Lovey LouAnn’s Carrot Cake

*Fork pictured was not found on the street.*

On Saturday, I had, as my particular friend called it, a visceral reaction to the suburbs.

We had dropped Khristian’s daughter off at the movies with a friend and planned a drink and some food at the least offensive of the chain restaurants in Hunt Valley (which turned out to be California Pizza Kitchen).

Things started out fine, as they usually do, and we ordered drinks and food at the bar.

After these diversions were settled I was able to look around.

The customers next to us were unhappy with something and a perfectly nice manager came over and soothed them.

The incoming male bartender, clearly an annoyance to our outgoing female bartender, overpoured for a lone male customer and mentioned that he (the bartender) would prefer some Rumplemintz. It was clear that the male customer was not really interested in the extra booze, but it was delivered in such a way that refusal would have seemed odd, so the male customer pretended it was fine.

It wasn’t really fine. I could feel it. The gesture of the extra booze came off as the “everybody’s doing it” kind of knuckle-dragging peer pressure one experiences around the beer funnel at a backwoods party.

Then we heard the same bartender mention Rumplemintz again at the other end of the bar. Soon after we watched him stick his finger in the neck of a bottle of some kind of juice mixer to unclog it before adding it to a waiting tray of drinks which was then, presumably, delivered to an unsuspecting patron.

Right around this time I started to feel…off.

I am not sure the last time I have been in a “fast-casual” dine-in chain restaurant, but I do remember saying that I didn’t want to do it again, and as I watched the people at the bar eating and listened to the modest din of their conversation or watched them staring into space or at the NCAA women’s basketball on the TVs over the bar I started to feel worse.

We finished our pizza and kale salad and paid. With time to kill, we boarded the escalator and descended into the belly of the beast: Wegman’s.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Wegman’s. And the Hunt Valley Wegman’s is legendary.

But the second I walked into the store I knew it was a mistake. It was hot, and it smelled strongly of food and people at the same time, in equal measure. Whole families were doing the weekly shopping, which translated into hordes of people, all with a determined look on their face and little regard for the people around them. We headed to the back of the store and perused the gluten-free section for a bit, and then I started to realize that the rest of our lovely day, the day that started with a walk to the Waverly farmer’s market for asparagus, a Blacksauce Kitchen biscuit, and a bag of Michele’s Granola, was not going to end well for me.

Anxiety is visceral. It may originate from a few random firing synapses in your brain, but the second those electrical impulses begin, the physical sensations are unmistakable with sensory detail that is clear, odd, and particular.

I could taste the last bite of kale salad in the back of my throat, where my breath lodged and came in short, shallow gasps. I was hot, and my clothes started to squeeze me. My mouth dried out. My heart beat in my chest, and I could feel the pulse in my belly, the one that connects to the vagus nerve, the transmitter of butterflies and anxiety and fear in a straight shot to the base of the skull.

Thinking to maybe head off the inevitable, I left my particular friend holding our few groceries and went to the restroom. Sometimes the quietness of the bathroom gives me space to collect myself. It may seem impossible that a public bathroom could become a refuge, but sometimes it’s the only quiet, peaceful space to go to when anxiety fires up.

The bathroom was rank-smelling and unclean. Loud music piped through the store, the kind of saccharine pop music that sounds like Christian rock but isn’t and involves no real instruments, reverberated against the oddly terracotta walls here. The bathroom was no help. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My mouth was completely devoid of moisture, foul-tasting and pebbled with tastebuds that felt every particulate-filled, unrelenting morsel of inhaled air.

I will spare you the details of the next 45 minutes or so except to say that I visited that bathroom once more, plus a Peet’s coffee and tea bathroom and the movie theater bathroom (three times) before the girls finished their movie. I had taken an anxiety pill, then another half, and then another half. It’s hard to know if the medication sticks when you can’t keep it down. We made it home, where I took another pill, spent some more time in my (mercifully quiet and clean) bathroom, put on thick jammies (for the shivering when it came), and got into bed.

It’s not like I am unfamiliar with the trappings of the suburbs.

I spent 13 years in the suburbs of Atlanta. Without knowing it, in those 13 years, I lost bits of myself. It was subtle at first. Weekend shopping and meal planning on Sundays. Casual acquaintances who never really knew me (or cared to, really). Weekends consumed at the softball field, my child the center of the universe.

I kept the house, bossed my husband (Dane, for those who are just joining in) around, swore he couldn’t live without me (even went on strike once, like a total douche), and fully developed the raging anxiety that first surfaced when I was young. Every moment was gogogo, working for the weekend, taking care of business. The joy of teaching I experienced in Seattle evaporated in Georgia under a domineering boss who spent faculty meetings yelling at us.

We bought a farm. We lost a baby. I quit my job and started a school. Dane lost his job. We lost the farm. Dane died.

Sicily and I fled the suburbs for Baltimore.

Forgive me.

