Sprung At Last

A Room at the Inn, Part 1

01.17.2017 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I plan a trip to Wisconsin. We will stay at a hotel near the family home, where my grandparents lived, then just my grandmother, and after she died, my Aunt. It feels odd not staying at the house, which has itself always been somewhat of a hotel, a place for family to stay when they needed it. I lived there from the ages of two until about six, then spent all my summers there until the year after my grandfather died, when I was ten, then every Christmas but one until my grandmother died.

I was not the first temporary resident: my mother’s older sister returned with her son and daughter, both toddlers, when her marriage to her high school sweetheart failed not long after it began. She is staying there again, with the current owner of the house, her younger sister, who looks after her and takes her to an endless stream of doctor appointments.

It is easier for my younger aunt if we we stay elsewhere: She can only handle one family member at a time.

It is easier for me if we stay elsewhere: My mother cannot drop by unexpectedly and discover we are there.

Cocomalt Brownies

01.01.2017 by J. Doe // 1 Comment

No one can hide from the truth forever, so here is my truth: I am a very poor excuse for a food blogger. Some of this may be due to the fact that I’m not really a food blogger, I’m just someone with a blog who happens to enjoy cooking.

Mostly, though, this is due to another truth: I gained a lot of weight during my unfortunate marriage, then gained even more after its abrupt end.

I tried lying at first, telling myself I hadn’t really gained that much. But my pants never lie, and they told a different story. Lose it, they said, and after a while, I listened.

Dieting is hard, and being a food blogger on a diet is harder still.

A better person than the one I am would probably write about healthy food and low-calorie eating, but not me: I am in deep denial that anyone could find kale edible under any circumstances, and furthermore, I don’t want to be anywhere near a kitchen when I am trying not to think about the kind of food I actually do want to eat.

When I’m not on a diet, the kitchen is place of memories, inspired by the comforting smell of roast chicken, or the astonishingly light weight of my grandmother’s beloved cast iron skillet. When I am on a diet, the kitchen is simply a room full of reminders of things I’d rather be eating: A hundred or so cookbooks, many of them devoted to cakes, pies, and cookies.

I like the idea of healthy eating. I own a juicer. It was a gift, and I’ve never actually plugged it in, but I dedicate valuable countertop space to it, and I feel like that must surely count for something.

My pants disagree.

I started my diet in the early fall. By the end of fall, I had lost some weight, by which I mean, more than twenty pounds. Three pants sizes.

I donate my disagreeable pants to charity, and take myself shopping for a happier pair.

The holidays roll around, and though I begin the season worried about the upcoming buffets and potlucks, it turns out it is not that hard to just eat a little bit of everything, when that has become the habit. I find I’m relaxed – enjoying myself, even. I look forward to baking the things I will contribute. I look forward to writing about them on my blog.

The stars seem to align for the return of my blog, but my friends have other things in mind: They all have their favorites, and with each invitation comes a request for something I’ve made before. Tradition! I make Sugar Cream Pie for a potluck, and Eggnog Cookies re-appear with the return of my annual cookie exchange.

Thanksgiving finds me without much to do; months ago, I volunteered to work, since my office needed one person to be on call, just in case something needed attention. It was a convenient excuse to avoid cooking the same meal I had made so many times. The Child spends the day watching movies with the Red Dog, while I do things around the house and occasionally refresh my browser to see if there is anything to actually do at work, apart from logging in. We’re invited to a friend’s house in the evening, so on one of my breaks from not working, I make a quick batch of brownies for The Child to share with her friend, while I sip wine with her friend’s mother.

I make Cocomalt Brownies. If you don’t know what Cocomalt is, there’s a good reason for that: it hasn’t been manufactured for decades. I discovered the term over the summer, in a 1946 copy of The Household Searchlight Recipe Book that I picked up in an antique mall in Wisconsin. A little research leads me to the conclusion that it was something like Ovaltine – a chocolate malt powder that can be added to milk, hot or cold.

They still make Ovaltine, so I use it as a substitute when I attempt one of the recipes, for Cocomalt cookies. The Child pronounces them delicious, and before I have a chance to get a picture of the cookies, she offers them up to a group of her friends, and they disappear.

