Bake A Cake Quotes

What about you?" "Not a clue. I keep wishing I could bake a cake or something.

You can keep your willpower, Frog. I am going home to bake a cake.

We walked on the beach, fed blue corn ships to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy and all the other free samples my mom brought home from work. I guess I should explain the blue food. See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop.

Manifesting is a lot like making a cake. The things needed are supplied by you, the mixing is done by your mind and the baking is done in the oven of the universe.

Uriah drops his tray next to me. It is loaded with beef stew and chocolate cake. I stare at the cake pile. “There was cake?” I say, looking at my own plate, which is more sensibly stocked than Uriah’s. “Yeah, someone just brought it out. Found a couple boxes of the mix in the back and baked it,” he says. “You can have a few bites of mine.” “A few bites? So you’re planning on eating that mountain of cake by yourself?” “Yes.” He looks confused. “Why?” “Never mind.

You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.

I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.

...I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - allof those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us...

Real men bake cakes. And pies. And cookies. And other shit.

Be the kind of friend that you want to have. This is what it all boils down to. Listen when they bitch. Tell them they'll be okay. Go over and check in on their cat when they're on vacation. Call them on their birthday, or better yet bake a cake in the shape of their initial. Keep their secrets. Treat them like what they are--the rare person in this world who gives a fuck about you not because they have to, but because they want to. Give a fuck about them.

If you wait for a cake to be given to you so you will be happy- then you will be happy when someone gives you a cake. But if you buy a cake (or bake one) for yourself so you will be happy, you have found the way of happiness.

Call her Betty Fucking Crocker, because the cake was so going to be worth the bake.

To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

You know, people always warn children about taking candy from strange adults. But they never warn us adults about taking candy from strange children. All those sweet-looking kids who sell boxes of candy bars on the street to help pay for schooling - how do we know what's in those bars? And don't even get me stated on that nefarious institution designed to lure unsuspecting customers into buying mysterious frosted goodies: the bake sale. Adults, be warned: if a child wanted to poison you it would be a piece of cake! Literally a piece of cake.

She wants to have baked a cake that banishes sorrow, even if only for a little while.

Remember, no matter what life throws at us, we can always bake a cake!

Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.

Yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyooyoyoyyoyoyoyo Come by I baked a SHEETCAKE Your favorite Confetti emoji

I'm not indecisive, Mother, I'm bisexual. There's a difference.

Imagination is not an icing on the cake of life but the oven in which it is baked.

Mallowmelt turned out to be a gooey cake that tasted like fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies soaked in ice cream and covered in frosting and butterscotch

In all things in this life, we are told "It's okay if you don't make it the first time!", "It's fine if you don't get it right the first time, just try again and again!" We are told this in learning how to ride a bike, in learning how to bake a cake, in solving our math equations...in everything. Except marriage. Why are we all expected to get such an enormous and weighty thing right, the very first time, and if we don't we're considered as failures? I beg to differ! This is a stupidity!

Literature is a cake with many toys baked inside--and even if you find them all, if you don't enjoy the path that leads you to them, it will be a hollow accomplishment.

Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What was missing was not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called 'money.' It was akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she couldn't bake a cake because she didn't have any ounces. She had butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just didn't have any ounces, any pinches, any pints. The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.

You can’t tell a little kid that you swear to God over something and then not do it. You may effectively ruin my childhood.” He looks off into nothing, a wistful expression on his face. “Gosh, think of the therapy bills. Not to mention how I’ll probably never be able to have a normal relationship when I’m an adult. I’ll live with you forever and become a cat lady.” I cock an eyebrow at him. “You hate cats.” He rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah, now I do. But I won’t have a choice. It’ll be inevitable. And I’ll probably have to throw birthday parties for my feline companions where I bake them cakes out of Fancy Feast. All because you went back on your God swear.

An ideological movement is a collection of people many of whom could hardly bake a cake, fix a car, sustain a friendship or a marriage, or even do a quadratic equation, yet they believe they know how to rule the world. The university, in which it is possible to combine theoretical pretension with comprehensive ineptitude, has become the natural habitat of the ideological enthusiast. A kind of adventure playground, carefully insulated from reality in order to prevent absent-minded professors from bumping into things as they explore transcendental realms, has become the institutional base for civilizational self-hatred.

bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

It's not that you have lost touch with these people. You haven't. It's just that they have kept in such close touch with each other. When scrolling through your cell phone, you generally let their numbers be highlighted for a second, hovering, and then move along to people you have spoken to within the last month. It's not that you're a bad friend to these people. It's just that you're not a great one. They know the names of each other's coworkers and the blow-by-blow nature of each other's dramas; they go camping in the Berkshires together and have such sentences in their conversational arsenal as "you left your lip gloss in my bathroom." You have no such sentences. Your connection to your friends is half-baked and you are starting to forget their siblings' names, never mind their coworkers. But you're still in the play even if you're no longer a main character.

Are you a witch?” I ask, reaching in and taking a bite of one. It’s like Monster Cake, the Sequel—freaking Christmas in my mouth. I already want more before I’ve even managed to chew.

And so I was crushed,” Mimi said. “Because I thought I was such a good mother. I baked a cake and a pie every night. Or at least had Jell-O with whipped cream.

My idea of a perfect day is a frozen custard at Shake Shack and a walk in the park. (Followed by a Lactaid.) My idea of a perfect night is a good play and dinner at Orso. (But no garlic, or I won't be able to sleep.) The other day I found a bakery that bakes my favorite childhood cake, and it was everything I remembered: it made my week.

If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven’t, then you probably don’t. Well…a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I’ve been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.

Bake with love..

Easy as cake." "Pie." "Yeah. I can't make pie. My cousin got all the baking genes, but if it comes out of a box and has very detailed instructions, I can make an edible cake. Cake is easy. Pie's a bitch.

Take the broken pieces of your life, bake a master cake out of it. Don't stand still like a lake; keep flowing like a stream!

We are trying to divide the cake, which is not even baked.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to bake a cake when you’ve got an eternity to get it right.

Mehri has always treated parenting like she’s cooking a big warming pan of something: a pinch of that, a pinch of this, she’s sure it will turn out fine in the end. Cora’s own approach has always felt more like baking a cake: carefully measuring out ingredients and trying not to ruin everything. She admires Mehri’s way.

You cannot go around in grief and panic every day; people will not let you, they will coax you with tea and tell you to move on, bake cakes and paint walls. [...] So what you do is you let them coax you. You bake the cake and paint the wall and smile; you buy a new freezer as if you now had a plan for the future. And secretly--in the early morning--you sew a pocket in your skin. At the hollow of your throat. So that every time you smile, or nod your head at a teacher meeting, or bend over to pick up a fallen spoon, it presses and pricks and stings and you know you’ve not moved on. You never even planned to.

Life, my brethren, is like plum-cake. In some the plums are all on the top, and we eat them gayly, till we suddenly find they are gone. In others the plums sink to the bottom, and we look for them in vain as we go on, and often come to them when it is too late to enjoy them. But in the well-made cake, the plums are wisely scattered all through, and every mouthful is a pleasure. We make our own cakes, in a great measure, therefore let us look to it, my brethren, that they are mixed according to the best receipt, baked in a well regulated oven, and gratefully eaten with a temperate appetite.

That was sex for you -- it only got really good when you didn't care how undignified the whole business was.

Sam told me as we were hanging up our coats that Bob was “baked like a fucking cake.” I really had to quote that one even though it has a swear.

That's the thing with putting yourself out of your comfort zone: once you get there, you're like, Now I'm uncomfortable, what am I supposed to be doing?”

That time, in third grade, with the help of Mrs. Callahan, my ESL teacher, I read the first book that I loved, a children's book called Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco. In the story, when a girl and her grandmother spot a storm brewing on the green horizon, instead of shuttering the windows or nailing boards on the doors, they set out to bake a cake. I was unmoored by this act, its precarious yet bold refusal of common sense. As Mrs. Calahan stood behind me, her mouth at my ear, I was pulled deeper into the current of language. The story unfurled, its storm rolled in as she spoke, then rolled in once more as I repeated the words. To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

I always say a little prayer when I put cakes in the oven,” remarked Eve, as she stopped to kiss Rose good-bye. “What do you say?” “I say, ‘Please, God, don’t let me forget I’ve put that cake in the oven.

I always say a little prayer when I put cakes in the oven,” remarked Eve, as she stopped to kiss Rose good-bye. “What do you say?” “I say, ‘Please, God, don’t let me forget I’ve put that cake in the oven.

One of the odder services the Villa Candessa provided for its long-term guests was its “likeness cakes”—little frosted simulacra fashioned after the guests by the inn’s Camorr-trained pastry sculptor. On a silver tray beside the looking glass, a little sweetbread Locke (with raisin eyes and almond-butter blond hair) sat beside a rounder Jean with dark chocolate hair and beard. The baked Jean’s legs were already missing. A few moments later, Jean was brushing the last buttery crumbs from the front of his coat. “Alas, poor Locke and Jean.” “They died of consumption,” said Locke.

Mallowmelt turned out to be a gooey cake that tasted like fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies soaked in ice cream and covered in frosting and butterscotch.

And in her long nights, in her long house of smoke and miller's stones, she baked the bread we eat in dreams, strangest loaves, her pies full of anguish and days long dead, her fairy-haunted gingerbread, her cakes wet with tears.

The story unfurled, its storm rolled in as she spoke, then rolled in once more as I repeated the words. To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

All sorrows in life stem from the lack of cake. If you had your own cake, you wouldn't bother trying to take away the other person's cake! And, if the cake you had were beautiful enough, you wouldn't bother trying to melt the icing on that other person's cake! And if you always had a very beautiful cake that was always beautiful enough, then you would have a smile on your face all the time and wouldn't even care if other people were enjoying their own cakes! Because you'd be enjoying yours, too! Therefore, I hereby decree that all sorrows can be fixed by many beautiful cakes! Bake a cake!

Lauren had serious - and honestly, correct - opinions about the way society had gone from judging women for failing to live up to unrealistic beauty standards to judging them for both failing and succeeding.

HOPE CAKES 2 tablespoons butter 8 ounces cream cheese 3 bananas 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups white sugar 2 eggs, refrigerated 3 cups flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt Topping 1 tablespoon flour ⅔ cup brown sugar 1 cup butter ½ cup nuts Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a big baking pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, cream cheese, bananas, vanilla, and white sugar. Add the eggs. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, mixing all the while. Pour the batter into the pan. To make the topping, in a medium bowl combine flour and brown sugar, then mix in the butter and the nuts. Using a fork, gently lay the topping on the batter. Bake in oven for 40 minutes, or until an impossible thing comes true. Whichever comes first. AUTHORS’ NOTES JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

Musa Okwonga, the poet, journalist and essayist whose powerful ‘The Ungrateful Country’ closes the book, once said to me that the biggest burden facing people of colour in this country is that society deems us bad immigrants – job-stealers, benefit-scroungers, girlfriend-thieves, refugees – until we cross over in their consciousness, through popular culture, winning races, baking good cakes, being conscientious doctors, to become good immigrants. And we are so tired of that burden." (from "The Good Immigrant" by Nikesh Shukla)

It didn't stop her from pretending, though. Imagining for a moment she could have a life like Harry's. Where your world was whatever you made of it and whoever you let into it and you were allowed to be happy with that.

I told her that we go to work to provide for our families, attend school functions that our children are involved in, take a few pieces of cake we just baked over to our neighbor next door, drive our children to school in the morning. “No! No!” She said. “How do you worship?” I said we make love to our spouses, smile and greet someone we pass on the street, help our children with their homework, hold open a door for someone behind us. “Worship! I’m asking about worship!” She exclaimed. I asked her exactly what she had in mind. “You know-Rituals!” She insisted. I answered her that we practice those also and that they are a very important part of Muslim worship. I was not trying to frustrate her, but I answered her in this way in order to emphasize Islam’s comprehensive conception of worship.