The vacuous homogeneity, the forced joie de vivre, the conspicuous consumption, and lack of individuality of the suburbs nearly killed me.

The low-key unhappiness that no one will admit to. The women complaining constantly about their husbands, who continue to ask forgiveness, not permission, of their wives.

The soul-killing lack of creativity, a hole that women attempted to fill chock-a-block full with Mason jar crafts, Pinterest boards, and wine painting party girls’ nights out. The insistence on calling each other “girls” in the first place.

The apathy towards politics, or the overwhelming conservative nature of the politics they did participate in.

The sheer size and number of SUVs and the callous, blatant disregard for fellow humans who are not in the inner circle, as evidenced by the lush green lawns and huge bags of garbage.

The subtle once-over every time you walk in someone’s door.

The endless evenings and weekends driving to activities or playdates or else keeping up the lawn, the house, the charade.

Forgive me.

It’s small wonder that in terms of volume and sheer violence, most heinous crimes are perpetrated not in rural areas or in the darkest parts of the urban jungle but just outside the beltway. School shootings happen in the suburbs, most often carried out by deeply unhappy people with startlingly easy access to guns.

But I digress.

I didn’t realize how miserable I was being the person I was never meant to be until I didn’t have to be that person anymore.

I shared these thoughts with Sicily the following day. We were walking across a parking lot, and when I told her my thoughts, her chin quivered and she lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes.

“Do you regret it?” she asked me. “Being a softball mom?”

I stopped in the parking lot and looked her full in the face. I reassured her that she is the joy of my life. She made me understand the unfathomable depths of love and has given me the most blissful moments I have yet experienced in this incarnation. I am who I am today because she was born – she has made me a better person.

In truth, as much as my flight from the suburbs was about excavating the person I buried for so many years, it was also about being someone my kid could look up to. To show her that even from the shadow place of grief and through years of feeling unworthy, there is a way to come back. That it’s a sad and hard and joyous and exhausting and frustrating and hilarious and angry-making journey filled with ten tons of bullshit but also an equal measure of tears and laughter and the full range of emotion.

That feeling the full range of emotion – the crevasse of the depths and the universal height of joy – is the necessary thing. It’s the thing I couldn’t feel for 13 years. It’s the thing that came surging through me as we wandered the chaos of a strip mall in suburban Hunt Valley on a Saturday, only this time it came like a coiled snake, snapping out of a clay pot.

I want my beautiful daughter to know that it doesn’t have to be so for her. She can be who she is, just as she is. The Wiccans express it thus: “An it harm none, do as thou wilt.” And so I say now to both myself and my daughter.

As my anxiety receded, I felt like eating. Usually, I don’t eat for the rest of the day after an anxiety attack, and today was no different, but my cravings are always specific – sweet, comforting things, usually in the form of cake. I am possibly cake’s biggest fan.

In light of the burgeoning spring that has begun to sprung outside my bedroom window, and to honor my heart walking around outside of my body as we both continue to move towards who we are, I present to you this lovely, easy, unfussy carrot cake. I made carrot cake for Sicily’s first birthday. She ate it with a fork, no sticky fingers for her, and I knew, even in the middle of the suburbs, that she and I would somehow get to be just fine.

LouAnn’s Carrot Cake

Sicily, a.k.a Muffin Girl and Lovey LouAnn, maybe would have chosen a different cake for her first birthday, were she given a choice. I made this to try to reconcile her steady diet of organic, handmade meals and snacks with my deep love of sweet, sweet birthday cake. This recipe is a mash-up of several different recipes I have made over the years, with tweaked spices and a new technique that is shamelessly stolen from Cook’s Illustrated. After making cake in this way, I may never return to the round.

(serves 10)

Ingredients

Cake

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular AP works here, too)

1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3 large eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup well-mashed banana (about two bananas)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 2/3 cups shredded carrot (about 3 large carrots – this measurement needn’t be exact)

Frosting and decoration

12 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 stick butter, softened

Optional: 1/4 cup buttermilk powder

2 teaspoons lemon

3 cups powdered sugar

Optional: milk, as needed

2 cups pecans, toasted, cooled, and chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13″ x 18″ rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (allow overhang at the ends) and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

In a larger bowl, use the same whisk to combine eggs, oil, bananas, and vanilla. Whisk thoroughly until egg and oil are completely incorporated.

Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until combined (note: if you are using regular AP flour, do not overmix). The batter will seem fairly thick, closer to brownies than cake.

Fold carrots into the batter.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Use an offset spatula to even the surface and make sure it is level.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is dry. You can use a cake tester or toothpick to test also; no crumbs should stick to either.

Cool in pan for five minutes, then carefully life with the edges of the parchment paper and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting, place cream cheese, butter, and buttermilk powder (if using) in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and powdered sugar (sift if you are particular; I am not), one cup at a time, beating well between additions. If your frosting is too thick, add a teaspoon of milk at a time, beating well, until it achieves a smooth, spreadable consistency.