Then, she does it again.

I wanted to make the cookies a third time, but I don’t want to be away from my desk too long, so I do a little bit of hunting and discover booklets dedicated to Cocomalt recipes, one of which contains a recipe for brownies. I substitute Ovaltine again, and it works just fine, even using a slightly larger pan than originally called for.

The brownies mix up quickly and require no special technique – just mix everything up in order, and dump it in the pan. I lined the pan with parchment for ease in removal. The resulting brownies are light and slightly malty; The Child says they are like Cocopuffs, a fairly accurate description. They’re as easy as brownies from a mix, but a little bit special. They can’t foul up your diet, either, because like the Cocomalt cookies, they disappear very quickly when kids are around.

Cocomalt Brownies

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

45 mins

Author: My Favorite Cocomalt Recipes, R.B. Davis Co, 1929

Ingredients

2 eggs
½ cup melted butter
¾ cup brown sugar
½ tsp vanilla
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup Ovaltine (chocolate malt powder)
¼ tsp salt
½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans, as you prefer

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350° F.
Mix ingredients in order given.
Line a 9-inch square metal pan with parchment paper, letting paper hang over the edges to act as a sling. Use a spatula to spread the batter evenly into the pan.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Let cool ten minutes in pan, then use parchment to lift out of the pan. Finish cooling on a wire rack, and cut into squares of desired size.

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That Plum Torte

08.15.2016 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

Of the many gifts the internet has given us, I would argue the greatest may be this: Targeted recycling.

Yes, keeping stuff out of landfills is nice, but that isn’t why I recycle, and I suspect that’s true of a good many people. I will grudgingly separate out the recyclables in my trash because I am required to do so, to avoid a fine. I will happily recycle, though, when there is a monetary gain involved.

My most enthusiastic period as a recycler was during The Child’s infant and toddler years, when she required a new wardrobe with each change of season. Baby clothes are expensive, especially if you don’t have anyone passing along hand-me-downs, and even more especially when you crave only the most exquisite clothing for that baby.

It is entirely possible I was overcompensating for my own childhood, a time that photographic evidence suggests I spent wearing primarily hand-me-down boys’ play clothes, except for special occasions, which I spent in dresses sewn by my mother, and which was spent in the 1970s either way.

My Child’s photo albums would not suffer the same cruel fate, but my wallet could not bear the burden. I quickly discovered consignment stores, but then a magical thing occurred: Ebay.

I found out one could buy beautiful, slightly used boutique baby clothes at a fraction of the original price, and an obsession was born. I learned about internet auctions, and online payment systems, and bid sniping, and bid stalking, and became somewhat of a pro, buying at a discount, then selling what I could bear to part with once she had outgrown it.

Eventually, she preferred choosing her own clothes, and wore clothes long enough that they actually showed signs of wear, so I moved on from Ebay, unless I happened to be in the market for something from my childhood that I did want to remember, like a replacement for my favorite Christmas book, the now sadly out of print Grimble at Christmas.

I discovered other recycling sites had their uses, notably Freecycle, a Yahoo group that allowed me to get rid of large pieces of furniture without having to haul them to a donation site or pay for trash removal. I just emailed out to the group, and chose someone from among the replies, and that someone showed up with a pickup truck and an appreciative smile. The Departed’s massive, battered old desk was freecycled away to a grateful divorcee who needed it to study as she prepared to return to the workforce. Even he couldn’t find a reason to object to this hassle-free system.

Then Facebook came along, and with it, the Buy Nothing group. If you’ve never been in one of these groups, here is how they work: Group members, who live in a small geographical area, post pictures of things they don’t want anymore. Other group members comment on the photos if they are interested in having the item. The giver chooses a recipient. No one is allowed to ask for or offer money.

That’s it. Free stuff on the internet.

The posts are, not surprisingly, heavily tilted toward outgrown children’s items, but there’s quite a bit of other stuff. I posted quite a bit myself, after reading Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – a book we have two copies of, one for me and one for The Child – when I began my household purging, starting with my vast collection of last year’s handbags. I asked everyone who posted to come up with a creative name for each bag’s color, and whoever made the suggestion that tickled my fancy got the bag. I got some free entertainment and a lot of closet space from that.