I was going to bake you a cake with a hacksaw in it," he said without preamble, " but-" "But you realized it wouldn't work." "Well, no. I realized I don't know how to bake.

A really good blowjob is like making a cake, the gathering of ingredients, the mixing and stirring, the slow baking in the warm oven of your mouth. Timing is everything. So is the variety of flicks, licks, nicks and kisses that culminate with gentle persistent pressure on the frenulum, a membrane on the underside of the penis that connects the head to the shaft.

How is destruction beautiful?" He asked in a challenging tone. "You may think that a broken egg is ugly and messy," she answered, "but the cake it goes into is beautiful and won't hold together without it." "Eggs don't get blown up. They get broken." "You've never seen me bake," she replied with a smirk.

That we looked out for one another- that we watched out for each other's kids and shared the harvest of our gardens and took care of our old people, and when we did the little things, like bake a cake, we'd bake two, one for our home and one for the neighbor.

Remember that when a women gets the job you wanted or dates that bloke you fancied or wears a dress you loved but couldn't afford, she hasn't taken anything from you. There is time and space for you to do it too. One of the cleverest things the patriarchy did was make us believe that there is only one tiny sliver of success cake available; that we all have to fight over it; that a woman who tramples on her competitors to chow it down first is somehow 'ruthless' or to borrow a phrase from Apprentice-ese, 'a natural business mind.' This is a scare-mongering lie. There are so many cakes to eat. And if you can't find the slice you want, try baking one. Cake for everyone! Let them eat cake! I've got lost in the metaphor.

Write some letters.” “Don’t want to.” “Bake a cake to give that boy a slice of.” “He might come while I’m still making it, and then we’d have to make conversation for an hour and a half till it was ready. Anyway, we’ve got some biscuits.” “Well, I give up,” he said.

I also had the sense that there was something distinctly impolite about [transitioning], like agreeing to go out for pizza with a group of friends and, just as we were being led to our table, announcing, "I think I'd rather have birthday cake for dinner. Does anyone mind if we leave now and go bake a cake somewhere?" And my friends might agree out of politeness and affection, but their hearts wouldn't really be in it, and I would in fact have trespassed on their good natures by asking, making such an outrageous, selfish request.

There were people who knew about stars, who could tell you the name of every star in the sky. ... But she did not understand how it could be important to learn the name of every single star in the sky; surely it was better to know the name of every person in your street?

The kitchen can be a sacred space. Where magic is created, whether it's mixing up a potion, or baking a cake for friends. The whole process is part of this spell - intention being just as important as the ingredients! The Kitchen Witch keeps a warm and happy home infused with magic.

His father is out cutting wood, so he goes to his mother. 'Mother, I must away and see the world, or I shall go mad.' Says his mother, 'If you must go, go you must, and God go with you! I will bake you a cake. Will you have a little cake with my blessing, or a big cake with my cursing?' Says Jack, 'Make me a big cake, mother. It will last longer.' His mother makes him a big cake, and he sets out. And she is standing on the roof of the house, calling curses after him as far as she can see him.

As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, 'If everything needs everything else, how did the communities of molecules ever arise in the first place?' It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake - but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it.

I had a lot of disasters in the kitchen, even during the long period when I was cooking under my mother's supervision and with the benefit of her experience. I still fail all the time, in particular when I turn to baking. After hundreds of attempts, following dozens of different formulas, I don't think I have ever made what I would consider to be a completely successful pie crust. Disaster is somehow part of the appeal of cooking for me. If that first Velvet Crumb Cake had turned out to be a flop, I don't know if I would have pursued my interest in cooking. But cooking entails stubbornness and a tolerance--maybe even a taste--for last-minute collapse. You have to be able to enjoy the repeated and deliberate following of a more of less lengthy, more or less complicated series of steps whose product is very likely--after all that work, with no warning, right at the end--to curdle, sink, scorch, dry up, congeal, burn, or simply taste bad.

Parenting is a bit like baking a cake. You put all the right stuff in and do exactly what your mother wrote in the recipe but when you look away for just a second, someone bounces in front of the oven and you end up with something unexpected.

Jacob made Laban agree to sacrifice two fat lambs and a kid to the god of his father, as thanks for the bounty. Leah baked raised cakes from the precious stock of wheat for the sacrifice, too, which was carried out as Jacob directed. In the manner of his fathers, he burned entire loaves and all the choice parts of the animals rather than a few portions. The women muttered among themselves at the waste.

Confection wasn't like that. Confection was Nonsense with rules, where baking soda would always leaven your cake and yeast would always rise. Confection could be Nonsensical because it had rules, and so Logical people could survive there, could even thrive there, once they had accepted that things weren't quite the same as they were in other worlds.

The world spins and spins. Sometimes, there is nothing you can do but surrender. There is nothing you can do but stand in your best friend's dingy kitchen and bake cakes and cry and hope hope hope for something better to come. Nothing you do will ever stop the world turning, will ever tilt the planet off its axis. All revolutions are futile in the end.

You cannot have a secret in Kigali, Auntie. Eyes have no curtains here.

There was power in it....Living in a world where you got to choose what mattered. And with time, and work, and perhaps a tiny bit of therapy, maybe she could have the too.

When you celebrate, there is sure to be cake." Florence Ditlow, in "The Bakery Girls.

All is flux, nothing stays still, as Heraclitus said. By the time I wrote this, everything has changed in the universe; everything but the taste of the cakes baked at home!

..And where a neighbour bakes hummingbird cakes in the hope of bringing back a lost love.

You can still bake a perfectly good cake while losing your mind.

I have to go," I say, "I am baking a cake.

Auntie, in Kinyarwanda we say that a hoe cannot be damaged by a stone that is exposed. I think it means that the truth will hurt us only if it remains hidden.

Just because I can read the ingredients on a box of cake mix doesn’t mean I can tell ya how to bake the thing.

If I bake a cake from flour, oil and sugar, all of which have been sitting in my pantry for the past two months, it does not mean that the cake itself is two months old.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to bake a cake when you’ve got an eternity to get it right.

If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven't, then you probably don't. Well...a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I've been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you'll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.

The difference between superlative pie and a wish for cake is crust. Understand that pie is a generous but self-centered substance. It likes attention, not affection. Do not hug your crust. Do not rub its back or five its high. Don't fuss with refrigerators every step oft he way. Keep the water and butter cold, and remember what a wise baker once said: The goal is pie.

Because baking a black cake was like handling a relationship. The recipe, on paper, was simple enough. Its success depended on the quality of the ingredients, but mostly on how well you handled them,

I’m so proud of you,” I said over her shoulder. “I’m so proud of you that I’m going to stop at the store on my way home.” Callie pulled back. “Why?” “Because,” I told her. “I’m going to bake you a cake.” “You suck at baking,” she said. This was true. “Okay,” I said, “I’m going to buy you a cake.” “Cool.

I look at Gloria with her red hair and glass of champagne and expression of utter disdain and wonder how many expletives she'd manage to fit into a sentence if I asked her to teach me to knit or bake me a cake.

Maybe even wasn't the point at all and you didn't have to keep a constant record of who owed what to whom. Because most people, at least most people you wanted in our life, wouldn't be out to use it against you anyway.

People get so caught in how they don’t like one part of themselves; nose, thighs, tummy, whatever. Things like flour and baking powder go into cakes and those things are gross alone, but the cake is pretty damn delicious.

The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine with leeks and dill. Then, in order, came a service of broiled quail stuffed with morels, served on slices of good white bread, with side dishes of green peas; artichokes cooked in wine and butter, with a salad of garden greens; then tripes and sausages with pickled cabbage; then a noble saddle of venison glazed with cherry sauce and served with barley first simmered in broth, then fried with garlic and sage; then honey-cakes, nuts and oranges; and all the while the goblets flowed full with noble Voluspa and San Sue from Watershade, along with the tart green muscat wine of Dascinet.

Okay, I know he was captain of the football team and he could bake a cake—that didn’t mean I was ready to suck his finger. I was picky about what I put in my mouth. “I’ll wait,” I told him. “Wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite.

If anyone can ever find a way to explain to me how carrying around a sack of flour with a diaper on it is supposed to prepare you for motherhood, I will personally bake that person a chocolate cake with my practice baby's insides.

But Mrs. Meany, see, the women went on, leaning forward, despite how her heart was broken, pulled herself together, anyway, to put on a good face for the rest of the family at home. And she went back, Sunday after Sunday, right up until the Sunday before she died. Mrs. Meany put her beautiful love - a mother's love - against the terrible scenes that brewed like sewage in that poor girl's troubled mind. She persevered, she baked her cakes, she hauled herself (the goiter swinging) on and off the ferry, and she sat, brokenhearted, holding her daughter's hand, even as Lucy shouted her terrible words, proving to anyone with eyes to see that a mother's love was a beautiful, light, relentless thing that the devil could not diminish.

His sister Kat, her husband, Morgan Williams, have been plucked from this life as fast as his daughters were taken, one day walking and talking and next day cold as stones, tumbled into their Thames-side graves and dug in beyond reach of the tide, beyond sight and smell of the river; deaf now to the sound of Putney's cracked church bell, to the smell of wet ink, of hops, of malted barley, and the scent, still animal, of woolen bales; dead to the autumn aroma of pine resin and apple candles, of soul cakes baking.

Silas baked me a cake for my birthday. It was awful. I think he forgot the eggs. But it was the most beautiful chocolate failure I’ve ever seen. I was so happy that I didn’t even make a gag face when I ate a slice. But, oh god, it was so bad. Best boyfriend ever.

There are two kinds of thoughts. There is nothing wrong with thinking in the sense of what I call “technical thinking.” We have to think in order to walk from here to the corner or to bake a cake or to solve a physics problem. That use of the mind is fine. It isn’t real or unreal; it is just what it is. But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality. And we go from birth to death, unless we wake up, wasting most of our life with them.

Howard was almost as fond of this hall as he was of his own shop. The Brownies used it on Tuesdays, and the Women's Institute on Wednesdays. It had hosted jumble sales and Jubilee celebrations, wedding receptions and wakes, and it smelled of all of these things: of stale clothes and coffee urns, and the ghosts of home-baked cakes and meat salads; of dust and human bodies; but primarily of aged wood and stone.

The bathroom was jungle-fogged, flooded with puddles, piled with soaked towels; cakes of soap with long strands of blonde baked in. A girl in pieces: Barbie-thin ankles, a shaving cut on her knee; hipbones she could stab you with; white hands gelled with strawberry body lotion.

This is huge. Saying that a gene “decides” when it is transcribed is like saying that a recipe decides when a cake is baked. Thus transcription factors regulate genes. What regulates transcription factors? The answer devastates the concept of genetic determinism: the environment.

Where are they!? Who moved them!? Who moved my children!? Someone moved my M&M's, and now I'm going to start killing. The other people in my house tried to hide the M&M's from me, but because I am a little goblin, I found them. Because if you try to hide any candy from me, I will find it.

I walked back to the front of the bakery to see a knot of people stalking our display for June. Apricot and lavender might seem like an unusual pairing, but it made perfect sense to me. Luscious, sweet apricots taste best when they're baked and the flavor is concentrated. On the other hand, lavender likes it cool; the buds have a floral, almost astringent flavor. Lavender was a line drawing that I filled in with brushstrokes of lush apricot.

He was supposed to leave six months ago and canceled for personal reasons. If he cancels again, he’ll have to pay thirty million dollars to the production companies. The insurance will never pay up, considering the cause of termination was him swimming in enough cocaine to bake a five-tier wedding cake.

You might've lost me. The way I see it, if they're your family, either they'll love you no matter what, or fuck 'em.” “Yeah, they don't work like that. They're more, _We're here for you no matter what you choose, as long as you choose what we want you to._ It's sort of the Model T Ford of emotional support.