To assemble, use a sharp knife to cut the cake into four pieces: one big cut across the longest part of the cake and one on the shorter side (you will end up with four rectangles that are about 6″ x 8″ each).

I use a rotating cake stand to frost, but since this is a round cake that is not entirely necessary. Frost and fill, allowing plenty for the top. If some crumbs show through on the sides, that’s okay.

When the cake is frosting, press handfuls of pecans into all four sides until covered. Pro tip: DO NOT DO THIS OVER THE SINK (don’t ask how I know). What happens is you waste a ton of pecans, which are very expensive. Complete this by holding the cake in one hand over the same rimmed baking sheet it was cooked in, using the other hand to press a handful of pecans into the sides at a time. Whatever is leftover can be used in another application.

Try not to eat it all, but remind yourself that since there are carrots in there it’s practically a vegetable.

Recipe Notes

You can substitute applesauce OR drained crushed pineapple for banana in the same amounts.
Buttermilk powder is not strictly necessary, but it’s nice to have around and lasts forever. Find it in the baking aisle near the canned and powdered milk.
You could also add currants to the batter…if you were a MONSTER.

Hustle And Stack: Vanilla Ice Cream With Tamarind Caramel And Spicy Peanut Crumble

I am not a rise-and-grind, hustle-and-stack kind of girl.

While I recognize the value in this philosophy for some folks, it just doesn’t feel good for me. It feels frantic and crazy-making and doesn’t leave any space inside it for enjoying the fruits of your labor.

It’s a grind. A slog. An ongoing rush to get something more than what you have.

My dad, in his day, and all of the days I had with him, was a hustle-and-stack OG. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2001 and given six months to live. I quit my job and flew back East from Seattle so he could get to know his infant granddaughter in whatever time he had left. Although he positively doted on her (for the next six years), he was often too busy to do more than come up from his basement office and say hi. He traveled for his work constantly and worked through multiple bouts of chemo and radiation and many courses of experimental treatments.

In a moment of frustration, I asked him once what amount of money it would take for him to stop working long enough to come out of the basement and enjoy his family before he died. He had no answer – it was literally the hustle he liked, I think, more than the progress towards any goal.

Part of this compulsion to grind stems from fear. Fear of not having enough, being enough, or deserving enough.

But then I read this quote from Osho:

“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”

Yes. THIS.

Fear is oxymoronic in that it can alternately hold us back and compel us forward. Fear is the trigger that serves our flight, fight, or freeze instincts, the ones buried so deeply in our brains that we don’t even recognize that this compulsive need for hustling and stacking is just a modern-day version of fleeing from a saber tooth tiger.

The other side of this compulsion is that we never truly get to experience whatever it is we say we are seeking to experience if we are constantly hustling. There is no ease, no balance. No repose. No rest.

Of course, this ease and repose can masquerade as lazy, and the whole world will jump to tell you that time spent slowly is time wasted.

As all three regular readers of this blog can attest, I disagree with the whole world in this regard. I don’t think you can really know what it means to feel something without slowing down to feel it. You might think that “hustle and stack” has little, if anything, to do with feeling, but think back to a time when you won something. That rush of adrenaline; that quick flush of victory. For some people, it’s positively ADDICTIVE.

Today in my yin yoga class with Jessie Kates, she talked about the idea that having goals and plans in this life are good, but sometimes we get so distracted by them that we forget to slow down to take detours to do things that give us joy just because. Maybe the detours don’t make us money, or they don’t increase our social media reach, or otherwise elevate us to the lofty, random standards that others set. But WOW.

Joy? The possibility of joy? The potential to do something just because it feels good for your soul?

YES. THAT.

That I would rise-and-grind for.

I will also rise-and-grind for:

an early morning camping trip
a road trip
my birthday
Sicily’s birthday
Khristian’s birthday
most people’s birthdays, if I am honest
complicated cooking projects
a long walk in the woods
a heart-opening yoga class

I am done rising-and-grinding for the sake of itself, and I am certainly not making the hustling and the stacking a priority. I sound like your grandmother, adding “the” in front of “hustling” and “stacking” (as I often do with The Facebook, except that’s what it used to be called, but I digress), but know that it’s a writing device and is not accidental and since I know the rules I can break them so there.

I like the idea of a leisurely morning on my balcony with coffee and three trees’ worth of birds twittering and flitting. I like listening to little kids walking to the park across the street and watching dogs with their zingy little bodies flinging themselves around with sheer delight at being outside because they can. This is not time wasted. This is time spent rooted in the essence of respect and awe, and wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to do?

We can actually construct a life that has built into it more time for joy and awe and respect and wonder and zingy-body flinging, so long as we are willing to shuffle off the mortal coil of Stuff and Striving. I suppose it’s a bit of striving to make this happen, too, but in the very best way – the shedding part of striving, where you shed the illusion that you have to Do and Be and Go in order to be considered Successful.

