fourth time I have baked something from this book, and each baked good has been a perfect specimen. It’s enough to make a gal pay attention to her oven thermometer…
Anyway– these are the “Corniest Corn Muffins” and “Chocolate Chunk Muffins,” both made yesterday morning for a birthday brunch. I figured the birthday girl should have something chocolate, even if brunch did begin at 10 a.m. (Ugh). The chocolate muffins are almost enough to make me eat chocolate on a regular basis– made with Green & Black’s cocoa powder and chunks hacked from a Trader Joe’s semisweet chocolate “Pound Plus” bars, they are light, moist, not too sweet, and incredibly chocolatey. Coming out of the oven, the steamy sweet odor emanating from the cracked tops of these muffins was enough to get the slugabed Better Half out of bed. (You will notice my batter spooning skills need improvement. We took the two smallest muffins out of the batch we brought so they wouldn’t feel dwarfed by their craggy compatriots).
The corn muffins, well, what can I say? Yum. That’s about it. I used canned corn in the amount called for in the recipe, and coarse grind Goya corn meal. (One flaw, the recipe doesn’t specify the grind of the cornmeal). The whole kitchen smelled like summer as these puppies baked, rising with crackly golden-brown edges and splitting tops. The glamour shot muffin at top lasted about 2 seconds with some salted butter. The recipe calls for very little sugar, comparatively, and the muffins are so moist, yet crunchy with the cornmeal and the crisp edges. Mmm. I ate them too fast to split them, grill them, and stuff them with bacon.
I brought raspberry jam for both muffins, and they went over very well. I was tempted to add cheddar to the recipe, but I didn’t want to mess them up. There is a recipe following this one for savory corn muffins, but I think I will try tweaking this one with the sugar in it, since I love the sweet/salty juxtaposition. Hmm– cheddar, bacon, charred yellow onion? Wonder if the batter would cook into gussied-up johnny cakes?