Luella had been Lou's favorite grandma. Some grandmas took their grandchildren to parks, or bought them books and dolls, or shared their special stories. Her grandma shared her recipes. She taught Lou how to check when a roast turkey was done, chop veggies without cutting off a finger, and bake a coconut cake grown men swooned over. A fog of comforting smells had perpetually blanketed her kitchen- an expression of her love so strong you could taste it. Lou caught the culinary bug during those early days and loved that she was named after her grandma, even if Lou believed she'd never make food quite as delicious.

There are divisions between a culinary chef and a dessert chef, also called a pastry chef. At Zomick's are specializations within the pastry chef field. Some pastry chefs specialize in baking breads, while others are master cake designers. Each field requires an exceptional level of creativity and attention to detail.

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion. There’s certain special skills, especially in advanced engineering, that are the limiting factor in creating new companies; we send these people home after training them in our graduate schools.

Descartes' Meditations; doubt rise and results in clear and distinct ideas. all in the mind and all innate. Spinoza bakes the best cake, love God intellectually. Oh! God, he should have stuck to polishing glasses or gotten married. Then dear Philosopher we what mettle your are of. Soren Kierkgaard is the king of leer; life is a disease unto death, he proclaimed till death claimed him early. And Nietzche? following Schopenhauer's Superman- was nursed by his sister despite crying foul of the female race and died a wreck man. All theory no practice. Sartre was better , loyal to Simon De...Both lay next to each other in Paris, witout marrying.

Literature is a cake with many toys baked inside-and even if you find them all, if you don't enjoy the path that leads you to them, it will be a hollow accomplishment. There was a playwright named Heller, American, I believe, who summed it up this way. He said, 'They knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

Price Pritchett, author of The Quantum Leap Strategy, emphasizes that what often looks like failure is actually a work in progress: “Everything looks like a failure in the middle. You can’t bake a cake without getting the kitchen messy. Halfway through surgery it looks like there’s been a murder in the operating room.” If you measure your body fat after a week of work and there’s no change, you haven’t failed; you’ve simply produced a result. As long as you have a goal and you’re taking efficient daily action, then whatever result you produce is “performance feedback.” It may not be the result you want, but it’s still valuable feedback. You’ve learned one way that doesn’t work.

Oh, Roz" -- Lauren gave a deep shudder -- "heterosexual sex sounds excruciatingly dull.

No one can have everything. You’ve just got to figure out what matters. And then not let stuff what don’t matter get in the way of stuff what does.

I WAKE for my SAKE, to MAKE, to BAKE my CAKE.

Told the afternoon before that his wife and two of his children were alive, Reed had stayed up through the night, baking sweet cakes for them.

You have the ingredients inside you to bake the cake you desire, Start Mixing!

You have all the ingredients for you to bake the cake you want in life, Start mixing!

Muslim store clerks should sell alcohol and pork. Christian bakers should bake gay wedding cakes. Everyone should do their fucking job.

Christmas in Barbados I miss being in Barbados in December, That is a time I always remember, The smell of varnish on the wooden floors and the smell of paint on the wooden floors. The smell of cloves as the ham was baked And the smell of the rum in mother’s fruit cake The smell of coconut as she bake de sweetbread, And the smell of the cloth, as she made up de bed

I was unmoored by this act, its precarious yet bold refusal of common sense. As Mrs. Callahan stood behind me, her mouth at my ear, I was pulled deeper into the current of language. The story unfurled, its storm rolled in as she spoke, then rolled in once more as I repeated the words. To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

I swallowed hard and closed my eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to drop to my knees and confess my undying love for her and asking her to bear my children and bake me cakes forever.

Are you any good at baking cakes? Preserves? Chutneys? Wines?” I felt inadequate. “No, not at all. To recognise my level of skill in the kitchen, they’d have to have a category for toast.

Jeanne’s sisters thought nothing of themselves.... Helen stayed up late in Brookline, baking. Lemon squares, and brownies, pecan bars, apple cake, sandy almond cookies. Alone in her kitchen, she wrapped these offerings in waxed paper and froze them in tight-lipped containers.... Helen was the baker of the family. What she felt could not be purchased. She grieved from scratch.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that in the physical act of cooking, especially something complex or plain old hard to handle, dwelled unsuspected reservoirs of arousal both gastronomic and sexual. If you are not one of us, the culinarily depraved, there is no way to explain what's so darkly enticing about eviscerating beef marrowbones, chopping up lobster, baking a three-layer pecan cake, and doing it for someone else, offering someone hard-won gustatory delights in order to win pleasures of another sort. Everyone knows there are foods that are sexy to eat. What they don't talk about so much is foods that are sexy to make. But I'll take a wrestling bout with recalcitrant brioche dough over being fed a perfect strawberry any day, foreplay-wise.

Then Dummling said: 'Father, do let me go and cut wood.' The father answered: 'Your brothers have hurt themselves with it, leave it alone, you do not understand anything about it.' But Dummling begged so long that at last he said: 'Just go then, you will get wiser by hurting yourself.' His mother gave him a cake made with water and baked in the cinders, and with it a bottle of sour beer.

The length of time that the thought is held has also much to do with its accomplishment, for the thought-vibrations have to be active for a certain time to bring about a certain result. A certain length of time is required for the baking of a cake; if it is hurried the cake will be uncooked; with too great a heat it will burn. If the operator of the mental vibrations lacks patience then the power of thought will be wasted, even if it were half-way to its destiny, or still nearer to a successful issue. If too great a power of thought is given to the accomplishment of a certain thing it destroys while preparing it.

At their time of life they should be wearing trouser suits and baking cakes, maybe spending their days penning hand-written letters of complaint to newspapers. Not drinking alcopops with crude straws in them.

Yes, like bread… I’ve watched the women making bread at the centre. The ingredients do nothing on their own, but when they’re all together, they stick together and rise. They get beaten down and they rise again.

This morning's pastry poses challenges. To assemble the tiny mosaic disks of chocolate flake and candied ginger, Avis must execute a number of discrete, ritualistic steps: scraping the chocolate with a fine grater, rolling the dough cylinder in large-grain sanding sugar, and assembling the ingredients atop each hand-cut disk of dough in a pointillist collage. Her husband wavers near the counter, watching. "They're like something Marie Antoinette would wear around her neck. When she still had one." "I thought she was more interested in cake," Avis says, she tilts her narrow shoulders, veers around him to stack dishes in the sink.

I get that you have a weird professional duty to respect the wishes of people who want their kids to stay homophobic for as long as possible. But hopefully you get why that isn’t my problem. And if you ever try to make it Amelie’s problem again, I will lodge a formal complaint with the governors.” Miss Wooding de-flinched slightly. “As long as she doesn’t—” “No ‘as long as she doesn’t.’ You’re not teaching my daughter to be ashamed of me.

Apocalyptic saucer cults have started to spring up all over America. One small group, which has been receiving messages from outer space via Lake City housewife Mrs. Marian Keech, becomes the subject of a research team led by psychologist Leon Festinger. According to an alien entity named Sananda, the end of the world is due any day and under the most cataclysmic of circumstances. The group meets regularly to discuss the latest predictions from Sananda and the rest of the Space Brothers, all relayed to them by Mrs. Keech. Some members bake cakes in the shape of flying saucers to be consumed during their gatherings while local college football scores are closely debated.

That evening I glanced back at the TV as Bella poured half a bottle of the finest brandy into her bowl of cake batter, I waited for tinselly anticipation to land like snowflakes all around me, but I felt nothing. Even when she produced what she described as 'a winter landscape for European cheeses', sprigged with holly and a frosty snow scene, I failed to get my fix. 'Ooh, this is a juicy one,' she said, biting seductively at a maraschino cherry she'd earlier described as 'divinely kitsch'. She swallowed the cherry whole, giggled girlishly and raised a flute of champagne. 'Why have cava when Champagne is sooo much more bubbly? Cheers!' she said, taking a large sip of vintage Krug.

Benny stands there in front of the refrigerator, letting the cool air fall on her toes, and thinks of the last cake her mother ever baked. She knows it’s sitting in the freezer but she can’t bear to look in there right now. Instead, she leans her forehead against the upper door of the fridge. This is your heritage, her mother used to say when they were making black cake, and Benny thought she knew what her mother meant. But she sees now that she didn’t know the half of it.

My birthday cake was her latest project because it was not from a mix but instead built from scratch- the flour, the baking soda, lemon-flavored because at eight that had been my request; I had developed a strong love for sour. We'd looked through several cookbooks together to find just the right one, and the smell in the kitchen was overpoweringly pleasant. To be clear: the bite I ate was delicious. Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar.

hands and transported by animal effort, eight dollars, ten dollars, sixteen dollars a ton. They were piled beside the railroad tracks as each section was built farther west. Hills of bones, mountains of blind skulls, loaded onto railroad cars and shipped back east to process sugar. So it was, every teaspoon of sugar that was stirred into a cup or baked into a pudding was haunted by the slave trade and the slaughter of the buffalo. Just as now, into every teaspoon, is mixed the pragmatic nihilism of industrial sugar farming and the death of our place on earth. This is the sweetness that pricks people’s senses and sparkles in a birthday cake and glitters on the tongue. Price guaranteed, delicious, a craving strong as love.

That's where the importance of nurturing comes in; the already sculpted personality is not recast, but refined. Loving, caring families can sand and polish, but they can't chip away at a lawn ornament and turn it into Michelangelo's David. Or vice versa. Want another analogy? Regarding personality, I am convinced that at birth the cake is already baked. Nurture is the nuts or frosting, but if you're a spice cake you're a spice cake, and nothing is going to change you into an angel food.

The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing. But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so. Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with every cell of our being, or lie in the grass watching stars and bats and dreams wander by. We can live inspired, stirring the darkness of the cauldron within our souls, the source, the womb temple of our true creativity, brilliant, untamed

Hey.’ Annabeth slid next to me on the bench. ‘Happy birthday.’ She was holding a huge misshapen cupcake with blue icing. I stared at her. ‘What?’ ‘It’s August eighteenth,’ she said. ‘Your birthday, right?’ I was stunned. It hadn’t even occurred to me, but she was right. I had turned sixteen this morning – the same morning I’d made the choice to give Luke the knife. The prophecy had come true right on schedule, and I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was my birthday. ‘Make a wish,’ she said. ‘Did you bake this yourself?’ I asked. ‘Tyson helped.’ ‘That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick,’ I said. ‘With extra-blue cement.’ Annabeth laughed. I thought for a second then blew out the candle. We cut it in half and shared, eating with our fingers. Annabeth sat next to me and we watched the ocean. Crickets and monsters were making noise in the woods, but otherwise it was quiet. ‘You saved the world,’ she said. ‘We saved the world.’ ‘And Rachel is the new Oracle, which means she won’t be dating anybody.’ ‘You don’t sound disappointed,’ I noticed. Annabeth shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t care.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?’ ‘You’d probably kick my butt.’ ‘You know I’d kick your butt.’ I brushed the cake off my hands. ‘When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable … Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal.’ Annabeth kept her eyes on the horizon. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Then up on Olympus,’ I said, ‘when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking –’ ‘Oh, you so wanted to.’ ‘Well, maybe a little. But I didn’t, because I thought – I didn’t want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking …’ My throat felt really dry. ‘Anyone in particular?’ Annabeth asked, her voice soft. I looked over and saw that she was trying not to smile. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ I complained. ‘I am not!’ ‘You are so not making this easy.’ Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands around my neck. ‘I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.’ When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.

Like I said last time, the world our parents grew up in is history. All the old rules, we've thrown them out. We're the ones making the future. We're the founding fathers. Hand us universal Wi-Fi and soup dumplings and we'll fix the world. So how do you fit in? What if you can't code? What if you've never been able to build anything more than a birdhouse? It doesn't matter. You've got skills that you probably disniss as tricks. That dance you can do, that song you can sing, the painting hanging in your room, those are all skills we need. See there's a reason my status online is recruiting for the future. We broke some eggs and we baked a cake. It was delicious, really amazing cream cheese frosting. I saved you a piece, but I don't want to give it to you. I want to teach you how to bake your own cake from scratch. Only, instead of flour and water and eggs, I want you to make something with oil paints, yarn, peptides, or computer parts. The revolution is now. Welcome aboard. And, uh, get ready to create...