(and true and weird thing that just happened: as my brain wanted to type “Successful,” my fingers typed “Suzannah.” STRANGE.)

The best parts of this will come together with less effort than one might think necessary. Just like this ice cream. Khristian and I are cooking our way through Madhur Jaffrey’s Vegetarian India, and as we finished up one meal and began to plan the other, these flavors came to me. Sweet. Sour. Spicy. Salty. The balance of flavor was not instantaneous, but that’s just the way things go, mostly, in ice cream as in life.

Take a detour with me here, and then tell me the best detour you ever took in the comments.

New feature here, for your edification, this was on the blog two years ago today: Galentine’s Day: Coffeecake and Connection

Vanilla Ice Cream With Tamarind Caramel And Spicy Peanut Crumble

Ingredients

Ice Cream

4 cups of dairy (see Recipe Notes)

1 vanilla bean, scraped (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)

1/2 cup sugar

4 egg yolks

pinch salt

Tamarind Caramel

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 or 3 teaspoons of tamarind concentrate (see Recipe Notes)

Peanut Crumble (from Madhur Jaffrey’s Vegetarian Indian)

1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts

1/3 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Method

Make the ice cream: Place dairy and vanilla bean (or extract) in a heavy saucepan over medium heat and heat until small bubbles appear around the sides (do not boil).

While the dairy is heating, place egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.

When dairy is ready, remove from heat and begin to slowly add to eggs, whisking constantly. I cannot emphasize enough the words “slowly add” and “whisking constantly.” If you add quickly and don’t whisk, you will make sweetened scrambled eggs. Pour a few drops of dairy at a time to begin, gradually working your way to a thin, constant stream of dairy, whisked into the eggs.

Once combined, place the saucepan back on the stove with a fine-mesh strainer on top of it. Strain the milk and egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, for about ten minutes (or until the mixture begins to thicken). Eventually, the mixture will thinly coat the back of a spoon, and you will know it’s done.

Place the fine-mesh strainer over another bowl, and strain dairy mixture into the bowl. Place plastic wrap on the surface of the dairy mixture and place in ‘fridge to cool completely. This can be done a couple of days ahead of time if you prefer.

Make the caramel: While the dairy is chillin’, make your caramel. Caramel is not hard but requires patience and a tiny bit of finesse. Combine sugar and water in a high-sided heavy saucepan over medium heat and swirl gently to mix (don’t use a spoon; pick up the saucepan and swirl it around).

You can leave the sugar/water mix briefly to combine the heavy cream and tamarind extract in a separate bowl. The tamarind extract immediately makes the cream thicken. This is totally fine. Do not panic. Set aside.

Take a look at your sugar/water mixture. You are looking to see if the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is bubbling. The bubbling will cause sugar deposits to climb up the side of the pan; use a pastry brush dipped in water to encourage those crystals to rejoin the liquid, but do not stir in.

Once your sugar mixture turns a light golden yellow, remove from heat and whisk in the cream and tamarind concentrate mixture. The sugar will bubble up (hence the high sides of the saucepan), so work quickly to incorporate the cream mixture. Stir and cook over medium-low heat until the mixture begins to thicken enough to coat the back of a spoon. Place in a jar or other container and let cool to at least room temperature. Set aside.

Make the crumble: Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender and pulse until you have medium-fine crumbs. Set aside.

Put it all together: You will process the ice cream according to your manufacturer’s instructions. I pour my custard in and process for about 15 minutes, then add the peanut crumble for five minutes (until totally incorporated) and then the completely cool tamarind caramel. I like there to be chewy streaks of caramel throughout, a little tartness to cut the sweet.

Recipe Notes

A word on dairy: I generally use 50% heavy cream and 50% whole milk in my ice creams, but you can use whatever is on hand. The more cream, the creamier (which makes sense). You can also be vegan AF if you like, but I have not tested this with plant milks (the ice cream or the caramel). Both might be very delicious with coconut milk.
I ordered my tamarind concentrate from the interwebs; it’s also referred to as tamarind paste, and I used the brand Madhur Jaffrey recommended.

Had We But World Enough And Time: Profiteroles

*The wild profiterole, captured in its natural habitat.*

First, for you, a poem about love. Sort of. If you are not a lover of poetry, feel free to skip to the erudite synopsis – the TL:DR, if you will – below:

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

~Andrew Marvell~

Essentially, Andrew Marvell is trying to convince his mistress to get freaky, and quick, before worms begin to eat them in the grave.

What this is really about is time (well, and if we are being honest, which we should always try to be, also sex), and how little we have in comparison to how much we tell ourselves we have (time and sex, both).

This winter break I wanted lots and lots of time. I wanted to have weeks of time to do as much or as little as I wanted, with no stress of deadlines. It may seem that as a freelance writer I have all of the time in the world, but in truth my days fly by in a haze of writing and basic life management. Most days I raise myself from a shitty night’s sleep and deliver The Child to school, and then, even with the day stretching out long before me, writing, house maintenance, family maintenance, yoga teaching/class planning, and yoga studio assistant managing fill up those minutes I thought I had plenty of when I first woke.