Occasionally, I get chosen for other people’s items: On one occasion, some vintage cookbooks; on another, an elegant unused Kate Spade organizer, for The Child to keep track of her school assignments. A second batch of free cookbooks turned out to be mostly useless, but included a copy of Fifty Shades of Chicken, which gave me a laugh and a very handy last-minute gag gift for a newly divorced – and, apparently, newly vegetarian – friend. I wanted to find a reason to need someone’s extensive rubber duck collection, but, much to my dismay, couldn’t.

It’s summer now, and people are posting their garden surplus – they have too much zucchini, or too many apples. I shared some of my rhubarb. A woman who was overrun with plums offered them to me, and when I couldn’t get over to pick them up that same day, she delivered them to my house, so that they wouldn’t go bad before I could get them.

Suddenly, I had too many plums.

Fortunately, I also had a recipe for a plum torte that I’ve been wanting to try, having read about it several times over the years on various food blogs. Created by Marian Burros, the recipe was originally published in the New York Times in 1982, and it made an annual appearance in the paper until 1989, when the editors decided it was time to move on.

The readers thought otherwise, and the Times was “flooded with angry letters.”

Of course, it is now freely available throughout the year through the Times online, and pops up elsewhere with some regularity. I was surprised to find a version of it in Burros’ 1967 cookbook Elegant But Easy (it includes blueberries, apples, and peaches, alongside the plums). It’s the standout recipe of the book, which can best be described at a mesmerizing culinary time warp, particularly the chapter on salads, which contains 19 recipes, of which 12 involve Jell-O and a mold.

The first time I made it, I covered every inch of the batter with plums, since I had so many. The plums I was using were a tiny Japanese variety, so I couldn’t use the stated number of the recipe, and it looked quite pretty. It may have been a bit too much, because even baking the cake for a significantly longer time than called for, the center was still a bit more moist than it should have been. Delicious, but not quite right.

I decided to make the cake a second time, using fewer plums, and as I was washing out my springform pan, I happened to notice the diameter measurement stamped into the bottom: I was the proud owner of an 8 inch pan, rather than the 9 inch pan called for in the recipe.

When I say “the recipe,” I mean every cake I’ve made in a springform pan in the last ten years.

On the one hand, it’s rather disheartening to realize you’ve been fouling up any number of perfectly good cake recipes this way; on the other hand, it’s nice to have a reason to go to the cookware department and buy a shiny new 9 inch pan.

This cake comes together very easily, so making it a second time was a snap. I used fewer plums, and was probably a bit too cautious about it, as the plum to cake ratio was definitely tilted toward cake. But, the cake did cook through, in the expected amount of time, and it was perfect in every way.

The recipe could easily be made with other fruit; it struck me that apricots in particular would be a nice variation, when they are in season. Sadly, the rest of my bounty of plums had gone off by the time I finished the second cake, but it’s something to look forward to next year.

Plum Torte

Author: adapted from Marian Burros, The New York Times

Ingredients

1 cup/125 grams all-purpose flour
1 tsp/5 grams baking powder
salt
1 cup/200 grams sugar, plus extra for topping
½ cup/115 grams unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
12 small plums, halved and pitted, or six larger plums
2 tsp lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Instructions

Heat over to 350°F.
Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. In a larger bowl or stand mixer, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, then the dry ingredients, mixing until just blended.
Spoon batter into a 9-inch springform pan and smooth the top. Arrange the plums on top, skin side up, covering the surface. Sprinkle with lemon juice and cinnamon, then one to two tablespoons of sugar.
Bake about 45 minutes, until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into a center part of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.
And remember, once cool, if you can stand it, leave it covered at room temperature overnight as this cake really is even better on the second day. (But don't beat yourself up if you can't wait. We tried a slice on the first day and it was amazing then too.)

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A Room at the Inn, Part 1

Cocomalt Brownies

That Plum Torte

About Me

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