The cake was not the one I'd baked as an afterthought. This was a foot high, silky yellow, sighing under the knife. Like nothing I'd tasted before. Part air, part kiss of milk and honey. It's a soufflé cheesecake, Aida told a guest. Very popular in Asia.

Still, I could tell he and Gayle were trying. She baked a cake. Not as good as yours, though.” “What kind of cake?” I ask. “Devil’s food cake. Kind of dry.” Peter hesitates before he says, “I invited him to graduation.” “You did?” My heart swells. “He kept asking about school, and…I don’t know. I thought about what you said, and I just did it.” He shrugs, like he doesn’t care much either way if his dad’s there or not. It’s an act. Peter cares. Of course he cares. “So you’ll meet him then.” I snuggle closer to him. “I’m so proud of you, Peter.” He gives a little laugh. “For what?” “For giving your dad a chance even though he doesn’t deserve it.” I look up at him and say, “You’re a nice boy, Peter K.,” and the smile that breaks across his face makes me love him even more.

Small acts of persuasion matter, because there is much less distance between people's beliefs than we often suppose. We easily confuse the distance between people's political positions with the intensity of their convictions about them. It is entirely possible for people to become sharply divided, even hostile, , over relatively minor disagreements. Americans have fought epic political battles over things like baking wedding cakes and kneeling during the national anthem. And we once fought a shooting war over a whiskey tax of ten cents per gallon. The ferocity of these battles has nothing to do with the actual distance between different positions, which, when compared to the entire range of opinions possible in the world, is almost negligible. None of this means that we can persuade our opponents easily. Persuading people to change their minds is excruciatingly difficult. It doesn't always work, and it rarely works the way we think it will. But it does work, and the fact that it works makes it possible for us to have a democracy.

Walter asked me to marry him again,” she said finally. Gertie gave me a knowing look. Bingo. She’d called that one correctly. “I’ll bake him a chocolate cake,” Gertie said. “It’s his favorite. Might take some of the sting out of the rejection.” Ida Belle looked over at us. “I didn’t say no.

When I got to Zomick's Kosher Bakery I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good Zomick's challah doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.

I carried with me into the West End Bar, the White Horse Tavern, a long list of things I would never do: I would never have my hair set in a beauty parlor. I would never move to a suburb and bake cakes or make casseroles. I would never go to a country club dance, although I did like the paper lanterns casting rainbow colors on the terrace. I would never invest in the stock market. I would never play canasta. I would never wear pearls. I would love like a nursling but I would never go near a man who had a portfolio or a set of golf clubs or a business or even a business suit. I would only love a wild thing. I didn't care if wild things tended to break hearts. I didn't care if they substituted scotch for breakfast cereal. I understood that wild things wrote suicide notes to the gods and were apt to show up three hours later than promised. I understood that art was long and life was short.

Humans can’t fly. The Earth isn’t flat. Her mother couldn’t lie. Three facts Aisha Malik would have been willing to bet her life on. Good thing she hadn’t, because her mother, in an attempt to secure a marriage proposal for her, had just told a lie. Aisha was an adequate cook as far as preparing normal, everyday meals was concerned, but making mind-blowing desserts, like the delicious chocolate cake everyone was generously praising? That was far beyond her culinary expertise. Contrary to what her mother had just said to impress their guests, that chocolate cake was not baked by Aisha. It was made in a bakery.

Silver sparkles from inside caught in the air and rolled in the wind past her. She took a deep breath, and it made her stand up straighter. Sugar and vanilla and butter. That relentless scent had been following her around all her life. Sometimes she could see it, like this, but most of the time she felt it. When she was a kid, she could be sitting in class at school, or walking her dog Chester, or in the middle of a dreary violin lesson with her older brother, and the smell would suddenly appear out of nowhere and make her inexplicably restless. Even now, sometimes she would wake up at night and swear someone was baking a cake in the house.

Back then, come July, and the blazers would again make their way out of the steel trunks and evenings would be spent looking at snow-capped mountains from our terrace and spotting the first few lights on the hills above. It was the time for radishes and mulberries in the garden and violets on the slopes. The wind carried with it the comforting fragrance of eucalyptus. It was in fact all about the fragrances, like you know, in a Sherlock Holmes story. Even if you walked with your eyes closed, you could tell at a whiff, when you had arrived at the place, deduce it just by its scent. So, the oranges denoted the start of the fruit-bazaar near Prakash ji’s book shop, and the smell of freshly baked plum cake meant you had arrived opposite Air Force school and the burnt lingering aroma of coffee connoted Mayfair. But when they carved a new state out of the land and Dehra was made its capital, we watched besotted as that little town sprouted new buildings, high-rise apartments, restaurant chains, shopping malls and traffic jams, and eventually it spilled over here. I can’t help noticing now that the fragrances have changed; the Mogra is tinged with a hint of smoke and will be on the market tomorrow. The Church has remained and so has everything old that was cast in brick and stone, but they seem so much more alien that I almost wish they had been ruined.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')

What treasures lay inside! Yes, here were the colors that she had asked for: red, pink, yellow, blue, green, black- all in powder form, of course, not like the one or two bottles of liquid food color that were available at the Lebanese supermarket in town; those were not at all modern- some big blocks of marzipan, and, as always, June had included some new things for Angel to try. This time there were three tubes that looked rather like thick pens. She picked one upend examined it: written along its length were the words 'Gateau Graffito,' and underneath, written in uppercase letters, was the word 'red.' Reaching for the other two pens- one marked 'green' and the other 'black'- she saw a small printed sheet lying at the bottom of the bubblewrap nest. It explained that these pens were filled with food color, and offered a picture showing how they could be used to write fine lines or thick lines, depending on how you held them. It also guaranteed that the contents were kosher. Eh, now her cakes were going to be more beautiful than ever!

I hold back too and remain like the last-minute toppings of things. My stories are dusted powdered sugar and mango glaze. I can’t tell my friend about the thick, bittersweet fillings of castles and vanilla black tea, or the rich, spongy cake of new friends and songs. I can’t talk about the motorbike wind and green and stone I baked into crusty bread and into the baker.

She would, on the birthday of Christ, allow herself what she called "an extra helping of prayer." At the time of the Civil War, she would pray for peace. Always, she asked God to spare me and my father. But at Christmas, she talked to God as if He were Clerk of the Acts in the Office of Public Works. She prayed for cleaner air in London. She prayed that our chimneys would not fall over in the January winds; she prayed that our neighbour, Mister Simkins, would attend to his cesspit, so that it would cease its overflow into ours. She prayed that Amos Treefeller would not slip and drown "going down the public steps to the river at Blackfriars, which are much neglected and covered in slime, Lord." And she prayed, of course, that plague would not come. As a child, she allowed me to ask God to grant me things for which my heart longed. I would reply that my heart longed for a pair of skates made of bone or for a kitten from Siam. And we would sit by the fire, the two of us, praying. And then we would eat a lardy cake, which my mother had baked herself, and ever since that time the taste of lardy cake has had about it the taste of prayer.

This cake is delicious.”Cary’s mouth was full. “It’s like carrot cake.” “Yeah, but no carrots.” “Seriously.” He was smiling. “It’s so good.” “Don’t be too impressed. There’s no art to baking a cake—it’s just following instructions.” Cary leaned back, settling into the couch. “Then why do most cakes taste significantly worse than this?” “Because most people refuse to follow instructions?

FOR THE CAKE: Beat together eight soup spoons butter with one cup sugar until fluffy. Mix in two eggs and three soup spoons juice from an orange. In a small bowl, blend one and two-thirds cups flour, a teaspoon baking powder, and half a teaspoon salt. Add dry to wet mixture along with one cup buttermilk. Blend well. Stir in one cup raisins, half a cup chopped walnuts, and one soup spoon finely grated orange peel. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake forty-five to fifty minutes. Cool before icing.   FOR THE ICING: Stir two soup spoons juice of orange and two cups powdered sugar together until the sugar dissolves completely and the icing is smooth. The icing should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If it is too thick, add more liquid; if too thin, add a little sugar.

So before the bus left, before Sammy's week was up, Sammy and Billy snuck into the church building, sat in the pews, and ate a mess of pineapple and peach and butter and nuts with some mint, all dumped and baked into cake batter. The end result was the distinctive flavor of strawberries. Proof that dump cake is life. No matter what you put in it, no matter what you try, how you're received is not always up to you.

I got up and took the cake out from under its cake-shaped cover. I had made it at three o'clock in the morning in a desperate attempt to comfort myself. And it was an enormous comfort, standing alone in the kitchen in my nightgown, sifting fresh ground nutmeg with allspice and cloves by the little light over the sink. I peeled the apples with ridiculous care, taking the skins off in long, even ribbons that spiraled down to the floor without breaking. I didn't think of any of them while I peeled those apples. I didn't work anything out in my mind. I just relaxed into the creaming of butter and sugar, the sweet expansion of every egg. I had hoped the mixer wouldn't wake anyone up.The last thing I had wanted was company. I cut off big, hulking slices and slid them onto dessert plates. The apples were soft and golden, the cake was a rust color.

Because the grape was proudly multipurpose, the shelf life it had to offer the ancient world was practically without rival. Grapes could be eaten fresh, straight from the vine. Dried, they were renamed raisins, and in the Bible, they were eaten plain or baked into cakes. Pressed, the grapes produced fresh juice, or far more significantly, they could be utterly transformed, possessing new properties and chemistry, into vinegars and wines.

Then just when I thought I was going to really break down for a good cry, I remembered a large bag of pistachio nuts in the back of the pantry. I don't know what made me think of them. I had hidden them beneath several packages of dried pasta. Sam liked pistachio nuts. I bought them for a cake recipe I had seen in Gourmet. I stood up like a sleepwalker, my hands empty of sheets or shoes. I would take care of all this once the cake was in the oven. The recipe was from several months ago. I didn't remember which issue. I would find it. I would bake a cake. My father liked exotic things. On the rare occasions we went out to dinner together over the years, he always wanted us to go to some little Ethiopian restaurant down a back alley or he would say he had to have Mongolian food. He would like this cake. It was Iranian. There was a full tablespoon of cardamom sifted in with the flour, and I could imagine that it would make the cake taste nearly peppered, which would serve to balance out all the salt. I stood in the kitchen, reading the magazine while the sharp husks of the nuts bit into the pads of my fingers. I rolled the nut meat between my palms until the bright spring green of the pistachios shone in my hands, a fist full of emeralds. I would grind the nuts into powder without letting them turn to paste. I would butter the parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan. It was the steps, the clear and simple rules baking, that soothed me. My father would love this cake, and my mother would find this cake interesting, and Sam wouldn't be crazy about it but he'd be hungry and have a slice anyway. Maybe I could convince Camille it wasn't a cake at all. Maybe I could bring them all together, or at least that's what I dreamed about while I measured out the oil.

Stirring the pastry cream and putting it in the blast chiller in the island, a total chefly indulgence that I have never once regretted. The house filling with the scent of rich, dark chocolate as the cakes rise in the oven. The treat of the moist trimmings as I even up the layers before spreading the thick custard filling between them. The fudgy frosting smoothed perfectly over the whole thing, and then immediately marred with chocolate cookie crumbs.

tore off the tape holding the top flap down and lifted it up to reveal a giant cake dripping with chocolate icing inside. “OH MY FREAKING GOD.” “It’s chocolate cake with chocolate icing and chocolate chips baked into the cake,” Evan said. “You like?” I had just died and gone to a chocolate-filled heaven. “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” Philip declared, his scorn popping my happy chocolate daydream. I sucked in a sharp breath, picked up the box, and marched over to another table. “Anyone who wants to admire my beautiful cake can come over to this table.” I glared at Philip. “Heathens can stay over there.” “Whatever,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Clearly you’re not human,” I continued. “What human looks at this and thinks it’s disgusting?” I seriously wanted to shove my face into the cake, that’s how delicious it looked. “It’s chocolate. There’s nothing wrong with chocolate, Phil!