It astonishes me how I used to do all of the things I do these days with the added pressure of running a school and managing livestock. I cannot remember how it is that I got things done.

And that’s the haze aspect. I didn’t really spend too much time thinking about or noticing things that were happening. It’s the same as if your head is on fire – you don’t note the color of the flames, you just put the fire out. So many parts of my life have rushed by in a blur that I never fully experienced.

But the only way to really dive deep is to make time to do so. There are multiple studies on how we can’t actually “multi-task,” and that entering deeply into something is the only way to truly know that thing. If you quickly Google “how to learn something” you get 622 million results. The first few pages talk about learning something new every day and then quickly devolve into ways to learn new things in five minutes, or ten. It’s all about learning/doing the thing and less about experiencing the thing.

It’s hard to jump off the Must Get Things Done Treadmill.

But jump off I must. Not for any reason other than I want to continue to try to be present for everything. Possibly not things like cleaning the cat box or doing my taxes, but maybe even those things, too.

For months now I have wanted to give real pastry a try. I have been craving cream puffs and eclairs and cheese danish with an immeasurable ferocity for months now. The only reason I am not 1,000 pounds is because I am unwilling to pay eight bucks a pastry for substandard gluten-free bullshit. I may splurge for a $4 gluten-free cupcake on occasion, but I always regret it (I make them waaaaay tastier).

But real delicate pastry takes time and attention, both of which have been hard to come by in these past months.

Not anymore.

Here are profiteroles. Pâte à choux pastry, light and puffy, filled with sweet vanilla cream and striped with chocolate.

Authentic and delicious. Gluten-free (although you can make them with regular AP flour).

They take some time. I have modified the process a bit for less hands-on time, but still. You can’t just pop these in the oven and walk away.

Profiteroles

This recipe bows in gratitude to Michael Ruhlman and Ratio, but changes are made to accommodate the peculiar properties of gluten-free flour.

Ingredients

Pastry Creme (Creme Patisserie, or Creme Pat as they say on The Great British Baking Show)

1/4 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour (or just cornstarch)

4 room-temperature egg yolks

2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 vanilla bean, scraped (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)

Pâte à Choux

1 cup water

7 tablespoons butter

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour

3 room-temperature eggs, beaten

Optional drizzle

1/2 cup chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet chips because it’s what I had)

1/4 cup heavy cream

Method

Make the pastry creme first. In a large bowl, mix together flour and egg yolks until thoroughly incorporated and smooth. Set aside.

Heat milk, sugar, and salt to a simmer in a heavy saucepan over medium heat (look for small bubbles to appear around the edges of the pan). Remove from heat and grab a whisk.

Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture. WHISK CONSTANTLY. Don’t skimp, and don’t add the hot milk too fast. If you do, you will end up with sweet scrambled egg which is gross and nobody wants that.

Once the milk is completely added, pour the mixture back into the milk pan and cook over low heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture begins to thicken (about five to ten minutes).

Pro-tip: use a whisk. I tried a spatula and that did not end well.

Remove from heat and add scraped vanilla bean (or extract). Place a fine mesh strainer over the bowl you will cool the pastry creme in. Pour pastry creme into the strainer to remove errant lumps (of egg or flour). Place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the creme and place in the ‘fridge to cool thoroughly while you make the pâte à choux.

To make your pastry, preheat oven to 425 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment pastry. Set aside. Set up a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (or see Recipe Notes).

Heat water, butter, and salt in a high-sided saucepan over medium heat until butter is completely melted.

Add flour to water/butter mixture and stir with a wooden spoon, still over heat, until mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a ball. You will also notice a thin skim of pastry on the bottom of the pot.

Move pastry to the bowl of the stand mixer and let cool slightly. You want to be able to touch it, but you don’t want it cold.

Turn on stand mixer and begin to add beaten egg a little at a time. Smart people beat each egg separately and add them one at a time. You may not actually use all of the egg, which can be scary.

Don’t be scared.

Add a bit of beaten egg at a time and beat until it is incorporated. Ultimately you are looking for a dough that is somewhat stiff but still able to be piped. This is somewhere between cookie dough and a thick batter. It should not ooze at all or be sloshy. I know this to be true because that’s what my first attempts were like, and I ended up with egg-tasting pancakes. #Barf

The reason you may not use all of the eggs is because of the level of humidity in the air, the temperature of the flour/water/butter mix, alignment of the planets, the difficulty of the French: any number of reasons. It’s best to concentrate on the texture you are aiming for rather than the amount of each ingredient.

This is why people have dogs: to eat their extra eggs.

So beat your eggs as needed into the flour. When done, you can refrigerate your pastry dough for a day, or you can proceed.