You choose to work». «For us!» «No, Tatiana, for you». «Well, who do you work for? Don’t you work for you?» «No,» said Alexander. «I work for you. I work so that I can build you a house that will please you. I work very hard so you don’t have to, because your life has been hard enough. I work so you can get pregnant; so you can cook and putter and pick Anthony up from school and drive him to baseball and chess club and guitar lessons and let him have a rock band in our new garage with Serge and Mary, and grow desert flowers in our backyard. I work so you can buy yourself whatever you want, all your stiletto heels and clingy clothes and pastry mixers. So you can have Tupperware parties and bake cakes and wear white gloves to lunch with your friends. So you can make bread every day for your family. So you will have nothing to do but cook and make love to your husband. I work so you can have an ice cream life.

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows: Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Stormy, tell me about where you were when John F. Kennedy died.” “It was a Friday. I was baking a pineapple upside-down cake for my bridge club. I put it in the oven and then I saw the news and forgot all about the cake and nearly burned the house down. We had to have the kitchen repainted because of all the soot.” She fusses with her hair. “He was a saint, that man. A prince. If I’d met him in my heyday, we really could’ve had some fun. You know, I flirted with a Kennedy once at an airport. He sidled up to me at the bar and bought me a very dry gin martini. Airports used to be so very much more glamorous. People got dressed up to travel. Young people on airplanes these days, they wear those horrible sheepskin boots and pajama pants and it’s an eyesore. I wouldn’t go out for the mail dressed like that.” “Which Kennedy?” I ask. “Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. He had the Kennedy chin, anyway.” I bite my lip to keep from smiling. Stormy and her escapades.

I turn to Peter and say, “I can’t believe you did this.” “I baked that cake myself,” he brags. “Box, but still.” He takes off his jacket and pulls a lighter out of his jacket pocket and starts lighting the candles. Gabe pulls out a lit candle and helps him. Then Peter hops his butt on the table and sits down, his legs hanging off the edge. “Come on.” I look around. “Um…” That’s when I hear the opening notes of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. My hands fly to my cheeks. I can’t believe it. Peter’s recreating the end scene from Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan sit on a table with a birthday cake in between them. When we watched the movie a few months ago, I said it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. And now he’s doing it for me. “Hurry up and get up there before all the candles melt, Lara Jean,” Chris calls out. Darrell and Gabe help hoist me onto the table, careful not to set my dress on fire. Peter says, “Okay, now you look at me adoringly, and I lean forward like this.” Chris comes forward and puffs out my skirt a bit. “Roll up your sleeve a little higher,” she instructs Peter, looking from her phone to us. Peter obeys, and she nods. “Looks good, looks good.” Then she runs back to her spot and starts to snap. It takes no effort on my part at all to look at Peter adoringly tonight. When I blow out the candles and make my wish, I wish that I will always feel for Peter the way I do right now.

There was a small public library on Ninety-third and Hooper. Mrs. Stella Keaton was the librarian. We’d known each other for years. She was a white lady from Wisconsin. Her husband had a fatal heart attack in ’34 and her two children died in a fire the year after that. Her only living relative had been an older brother who was stationed in San Diego with the navy for ten years. After his discharge he moved to L.A. When Mrs. Keaton had her tragedies he invited her to live with him. One year after that her brother, Horton, took ill, and after three months he died spitting up blood, in her arms. All Mrs. Keaton had was the Ninety-third Street branch. She treated the people who came in there like her siblings and she treated the children like her own. If you were a regular at the library she’d bake you a cake on your birthday and save the books you loved under the front desk. We were on a first-name basis, Stella and I, but I was unhappy that she held that job. I was unhappy because even though Stella was nice, she was still a white woman. A white woman from a place where there were only white Christians. To her Shakespeare was a god. I didn’t mind that, but what did she know about the folk tales and riddles and stories colored folks had been telling for centuries? What did she know about the language we spoke? I always heard her correcting children’s speech. “Not ‘I is,’ she’d say. “It’s ‘I am.’” And, of course, she was right. It’s just that little colored children listening to that proper white woman would never hear their own cadence in her words. They’d come to believe that they would have to abandon their own language and stories to become a part of her educated world. They would have to forfeit Waller for Mozart and Remus for Puck. They would enter a world where only white people spoke. And no matter how articulate Dickens and Voltaire were, those children wouldn’t have their own examples in the house of learning—the library.

Grandma Rosa's Ricotta Cheesecake   1 box of yellow cake mix 2 pounds ricotta cheese, drained (the whole milk kind works best) 4 eggs ¾ cup granulated sugar ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract   Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare the cake mix according to directions on the box, and pour into a 13x9 inch greased pan. Mix together all the other ingredients. Pour ricotta mixture over the cake mix, leaving the outside edge open. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar and cut into cubes.       *

We walk inside, and I stop short. Our booth, the one we always sit in, has pale pink balloons tied around it. There’s a round cake in the center of the table, tons of candles, pink frosting with sprinkles and Happy Birthday, Lara Jean scrawled in white frosting. Suddenly I see people’s heads pop up from under the booths and from behind menus--all of our friends, still in their prom finery: Lucas, Gabe, Gabe’s date Keisha, Darrell, Pammy, Chris. “Surprise!” everyone screams. I spin around. “Oh my God, Peter!” He’s still grinning. He looks at his watch. “It’s midnight. Happy birthday, Lara Jean.” I leap up and hug him. “This is just exactly what I wanted to do on my prom night birthday and I didn’t even know it.” Then I let go of him and run over to the booth. Everyone gets out and hugs me. “I didn’t even know people knew it was my birthday tomorrow! I mean today!” I say. “Of course we knew it was your birthday,” Lucas says. Darrell says, “My boy’s been planning this for weeks.” “It was so endearing,” Pammy says. “We called me to ask what kind of pan he should use for the cake.” Chris says, “He called me, too. I was like, how the hell should I know?” “And you!” I hit Chris on the arm. “I thought you were leaving to go clubbing!” “I still might after I steal some fries. My night’s just getting started, babe.” She pulls me in for a hug and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday, girl.” I turn to Peter and say, “I can’t believe you did this.” “I baked that cake myself,” he brags. “Box, but still.” He takes off his jacket and pulls a lighter out of his jacket pocket and starts lighting the candles. Gabe pulls out a lit candle and helps him. Then Peter hops his butt on the table and sits down, his legs hanging off the edge. “Come on.” I look around. “Um…” That’s when I hear the opening notes of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. My hands fly to my cheeks. I can’t believe it. Peter’s recreating the end scene from Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan sit on a table with a birthday cake in between them. When we watched the movie a few months ago, I said it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. And now he’s doing it for me.

Genevieve’s “I Love You” Birthday Cake 2 ¾ cups sifted cake flour (unbleached) 4 tsps. baking powder ¾ tsp. salt 4 egg whites (organic) 1 ½ cups white sugar ¾ cup butter (do NOT substitute) 1 cup milk (organic) 1 tsp. PURE vanilla extract 1 tsp. almond extract Measure sifted cake flour, baking powder, and salt; sift together three times. In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add ½ cup of sugar gradually, and continue beating only until meringue will hold up in soft peaks. In a separate bowl, beat butter until smooth. Gradually add remaining 1 cup of sugar, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add sifted ingredients alternately with milk a small amount at a time, beating each addition until smooth. Mix in flavorings. Add meringue, and mix thoroughly into batter. Spread batter in a 15x10x1 inch pan which has been lined on the bottom with parchment paper. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes, then remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. You can also bake this cake in two 9 inch round pans for 30 to 35 minutes, or in three 8 inch round pans for 25 to 30 minutes.

Here is an extract from the Pentagon’s Department of Food Procurement specifications for a regulation Type 2 sandwich cookie: “The cookie shall consist of two round cakes with a layer of filling between them. The weight of the cookie shall be not less than 21.5 grams and filling weight not less than 6.4 grams. The base cakes shall be uniformly baked with a color ranging from not lighter than chip 27885 or darker than chip 13711. . . . ​The color comparisons shall be made under north sky daylight with the objects held in such a way as to avoid specular refractance.” And

Miss Wooding turned the nervous shade of pink that Rosaline found people often turned when her sexuality went from an idea they could support to a reality they had to confront. “I appreciate this is a sensitive topic and one that different people have different beliefs about. Which is why I have to be guided by the policies of our academy trust, and they make it quite clear that learners shouldn’t be taught about LGBTQ until year six.” “Oh do they?” asked Rosaline, doing her best to remember that Miss Wooding was probably a very nice person and not just a fuzzy cardigan draped over some regressive social values. “Because Amelie’s in year four and she manages to cope with my existence nearly every day.” Having concluded this was going to be one of those long grown-up conversations, Amelie had taken her Panda pencil case out of her bag and was diligently rearranging the contents. “I do,” she said. “I’m very good.” Miss Wooding actually wrung her hands. “Yes, but the other children—” “Are allowed to talk about their families as much as they like.” “Yes, but—” “Which,” Rosaline went on mercilessly, “when you think about it, is the definition of discrimination.” Amelie looked up again. “Discrimination is bad. We learned that in year three.” The d-word made Miss Wooding visibly flinch. “Now Mrs. Palmer—” “Ms. Palmer.” “I’m sure this is a misunderstanding.” “I’m sure it is.” Taking advantage of the fact that Miss Wooding had been temporarily pacified by the spectre of the Equality Act, Rosaline tried to strike a balance between defending her identity and catching her train. “I get that you have a weird professional duty to respect the wishes of people who want their kids to stay homophobic for as long as possible. But hopefully you get why that isn’t my problem. And if you ever try to make it Amelie’s problem again, I will lodge a formal complaint with the governors.” Miss Wooding de-flinched slightly. “As long as she doesn’t—” “No ‘as long as she doesn’t.’ You’re not teaching my daughter to be ashamed of me.” There was a long pause. Then Miss Wooding sighed. “Perhaps it’s best that we draw a line under this and say no more about it.” In Rosaline’s experience this was what victory over institutional prejudice looked like: nobody actually apologising or admitting they’d done anything wrong, but the institution in question generously offering to pretend that nothing had happened. So—win?

I'm no expert when it comes to confectionery, but I understand that unsalted butter is used as standard in baking. By contrast, the West buttercream uses salted butter. That salinity really brings out the overall sweetness of the cake, adding depth to its richness. The sponge has a satisfying density to it, declaring itself roughly on the tongue, scented like eggs and flour. The Christmas cakes I've eaten up until now have all been shortcakes, and it's always seemed to me that the delicate, fluffy whipped cream and the sweet sourness of the strawberries obliterate the aroma and the texture of the sponge.

Hubble then made an even more amazing discovery. By measuring the red shift of the stars’ spectra (which is the light wave counterpart to the Doppler effect for sound waves), he realized that the galaxies were moving away from us. There were at least two possible explanations for the fact that distant stars in all directions seemed to be flying away from us: (1) because we are the center of the universe, something that since the time of Copernicus only our teenage children believe; (2) because the entire metric of the universe was expanding, which meant that everything was stretching out in all directions so that all galaxies were getting farther away from one another. It became clear that the second explanation was the case when Hubble confirmed that, in general, the galaxies were moving away from us at a speed that was proportional to their distance from us. Those twice as far moved away twice as fast, and those three times as far moved away three times as fast. One way to understand this is to imagine a grid of dots that are each spaced an inch apart on the elastic surface of a balloon. Then assume that the balloon is inflated so that the surface expands to twice its original dimensions. The dots are now two inches away from each other. So during the expansion, a dot that was originally one inch away moved another one inch away. And during that same time period, a dot that was originally two inches away moved another two inches away, one that was three inches away moved another three inches away, and one that was ten inches away moved another ten inches away. The farther away each dot was originally, the faster it receded from our dot. And that would be true from the vantage point of each and every dot on the balloon. All of which is a simple way to say that the galaxies are not merely flying away from us, but instead, the entire metric of space, or the fabric of the cosmos, is expanding. To envision this in 3-D, imagine that the dots are raisins in a cake that is baking and expanding in all directions. On

In her younger years, Ginger had dressed in ordinary, drab clothing so she wouldn't call attention to herself. She'd even tried to hide her bright pink hair with a scarf. Her goal in those days had been to blend in and not be recognized as the daughter of the Candy Witch, because even a whispered mention of the word "witch" made people unnerved. But now, as a student at Ever After High, she'd come to realize that she was more than her legacy. She was her own person, and her passion was baking scrumptious treats, not wicked treats as her mother did. She began to dress the way that pleased her, adorning herself with cheerful colors, candy accents, and swirls, as if decorating a cake or cookie.

Driven by heartache, she beat the eggs even more vigorously until the glossy meringue quickly formed into stiff, bird's beak peaks. "Philippe, do you have any orange liqueur?" Marie asked, rummaging through her brother's pantry. "Here it is," Philippe said, handing a corked bottle to her. "What are you making?" "A bûche de Noël," Danielle said, concentrating on her task. Carefully measuring each rationed ingredient, she combined sugar and flour in another bowl, grated orange zest, added the liqueur, and folded the meringue into the mixture. "It's not Christmas without a traditional Yuletide log." Marie ran a finger down a page of an old recipe book, reading directions for the sponge cake, or biscuit. "'Spread into a shallow pan and bake for ten minutes.'" "I wouldn't know about that," Philippe said. "I don't celebrate your husband's holiday," he said pointedly to Marie. "Let's not dredge up that old argument, mon frère," Marie said, softening her words with a smile. "I converted for love." A knock sounded at the front door. Danielle threw a look of concern toward Philippe, who hurried to answer it. "Then we'll cool it," Danielle said, trying to stay calm. "And brush the surface with coffee liqueur and butter cream frosting, roll it like a log, and decorate." She thought about the meringue mushrooms she had made with Nicky last year, and how he had helped score the frosting to mimic wood grains.

Lillian lifted the cake pans from the oven and rested them on metal racks on the counter. The layers rose level and smooth from the pans; the scent, tinged with vanilla, traveled across the room in soft, heavy waves, filling the space with whispers of other kitchens, other loves. The students food themselves leaning forward in their chairs to greet the smells and the memories that came with them. Breakfast cake baking on a snow day off from school, all the world on holiday. The sound of cookie sheets clanging against the metal oven racks. The bakery that was the reason to get up on cold, dark mornings; a croissant placed warm in a young woman's hand on her way to the job she never meant to have. Christmas, Valentine's, birthdays, flowing together, one cake after another, lit by eyes bright with love.

HOPE CAKES 2 tablespoons butter 8 ounces cream cheese 3 bananas 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups white sugar 2 eggs, refrigerated 3 cups flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt Topping ½ cup flour ¼ cup oats ¼ cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ cup butter ½ cup nuts Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a big baking pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, cream cheese, bananas, vanilla, and white sugar. Add the eggs. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, mixing all the while. Pour the batter into the pan. To make the topping, in a medium bowl combine flour, oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon, then mix in the butter and the nuts. Using a fork, gently lay the topping on the batter. Bake in oven for 40 minutes, or until an impossible thing comes true.

Imagine sitting down at a table with two cups of flour, three eggs, a tablespoon of vanilla, one cup of sugar, one teaspoon of baking powder and a few other ingredients. You taste the sugar and it is good, but when you taste the baking powder it is bitter. You continue to taste the ingredients, some tasty and some downright gross. This is like life. Some of the events in your life are sweet like the sugar, others dry like the flour, and others still that you do not like at all. However, using Jesus’ perfect recipe, all of the events of your life will be mixed together and put through some intense heat—and then you will rise. Just as a cake would not be the same if you left out some of the ingredients, so Jesus wants to use all of your life experiences to make you complete and able to be used for His glory.

Molten Chocolate Cakes Makes 4 single-serve cakes Ingredients 1 stick unsalted butter 6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips 2 egg yolks 2 eggs ¼ cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour Directions 1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. 2. Spray the insides of 4 ramekins with baking spray. Put the ramekins on a baking sheet. 3. Microwave the butter and chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl for 1 minute. The butter should be almost all melted. The chocolate won’t be completely melted. 4. Whisk the butter and chocolate mixture until smooth. 5. Separate two egg yolks from their whites: Crack both eggs into a bowl without breaking the yolks. Then take an empty, disposable plastic water bottle, squeeze it, hold the opening to a yolk, and then release to suck the yolk into the bottle. Repeat with the second yolk. Then deposit both yolks into a clean bowl by squeezing the bottle and pouring them out. 6. Beat the egg yolks, eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract in an electric mixer on high or with a whisk until the mixture is thick. 7. Fold the butter and chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. 8. Add the flour to the mixture gradually. Don’t overmix. 9. Divide the batter into the 4 ramekins. 10. Bake the cakes for 8 to 12 minutes or until the cakes have risen over the sides of the ramekins and the tops of the cakes no longer jiggle when the baking sheet is given a little shake. The cake centers should still be soft. 11. Remove the cakes from the oven and let them cool for 1 minute. 12. Cover the cakes with upside-down dessert plates, flip the ramekins over, and remove the ramekins from the cakes. Eat immediately!

I close my eyes and hear wind rushing through palm trees again. And then laughter. The scene is foggy at first, and then it comes into sharp focus. I am standing in a kitchen. It's one of those big, well-appointed spaces you see in magazines, but this one is well loved, not just staged. A cake bakes in the oven. Carrot. There are matches and a box of birthday candles at the ready by the stove. Stan Getz's smoky-sweet saxophone filters from a speaker somewhere nearby. I'm stirring a pot of marinara sauce; a bit has splattered onto the marble countertop, but I don't care. I take a sip of wine and sway to the music. A little girl giggles on the sofa. I don't see her face, just her blond ponytail. And then warm, strong arms around my waist as he presses his body against me. I breathe in the scent of rugged spice, fresh cotton, and love.

Each bite is a tidal wave of savory, fatty eel juices... ... made fresh and tangy by the complementary flavors of olive oil and tomato! ...! It's perfect! This dish has beautifully encapsulated the superbness of Capitone Eel!" "Capitone specifically means 'Large Female Eel'! It's exactly this kind of eel that is served during Natale season from Christmas to New Year's. Compared to normal eels, the Capitone is large, thick and juicy! In fact, it's considered a delicacy!" "Yes, I've heard of them! The Capitone is supposed to be significantly meatier than the standard Anguilla." *Anguilla is the Italian word for regular eels.* "Okay. So the Capitone is special. But is it special enough to make a dish so delicious the judges swoon?" "No. The secret to the Capitone's refined deliciousness in this dish lies with the tomatoes. You used San Marzanos, correct?" "Ha Ragione! (Exactly!) I specifically chose San Marzano tomatoes as the core of my dish!" Of the hundreds of varieties of tomato, the San Marzano Plum Tomato is one of the least juicy. Less juice means it makes a less watery and runny sauce when stewed! "Thanks to the San Marzano tomatoes, this dish's sauce remained thick and rich with a marvelously full-bodied taste. The blend of spices he used to season the sauce has done a splendid job of highlighting the eel's natural flavors as well." "You can't forget the wondrous polenta either. Crispy on the outside and creamy in the middle. There's no greater garnish for this dish." *Polenta is boiled cornmeal that is typically served as porridge or baked into cakes.* "Ah. I see. Every ingredient of his dish is intimately connected to the eel. Garlic to increase the fragrance, onion for condensed sweetness... ... and low-juice tomatoes. Those are the key ingredients.

With orchards and gardens bursting with delicious Kentish apples, now is the time to fetch out those favourite recipes. Spiced Apple Cake is simple to make and a nice change from a pie. It works well served warm with custard, or cold with a cup of tea in place of a traditional fruit cake. 3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced 2 tsp golden syrup 1 tbsp butter 1 tsp ground cinnamon Sponge mix: 4 oz butter 2 tbsp golden syrup 4 oz caster sugar 2 eggs 4 oz self-raising flour 1 tbsp milk Simmer the apples with the syrup, butter and cinnamon for a few minutes until tender but not mushy. To prepare the topping, soften the butter and golden syrup in a bowl over a basin of hot water. Remove from the heat and beat in the sugar and eggs. Fold in the flour, adding milk to give the consistency of lightly whipped cream. Place the apple chunks in a greased tin or ovenproof dish and pour over the topping. Bake at Gas Mark 4 for 25 to 30 minutes until the sponge is golden brown and springy to touch.

And there is more still. DNA, proteins, and the other components of life couldn’t prosper without some sort of membrane to contain them. No atom or molecule has ever achieved life independently. Pluck any atom from your body, and it is no more alive than is a grain of sand. It is only when they come together within the nurturing refuge of a cell that these diverse materials can take part in the amazing dance that we call life. Without the cell, they are nothing more than interesting chemicals. But without the chemicals, the cell has no purpose. As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, “If everything needs everything else, how did the community of molecules ever arise in the first place?” It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake—but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it.

Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience. I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent." "That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman. "That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them. I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling. Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement. "We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door. "We're making an orange cake, not chocolate." "Chocolate is so much better." "Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that." "It's just a cake." "It's never just a cake, Lizzy." I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent. I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.

Nut Cake 3½ cups plain flour, not self-rising ½ pound salted butter, room temperature 3 cups sugar 6 large eggs 1 cup heavy whipping cream 3 cups chopped pecans 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon lemon extract Preheat oven to 325°F. Generously grease a tube pan with Crisco and lightly flour. Sift flour three times and set aside. Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat only until each disappears. Blend in 1 cup flour followed by ½ cup whipping cream. Repeat with 1 cup flour then ½ cup whipping cream. Add 1 cup flour. Coat pecans with remaining ½ cup flour. Carefully fold pecans into batter. Fold in vanilla and lemon extracts. Add batter to pan, level it, and knock bottom of pan on the edge of the counter, once, to get out the air bubbles. Place in the center of the oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until it’s medium brown on top and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.* Remove from oven. Wait 10 minutes and invert on a cake plate. Do not cover until cool to touch.

BONNIE BROWNIE COOKIE BARS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   4 one-ounce squares semi-sweet chocolate (or 3/4 cup chocolate chips) 3/4 cup butter (one and a half sticks) 1½ cups white (granulated) sugar 3 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 1/2 cup chopped cashews 1/2 cup chopped butterscotch chips 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)   Prepare a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan by lining it with a piece of foil large enough to flap over the sides. Spray the foil-lined pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray.   Microwave the chocolate squares and butter in a microwave-safe mixing bowl on HIGH for 1 minute. Stir. (Since chocolate frequently maintains its shape even when melted, you have to stir to make sure.) If it’s not melted, microwave for an additional 20 seconds and stir again. Repeat if necessary.   Stir the sugar into the chocolate mixture. Feel the bowl. If it’s not so hot it’ll cook the eggs, add them now, stirring thoroughly. Mix in the vanilla extract.   Mix in the flour, and stir just until it’s moistened.   Put the cashews, butterscotch chips, and chocolate chips in the bowl of a food processor, and chop them together with the steel blade. (If you don’t have a food processor, you don’t have to buy one for this recipe—just chop everything up as well as you can with a sharp knife.)   Mix in the chopped ingredients, give a final stir by hand, and spread the batter out in your prepared pan. Smooth the top with a rubber spatula.   Bake at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes.   Cool the Bonnie Brownie Cookie Bars in the pan on a metal rack. When they’re thoroughly cool, grasp the edges of the foil and lift the brownies out of the pan. Place them facedown on a cutting board, peel the foil off the back, and cut them into brownie-sized pieces.   Place the squares on a plate and dust lightly with powdered sugar if you wish.   Hannah’s Note: If you’re a chocoholic, or if you’re making these for Mother, frost them with Neverfail Fudge Frosting before you cut them.