Place dough into a pastry bag (see Recipe Notes) fitted with a round nozzle; I used a size 11, but you can eyeball it and go for 3/4 to 1″. Pipe 1″ rounds of dough onto parchment one inch away from each other. Each dough ball should have a little peak on top (if not, your dough is too runny. Sorry.).

Use a wet fingertip to smooth the top of each dough ball.

Place in oven at 425 for ten minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and cook for another 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and pierce sides with a toothpick to allow excess moisture to escape. Place back in turned-off oven and let them dry out for another 10 minutes.

Let cool completely.

Filling options:

Pipe cooled pastry cream with a skinny nozzle through the hole you made with the toothpick
Slice in half and use a spoon to dollop cream between both halves

For the optional drizzle, melt chocolate and cream over low heat, stirring constantly. If you are fancy as fuck, place that into a squeeze bottle and with a practiced air move it back and forth over your filled profiteroles until you achieve the chocolate coverage you desire.

If you have leftover drizzle, add some heavy cream, shake well, and pour over ice cream. Or add to milk and heat for hot chocolate.

Recipe Notes

You don’t need a stand mixer to make these, just lots of muscle. You can add your eggs and beat with a wooden spoon until you achieve the desired consistency. You can also use a food processor.
You also don’t need a pastry bag. Use a sealed freezer bag with the end snipped off and the pastry tip nestled into the snipped-off corner for the exact same result.

If you have read all the way through, finish this sentence in the comments: Had I but world enough and time, I would…”

A Balm For Memory Loss: Smith Island Cake

For someone of my age this may seem an overly dramatic statement: I am losing my memory.

For the record, I am 46, born in 1971, so just a shade away from 47 which is officially the late 40s but I don’t really care.

What I care about is that I cannot remember things.

Part of this is a car accident when I was 16. I can remember THAT: staring up through the spiderweb of the windshield, one leg on the driver’s side of my dream car, my 1971 refurbished Volkswagen Bug, the emergency brake raking open a long, bloody seam up the back of my left thigh, and the rest of me in the passenger side. An EMT with a shaky voice, tending to a cut on my head, saying, “It’s fine. You’ll be fine,” and then nothing until the vision of my mother storming through the curtains in the ER, brusque: “You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”

The doc, several weeks later, telling me that my memory would be affected forever by the early trauma to the frontal lobe.

Part of this is other trauma in childhood, some of which I remember and am addressing with My Therapist, some of which I believe is so deeply buried that the excavation itself would cause trauma.

Fast forward decades, when this – this memory loss thing – wasn’t really an issue, to now, when it has suddenly become one.

I can’t remember shit.

Not the funny, old-timer CRS (Can’t Remember Shit) disease.

Whole swathes of my life, gone with no real understanding of what happened or where they went.

Me in a formal dress next to a boy in formal dress: no idea the occasion or the boy.

Yesterday – what I did, where I was.

Some of this can be attributed to the lifestyle of a freelance writer. I have only one real standing appointment every week; otherwise, the days are all meaningless, fabricated markers of time. Other of this can be blamed on my Ayurvedic dosha – vata – which has me consuming large quantities of information and then promptly forgetting it.

But this loss of memory is distressing.

I can’t remember significant events in my life, events that make me the person who I am. Events that have forged relationships with people I love.

The thing that has saved me in many ways is my friends.

In my head, I call them the Keeper of Records.

I have friends who have known me for forty years- they have a grave responsibility to recall the child that they thought I was to the adult I am now.

I have friends who have only known me since this move back to Baltimore in 2014. They have less responsibility, perhaps, but they also have less invested in me. Perhaps they will grow weary of reminding me of their important dates, or nudging me towards our shared memories that are even now, just these few years on, receding.

It’s hard to go on record like this. It feels like failure.

And nothing soothes that feeling better than baking, and eating, cake.

Full disclosure: I have never before eaten Smith Island cake.

#Shocking

As a native Marylander, this is also something of a failure, but I choose to let this one go. I am letting it go because as I type this I am having a big slice for breakfast, which means not only am I not a failure in the long run, but I am also a fucking grownup who can eat cake for breakfast if I feel like it.

Plus, as I was researching this recipe I found out that the one lady on Smith Island who is super famous for her “authentic” Smith Island cake uses BOXED CAKE MIX.

GTFO. That’s just DUMB.

So I looked deeper and found the “original” recipe from Frances Kitching, an innkeeper on Smith Island who is believed to have created this iconic cake. This lady is the real deal; from her linked obituary, she delivers gems like:

“The best thing you can do to a crab is let it be. Clean it, fry it, and watch that it doesn’t pop in the skillet and burn your arm.”

And, when someone asked if they could keep their beer cold in her fridge while they ate:

“You’d be the first. I have simply turned down some people who appeared to have been drinking when they came here to eat. They were in no condition to enjoy and appreciate good cooking.”

The New York Times even stopped by her inn in 1979 to write a story about her. The article is notable in its description of not only the meal the writer enjoyed but also in the beauty of the descriptions of life on Smith Island.