GRAHAM CRACKER CAKE Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ½ cup salted butter, softened (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) ¾ cup white (granulated) sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 large eggs 2 teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt 2 and ¼ cups graham cracker crumbs 1 cup whole milk 1 cup chopped nuts (measure after chopping—I used walnuts)   8 and ¾ ounce can crushed pineapple WITH juice ¼ cup white (granulated) sugar Hannah’s Note: You can either crush your own graham cracker crumbs by placing graham crackers in a bag and rolling the bag with a rolling pin, crushing them in the food processor by using the steel blade, or you can buy ready-made graham cracker crumbs at the store. Spray a 9-inch square baking pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray and sprinkle the inside with flour. Shake out excess flour. You may also use Pam spray for baking, which contains a coating of flour. Both will work well. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar, adding the sugar gradually with the mixer on MEDIUM speed. Add the vanilla extract and mix it in thoroughly. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating the first egg before you add the second. Add the baking powder and the salt, beating until they’re thoroughly mixed. Mix in half of the graham cracker crumbs with half of the milk. Beat well. Mix in the other half of the graham cracker crumbs with the remaining half of the milk. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the chopped nuts by hand. Pour the Graham Cracker Cake batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Bake your cake at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Take your cake out of the oven, turn off the oven, and place the cake on a wire rack to await its topping. In a saucepan on the stovetop, combine the contents of the can of crushed pineapple and juice with the white sugar. Cook the pineapple mixture over MEDIUM HIGH heat, stirring constantly until it boils. Turn the burner down to LOW and cook the pineapple mixture for an additional 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Pour the hot pineapple sauce over the hot cake. Cool in the pan. Serve the Graham Cracker Cake with sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Now, by all accounts, you have the perfect life: you have the high-earning husband, the rosy-cheeked children, and the Buick in the driveway. But something isn’t right. Household tasks don’t seem to hold your attention; you snarl at your children instead of blanketing them with smiles. You fret about how little you resemble those glossy women in the magazines, the ones who clean counters and bake cakes and radiate delight. (Looking at those ads, a housewife and freelance writer named Betty Friedan “thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor.”) Everything and everyone confirm that it’s just as you suspected: the problem is you. You’re oversexed, you’re undersexed, you’re overeducated, you’re unintelligent. You need to have your head shrunk; you need to take more sleeping pills. You ought to become a better cook—all those fancy new kitchen appliances!—and in the meantime be content and grateful with what you have. The cultural pressure of the 1950s was so intense that some women, in order to survive, killed off the parts of themselves that couldn’t conform.

Well, I don’t know about you girls,” Patti called out, “but I’m starving. You wanna help me throw everything together before I go check on the chicken?” The twins shared uncertain expressions. “Sure, we’ll help,” I answered for them. “What do you need us to do?” “All right, how about you and Marna make the salad, and Ginger can help me bake this cake.” Their eyes filled with horror. “You mean like chopping things?” Marna whispered. “Yeah. It’s not hard. We’ll do it together.” At my prompting they stood but made no move toward the kitchen with me. “I’m not sure you ought to trust me with a knife,” Marna said. “Or me with baked goods,” Ginger added. I’d never seen her so unsure of herself. If it were just me making the request, she’d tell me to go screw myself, but neither girl seemed to know how to act around Patti. They fidgeted and glanced at the kitchen. Patti came over and took Ginger by the arm. “You’ll both be fine,” Patti insisted. “It’ll be fun!” The seriousness of the twins in the kitchen was comical. They took each step of their jobs with slow, attentive detail, checking and double-checking the measurements while Patti ran out to flip the chicken. Somewhere halfway through, the girls loosened up and we started chatting. Patti put Ginger at ease in a way I’d never seen her. At one point we were all laughing and I realized I’d never seen Ginger laugh in a carefree way, only the mean kind of amusement brought on at someone else’s expense. Usually mine. Ginger caught me looking and straightened, smile disappearing. Patti watched with her keen, wise eyes. She wasn’t missing the significance of any gesture here. When she returned from getting the chicken off the grill, Ginger said, “Oh, that smells divine, Miss Patti.” Who was this complimenting girl? Patti smiled and thanked her. Ginger was so proud of the cake when it was finished that she took several pictures of it with her phone. She even wanted a picture of her and Patti holding the cake together, which nearly made Patti burst with motherly affection. I couldn’t even manage to feel jealous as Patti heaped nurture on Ginger. It was so sweet it made my eyes sting. Marna kept sending fond glances at her sister. “I did that part right there all by myself,” Ginger said to Marna, pointing to the frosting trim. “Brilliant, isn’t it?” “Bang-up job, Gin.” Marna squeezed her sister around the shoulder.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

That baking day was the third day Mrs G had shut herself away in the stillroom, dosing herself with medicinal waters. As I rolled the pastry I lived out a fancy I had nourished, since the first apple blossom pinked in May- the making of the perfect dish. Next day was All Hallows Eve, or Souling Night as we called it, and all our neighbors would gather for Old Ned's cider and Mrs Garland's Soul Cakes. After the stablemen acted out the Souling play, the unmarried maids would have a lark, guessing their husband's name from apple pairings thrown over their shoulders. So what better night, I thought, for Jem to announce our wedding? At the ripe age of twenty-two years, the uncertainties of maidenhood were soon to pass me by. Crimping my tarts, I passed into that forgetfulness that is a most delightful way of being. My fingers scattered flour and my elbows spun the rolling pin along the slab. Unrolling before my eyes were scenes of triumph: of me and Jem leading a cheery procession to the chapel, posies of flowers in my hand and pinned to Jem's blue jacket. In my head I turned over the makings of my Bride Cake that sat in secret in the larder- ah, wouldn't that be the richest, most hotly spiced delight? And all the bitter maidens who put it underneath their pillows would be sorrowing to think that Jem was finally taken, bound and married off to me.

English Gingerbread Cake Serves: 12 to 16 Baking Time: 50 to 60 minutes Kyle Cathie, editor for the British version of The Cake Bible (and now a publisher), informed me in no uncertain terms that a book could not be called a cake "bible" in England if it did not contain the beloved gingerbread cake. When I went to England to retest all the cakes using British flour and ingredients, I developed this gingerbread recipe. Now that I have tasted it, I quite agree with Kyle. It is a moist spicy cake with an intriguing blend of buttery, lemony, wheaty, and treacly flavors. Cut into squares and decorated with pumpkin faces, it makes a delightful "treat" for Halloween. Batter Volume Ounce Gram unsalted butter (65° to 75°F/19° to 23°C) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) 4 113 golden syrup or light corn syrup 1¼ cups (10 fluid ounces) 15 425 dark brown sugar, preferably Muscovado ¼ cup, firmly packed 2 60 orange marmalade 1 heaping tablespoon 1.5 40 2 large eggs, at room temperature ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 fluid ounces) 3.5 100 milk 2/3 cup (5.3 fluid ounces) 5.6 160 cake flour (or bleached all-purpose flour) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (or 1 cup), sifted into the cup and leveled off 4 115 whole wheat flour 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon (lightly spooned into the cup) 4 115 baking powder 1½ teaspoons . . cinnamon 1 teaspoon . . ground ginger 1 teaspoon . . baking soda ½ teaspoon . . salt pinch . . Special Equipment One 8 by 2-inch square cake pan or 9 by 2-inch round pan (see Note), wrapped with a cake strip, bottom coated with shortening, topped with a parchment square (or round), then coated with baking spray with flour Preheat the Oven Twenty minutes or more before baking, set an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C. Mix the Liquid Ingredients In a small heavy saucepan, stir together the butter, golden syrup, sugar, and marmalade over medium-low heat until melted and uniform in color. Set aside uncovered until just barely warm, about 10 minutes. Whisk in the eggs and milk. Make the Batter In a large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter mixture, stirring with a large silicone spatula or spoon just until smooth and the consistency of thick soup. Using the silicone spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the Cake Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a wire cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from the oven. Cool the Cake Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. While the cake is cooling, make the syrup.

It will be agreed that you can’t divide a cake up into its component crumbs and say ‘This crumb corresponds to the first word in the recipe, this crumb corresponds to the second word in the recipe’, etc. In this sense it will be agreed that the whole recipe maps onto the whole cake. But now suppose we change one word in the recipe; for instance, suppose ‘baking-powder’ is deleted or is changed to ‘yeast’. We bake 100 cakes according to the new version of the recipe, and 100 cakes according to the old version of the recipe. There is a key difference between the two sets of 100 cakes, and this difference is due to a one-word difference in the recipes. Although there is no one-to-one mapping from word to crumb of cake, there is one-to-one mapping from word difference to whole-cake difference. ‘Baking-powder’ does not correspond to any particular part of the cake: its influence affects the rising, and hence the final shape, of the whole cake. If ‘baking-powder’ is deleted, or replaced by ‘flour’, the cake will not rise. If it is replaced by ‘yeast’, the “cake will rise but it will taste more like bread. There will be a reliable, identifiable difference between cakes baked according to the original versoin and the ‘mutated’ versions of the recipe, even though there is no particular ‘bit’ of any cake that corresponds to the words in question. This is a good analogy for what happens when a gene mutates.

It will be agreed that you can’t divide a cake up into its component crumbs and say ‘This crumb corresponds to the first word in the recipe, this crumb corresponds to the second word in the recipe’, etc. In this sense it will be agreed that the whole recipe maps onto the whole cake. But now suppose we change one word in the recipe; for instance, suppose ‘baking-powder’ is deleted or is changed to ‘yeast’. We bake 100 cakes according to the new version of the recipe, and 100 cakes according to the old version of the recipe. There is a key difference between the two sets of 100 cakes, and this difference is due to a one-word difference in the recipes. Although there is no one-to-one mapping from word to crumb of cake, there is one-to-one mapping from word difference to whole-cake difference. ‘Baking-powder’ does not correspond to any particular part of the cake: its influence affects the rising, and hence the final shape, of the whole cake. If ‘baking-powder’ is deleted, or replaced by ‘flour’, the cake will not rise. If it is replaced by ‘yeast’, the “cake will rise but it will taste more like bread. There will be a reliable, identifiable difference between cakes baked according to the original version and the ‘mutated’ versions of the recipe, even though there is no particular ‘bit’ of any cake that corresponds to the words in question. This is a good analogy for what happens when a gene mutates.

Piña Colada Cheesecake This tropical twist on my mother’s old-fashioned cheesecake was a hit at cruiser gatherings. For the crust 1 cup graham cracker crumbs 1⁄2 cup sweetened shredded coconut 1⁄3 cup melted butter For the filling 11⁄2 pounds cream cheese, softened 2⁄3 cup sugar 4 eggs 3 tablespoons dark rum 1 cup sour cream 3⁄4 cup cream of coconut (see Tips, below) 2⁄3 cup well-drained crushed pineapple (about 1 19-oz can) 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 2. To make the crust, combine graham cracker crumbs and coconut with melted butter. Press into the bottom of a 10-inch springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes until lightly browned. Set aside to cool while you make the filling. 3. To make the filling, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, beating until blended. Mix in rum, sour cream, cream of coconut, and well-drained pineapple. 4. Spread evenly on prepared crust and bake about 50–60 minutes on middle rack of preheated oven, until edges are set and center moves just slightly when you shake the pan. 5. Run a knife around the inside of pan to loosen cheesecake. Allow cake to cool completely on a wire rack. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled or overnight. Remove from springform pan before serving. Serves 16 Tips • Garnish the cheesecake with slices of tropical fruit, such as fresh pineapple or mango. • Don’t confuse cream of coconut with coconut milk or coconut cream. Used to make drinks (such as piña coladas) and desserts, cream of coconut is thick, syrupy, heavily sweetened coconut milk. Coco Lopez is one popular brand.