In 2008, Smith Island cake became Maryland’s state dessert. You will note in the description that in order to be a Smith Island cake proper, flavor doesn’t matter, but the number of layers does: between eight and 12 is the standard.

So don’t look too closely at the picture above (hint: mine only has six, but in my defense I was feeling a little woozy when I made this AND it’s my first one AND I am not actually particularly fond of crepe cakes, which is what it begins to be when you have too many layers, so BACK OFF).

Never you mind the layers. I am calling it a Smith Island cake that cannot count. The next one will come correct.

But in the meantime, back away from the boxed cake mix and use Frances Kitchings’ own recipe, as I did. I subbed out my gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, and it was, as usual, spot-on.

And also, for those of you following along at home, this little thing happened:

Chad and I have been working on The Food Market {at Home} for nine months (my name is on the inside: “Written with Suzannah Kolbeck”), and it came out on Black Friday. You can order it online, or you can get it at either of his two restaurants, The Food Market in Hampden and La Food Marketa up in the county. I am not shilling this because I make any cash on the deal (I don’t), but it’s a nice big deal, and I am proud of the work.

There is even a recipe for Smith Island cake in here, Chad’s interpretation with a crazy good strawberry-flavored whipped cream cheese filling, microbasil, strawberry dust, and dehydrated strawberries. You, too, can get fancy at home (without too much fuss – seriously).

The Brady Bunch Challenge: Spicy Sweet Corn Ice Cream

My particular friend and I have Brady-bunched our households recently, in a much less dramatic fashion than the TV show (he brings a near-teenager part-time, D, and I have a teenager, Sicily, who is full-time but who is also a working stiff with lots of friends and is not around as often as she used to be).

It has been challenging, which is an understatement along the lines of “That iceberg looks pretty big,” and “Is it dangerous that this zeppelin is filled with extremely explosive gas?”

It is hard to know whether the best way to do this is to rip the Band-Aid off and just shove everyone together with family-type events or to let things just happen.

If you have teenagers, you know both are loaded propositions. Trying to manufacture a new type of family can be saccharin and artificial, and teenagers tend to mostly want to hibernate in their own rooms. So if we force everyone to a nightly family dinner it might feel fake and super awkward, but when left to their own devices, the two teenagers tend to disappear to their respective rooms, emerging like hibernating bears for food and occasionally to wash a huge load of laundry and shower. This makes getting to know everyone in this new way difficult.

And then there is the challenge of nurturing and growing our own relationship in the face of surly teenagers, differing parenting styles, and the shit that is cohabitating with others (how are there so many freaking bobby pins and single socks in this house?!). How do you manage an adult relationship with children that is not based on those children?

If you are a parent who is still partnered with the other half of your offspring’s DNA, you have exactly zero idea of what I am talking about. That’s totally amazing, and I am truly happy for you in your relationship. DON’T WASTE IT.

If you have lost a spouse to divorce or death, and you have managed to pull your soggy, mangled heart off the wasteland of the floor that is your life and actually get out into the world and meet another person, you are in for a challenge that goes far beyond being vulnerable, confronting loss, and worrying about showing your naked self to someone new for the first time in ______ years.

Turns out, those things are easy when compared to navigating the treacherous waters of parenting someone else’s kid.

For the record, I will never be D’s mom. She has a mom who loves her fiercely, exactly the way a mother should. I don’t share the birth experience with D, and that in and of itself is a powerful connection that only a biological mother can feel.

Side note: I have an adopted brother. Adoptive parents can feel just as powerful a connection in a different way that is no less valid and potent. Don’t get mad and send me hate mail. I mean no disrespect.

But there is no way around it: I am an adult in D’s life, and she is a child in my house. Khristian is looking down the barrel of a 17-year-old teenager (my daughter) who lost a dad of her own and isn’t really looking for a replacement.

Do you see how things can become/have become/are becoming more complex?

Parenting is the worst best job when the kid is your own. I never wanted to be a parent. If I am being honest (which I always try to be), I am not a huge fan of kids in general (which is pretty funny since one of my callings in life has been as a teacher, both in a classroom and now on a yoga mat. But I digress.) So what do you call parenting when the worst best job applies to someone else’s kid?

How do you not be an asshole to a 12-year-old, or, at the very least, not feel like an asshole when you correct said 12-year-old in the same way you would correct your own child but when the 12-year-old is not, in fact, your 12-year-old?

It is complex. Add to this a biological mother who is struggling – understandably so – with this reconfiguration, and the layers begin to look geologic. I started this blog post a couple weeks ago, and as time passed things got more heated. For all intents and purposes, and even though D has moved in, I am an outsider to one of the main struggles in her former-family, looking in on a parental relationship that failed and continues to be problematic for the parents (and increasingly, for the child). The first sentence of this blog in its first draft asked which was harder: death or divorce.

When it comes to parenting the answer is very, very simple: divorce.

Divorced people who want nothing to do with each other are forced to interact when they share a child. That interaction will only get worse as the kid gets older and decisions get more complicated and more expensive. In contrast with Sicily, whose dead father is a keen and deeply felt knife-like absence on (increasingly predictable) occasions, Khristian’s former spouse is a keen and deeply felt knife-like presence in even the most mundane of daily decisions. These are the fogs of a former dynamic that don’t quite seem to be dissipating.

So in essence, as of now, it seems that the house is just not big enough for everyone who is here.

I talked to my therapist about this today (and I don’t care who knows). My particular friend, my sweet love – he is struggling. And so am I. I am angry, explosively so but with no proper target and no real right to be angry. I can see from the outside what I think should be done, but it’s not mine to do. And yet the center, as it is, cannot hold.

My therapist is pretty much right on with most things. Previous examples of her brilliance include the acronym SET when dealing with teenagers (Support, Empathy, Truth), an approach that revolutionized the way I dealt with The Kid when her teenager was hanging out. True to form, today she proposed that I approach the situation with this thing called “radical acceptance.”

Whereas depression says, “Nothing matters, so it’s pointless,” radical acceptance realizes that there is nothing to be done one way or the other; things just are the way they are.

In other words, there is nothing for me to do about the hovering presence of a former spouse.

Getting involved doesn’t help.

Having an opinion doesn’t help.

Getting angry/sad/bitchy about it doesn’t help.

I can listen. That’s about it.

And when I can’t listen anymore, I can even say, “Hey, man. I can’t hear this right now.”

Therapy is a fucking miracle sometimes.

In the meantime, there is always food. That constant thread.

The above-referenced 12-year-old is a big fan of ice cream (and the 17-year-old works at The Charmery in Hampden, bringing home samples after each shift). D is a talented maker of ice cream herself, but she has a palate that is, to be frank, picky, very selective , and difficult to please (it’s hard to compete with grilled cheese and tater tots). I made this sweet and spicy ice cream using corn harvested from a friend’s father’s garden on a whim, not wanting to waste either the corn (which I made into relish) or the cobs (which found their way into this recipe). D loves it, cayenne pepper and all.

I am not naive enough to think that ice cream – however delicious – will make this transition pain-free. As I write this, the adults in D’s life are still trying to get their shit together. All I can do, all any of us can do, is try to recognize that all of the conflict really has nothing to do with me and everything to do with a past that is still present for D and her father. Divorce is its own particular kind of hell, I think, a hell that expands and contracts with each passing year. This particular divorce comes with a morass of painful feelings that sit on our doorstep as we combine families. After supporting the people in my household through this, I figure the very least I can do is give them something sweet.

Spicy Sweet Corn Ice Cream

The first thing you taste is sweet corn, followed by a hint of vanilla and the scratchy burn of just a touch of cayenne. This is pretty much the best summer dessert ever.

Ingredients

4 corn cobs, corn removed (but don’t be too precious about it; you can leave some on there)

2 cups heavy cream

2 cups milk

1 vanilla bean (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)

3/4 cup sugar, divided

6 egg yolks (make meringue with the whites, or give your dogs a treat)

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Method

Place heavy corn cobs, heavy cream, and milk in heavy saucepan and heat until bubbles form on the edges of the milk. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.

Remove the corn cobs from the cream/milk mixture, scraping all of the delicious bits off the cob with a spoon before pouring the milk through a fine mesh sieve. Return the milk to the heat. Scrape the paste from the inside of the vanilla bean and add to the milk (or add vanilla extract, if using) and add 1/2 cup of the sugar. Heat until bubbles begin to form on the sides of the pan, stirring occasionally.

Combine egg yolks, salt, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, and cayenne in a bowl. Use a whisk to combine completely.

This next part is where you might completely ruin your custard, so go slowly. If you have no experience with this sort of thing, go at half the speed you might normally go.

Using a whisk and whisking constantly, pour a thin stream of the hot milk into the eggs. You can pour a little and whisk, or pour a thin stream constantly; you are bringing the cold eggs up to the temperature of the hot milk (or close) so that you don’t make sweet scrambled eggs (BARF).

Once you have poured and whisked about a cup of the hot milk into the eggs, add the egg mixture back into the pan and return to medium-low heat. This is the second part where you might screw it up, so go slow and keep the heat low. Cook gently, stirring constantly, for about ten minutes or until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Remove from heat and once again pass the custard through a fine-mesh strainer. You need to chill this mixture before processing, but it’s important to bring the temperature down quickly as you have just created the perfect petri dish for bacteria (eggs and sugar and milk that’s warm). To do this, fill a large bowl (bigger than the bowl you have the custard in) with ice cubes and water, and place the custard bowl inside. Stir custard occasionally. When it has cooled enough to touch, remove from ice bath, cover with plastic wrap, and chill until completely cool (at least four hours but overnight is good, too, making this a great make-ahead dessert).

Chill according to manufacturer’s directions on your ice cream maker.

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