Herman and I have been doing a lot of talking about the cake the past couple of days, and we think we have a good plan for the three tiers. The bottom tier will be the chocolate tier and incorporate the dacquoise component, since that will all provide a good strong structural base. We are doing an homage to the Frango mint, that classic Chicago chocolate that was originally produced at the Marshall Field's department store downtown. We're going to make a deep rich chocolate cake, which will be soaked in fresh-mint simple syrup. The dacquoise will be cocoa based with ground almonds for structure, and will be sandwiched between two layers of a bittersweet chocolate mint ganache, and the whole tier will be enrobed in a mint buttercream. The second tier is an homage to Margie's Candies, an iconic local ice cream parlor famous for its massive sundaes, especially their banana splits. It will be one layer of vanilla cake and one of banana cake, smeared with a thin layer of caramelized pineapple jam and filled with fresh strawberry mousse. We'll cover it in chocolate ganache and then in sweet cream buttercream that will have chopped Luxardo cherries in it for the maraschino-cherry-on-top element. The final layer will be a nod to our own neighborhood, pulling from the traditional flavors that make up classical Jewish baking. The cake will be a walnut cake with hints of cinnamon, and we will do a soaking syrup infused with a little bit of sweet sherry. A thin layer of the thick poppy seed filling we use in our rugelach and hamantaschen, and then a layer of honey-roasted whole apricots and vanilla pastry cream. This will get covered in vanilla buttercream.

Caramel Apple Bundt Cake For people. Cake 1½ cups flour 1 cup pecans 2 teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda 1½ teaspoons cinnamon ¾ teaspoon nutmeg ¾ teaspoon cloves ¼ teaspoon salt 2 medium apples, peeled and cored ½ cup sugar + extra 1¼ sticks (10 tablespoons) butter at room temperature + extra for greasing the pan 1 cup packed dark brown sugar 2 large eggs at room temperature 1 cup applesauce Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place the flour, pecans, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt in a food processor and pulse until the pecans are fine. Transfer the flour mixture to a bowl. Insert the grating disk and grate the apples. Take 1 tablespoon of sugar out of the plain sugar and set it aside. Cream the butter with the sugars. Beat in the eggs. Alternate adding the applesauce and the flour mixture until completely combined. Stir in the grated apples. Grease the Bundt pan liberally. Sprinkle the extra sugar on the butter. You may need another tablespoon of sugar for full coverage. Use a cooking spoon to ladle the batter into the Bundt pan and smooth the top. Bake 40 minutes or until it begins to pull away from the sides and a cake tester comes out clean. Allow to rest on a baking rack about 5 to 10 minutes. Loosen the edges, and flip onto the rack. When cool, top with caramel. Caramel 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 cup packed dark brown sugar ¼ cup heavy cream Place the ingredients in a deep microwave-safe dish (I used a 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup). Microwave in short bursts, stirring occasionally, until it bubbles up and the sugar melts. (You may find that you even like it if the sugar doesn’t melt!) Swedish Tea Ring For people.

Chicken Francese, or lamb chops, or plump spinach gnocchi that she'd roll out by hand and drop into boiling salt water. When her brothers came home for the holidays, she'd spend days in the kitchen, preparing airy latkes and sweet and sour brisket; roast turkey with chestnut stuffing; elaborately iced layer cakes. She'd stay in the kitchen for hours, cooking dish after dish, hoping that all the food would somehow conceal their father's absence; hoping that the meals would take the taste of grief out of their mouths. "After my father died, I think cooking saved me. It was the only thing that made me happy. Everything else felt so out of control. But if I followed a recipe, if I used the right amounts of the right ingredients and did everything I was supposed to do..." She tried to explain it- how repetitive motions of peeling and chopping felt like a meditation, the comfort of knowing that flour and yeast, oil and salt, combined in the correct proportions, would always yield a loaf of bread; the way that making a shopping list could refocus her mind, and how much she enjoyed the smells of fresh rosemary, of roasting chicken or baking cookies, the velvety feel of a ball of dough at the precise moment when it reached its proper elasticity and could be put into an oiled bowl, under a clean cloth, to rise in a warm spot in the kitchen, the same step that her mother's mother's mother would have followed to make the same kind of bread. She liked to watch popovers rising to lofty heights in the oven's heat, blooming out of their tins. She liked the sound of a hearty soup or grain-thickened stew, simmering gently on a low flame, the look of a beautifully set table, with place cards and candles and fine china. All of it pleased her.

Accras (Saltfish Fritters) Accras (or acrats) de morue are saltfish fritters—the French island version of Dingis’s saltfish cakes. (Morue is French for cod.) Serve them as an appetizer or a snack. 1⁄2 pound salt cod or other saltfish, preferably boneless 1 lime 1 small onion, grated 1 clove garlic, grated 1⁄4–1⁄2 hot pepper, seeded and finely minced 1 seasoning pepper or 1⁄2 green bell pepper, finely chopped 1 stalk celery, finely chopped 2 green onions, finely chopped 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme Freshly ground black pepper 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1⁄2 cup water (approx.) Vegetable oil for deep frying 1. The night before you want to serve the fritters, put the fish in cold water to soak. Change water 4 or 5 times, squeezing half the lime into the water during each of the last two soakings. 2. Rinse fish, drain, and remove skin and bones if necessary. In a large bowl, finely shred the fish. (See Tips, below.) Add the onion, garlic, peppers, celery, green onions, thyme, and black pepper, and mix well. 3. Combine flour and baking powder and add to fish mixture. Stir thoroughly. Slowly add enough water to make a thick paste. 4. Heat oil to 350°F in a deep fryer or pot. Drop fish mixture by tablespoons into hot oil and fry until golden on both sides. 5. Drain on paper towels and serve hot with hot pepper sauce. Serves 4 Tips • Some saltfish may not shred easily. If that’s the case, chop it finely in a food processor or by hand with a knife. Alternatively, put it in boiling water, turn off the heat, and allow it to cool in the liquid. It should then flake easily. Whichever method you use, be sure to “chip it up fine,” as Dingis says. • Before proceeding with step 2, try a little piece of the soaked fish. If it is still too salty for your taste, soak it again in fresh water.

Which is actually good because we’re doing an AP Euro study group this week at the library—I mean good that it got canceled, not good that someone died—so I was wondering too if maybe I can use the car, so you won’t have to come pick me up super late every night?” Alma had been a wildly clingy kid, but now she is a mostly autonomous and wholly inscrutable seventeen-year-old; she is mean and gorgeous and breathtakingly good at math; she has inside jokes with her friends about inexplicable things like Gary Shandling and avocado toast, paints microscopic cherries on her fingernails and endeavors highly involved baking ventures, filling their fridge with oblong bagels and six-layer cakes. “I’m asking now because last time you told me I didn’t give you enough notice,” she says. She has recently begun speaking conversationally to Julia and Mark again after nearly two years of brooding silence, and now it’s near impossible to get her to stop. She regales them with breathless incomprehensible stories at the dinner table; she delivers lengthy recaps of midseason episodes of television shows they have never seen; she mounts elaborate and convincing defenses of things she wants them to give her, or give her permission to do. Conversing with her is a mechanical act requiring the constant ability to shift gears, to backpedal or follow inane segues or catapult from the real world to a fictional one without stopping to refuel. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that she won’t be accepted next month to several of the seventeen exalted and appallingly expensive colleges to which she has applied, and because Julia would like the remainder of her tenure at home to elapse free of trauma, she responds to her daughter as she did when she was a napping baby, tiptoeing around her to avoid awakening unrest. The power dynamic in their household is not unlike that of a years-long hostage crisis.

TIO TITO’S SUBLIME LIME BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ½ cup finely-chopped coconut (measure after chopping—pack it down when you measure it) 1 cup cold salted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound) ½ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar (no need to sift unless it’s got big lumps) 2 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it)   4 beaten eggs (just whip them up with a fork) 2 cups white (granulated) sugar cup lime juice (freshly squeezed is best) cup vodka (I used Tito’s Handmade Vodka) ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ cup all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it) Powdered (confectioners) sugar to sprinkle on top Coconut Crust: To get your half-cup of finely-chopped coconut, you will need to put approximately ¾ cup of shredded coconut in the bowl of a food processor. (The coconut will pack down more when it’s finely-chopped so you’ll need more of the stuff out of the package to get the half-cup you need for this recipe.) Chop the shredded coconut up finely with the steel blade. Pour it out into a bowl and measure out ½ cup, packing it down when you measure it. Return the half-cup of finely chopped coconut to the food processor. (You can also do this by spreading out the shredded coconut on a cutting board and chopping it finely by hand.) Cut each stick of butter into eight pieces and arrange them in the bowl of the food processor on top of the chopped coconut. Sprinkle the powdered sugar and the flour on top of that. Zoop it all up with an on-and-off motion of the steel blade until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Prepare a 9-inch by 13-inch rectangular cake pan by spraying it with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, for even easier removal, line the cake pan with heavy-duty foil and spray that with Pam. (Then all you have to do is lift the bar cookies out when they’re cool, peel off the foil, and cut them up into pieces.) Sprinkle the crust mixture into the prepared cake pan and spread it out with your fingers. Pat it down with a large spatula or with the palms of your impeccably clean hands. Hannah’s 1st Note: If your butter is a bit too soft, you may end up with a mass that balls up and clings to the food processor bowl. That’s okay. Just scoop it up and spread it out in the bottom of your prepared pan. (You can also do this in a bowl with a fork or a pie crust blender if you prefer.) Hannah’s 2nd Note: Don’t wash your food processor quite yet. You’ll need it to make the lime layer. (The same applies to your bowl and fork if you make the crust by hand.) Bake your coconut crust at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes. While your crust is baking, prepare the lime layer. Lime Layer: Combine the eggs with the white sugar. (You can use your food processor and the steel blade to do this, or you can do it by hand in a bowl.) Add the lime juice, vodka, salt, and baking powder. Mix thoroughly. Add the flour and mix until everything is incorporated. (This mixture will be runny—it’s supposed to be.) When your crust has baked for 15 minutes, remove the pan from the oven and set it on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. Don’t shut off the oven! Just leave it on at 350 degrees F. Pour the lime layer mixture on top of the crust you just baked. Use potholders to pick up the pan and return it to the oven. Bake your Sublime Lime Bar Cookies for an additional 30 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool your lime bars in the pan on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. When the pan has cooled to room temperature, cover it with foil and refrigerate it until you’re ready to serve. Cut the bars into brownie-sized pieces, place them on a pretty platter, and sprinkle them lightly with powdered sugar. Yum! Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you would prefer not to use alcohol in these bar cookies, simply substitute whole milk for the vodka. This recipe works both ways and I can honestly tell you that I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like my Sublime Lime Bar Cookies!

I lift the lid of the chest. Inside, the air is musty and stale, held hostage for years in its three-foot-by-four-foot tomb. I lean in to survey the contents cautiously, then pull out a stack of old photos tied with twine. On top is a photo of a couple on their wedding day. She's a young bride, wearing one of those 1950's netted veils. He looks older, distinguished- sort of like Cary Grant or Gregory Peck in the old black-and-white movies I used to watch with my grandmother. I set the stack down and turn back to the chest, where I find a notebook, filled with handwritten recipes. The page for Cinnamon Rolls is labeled "Dex's Favorite." 'Dex.' I wonder if he's the man in the photo. There are two ticket stubs from 1959, one to a Frank Sinatra concert, another to the movie 'An Affair to Remember.' A single shriveled rosebud rests on a white handkerchief. A corsage? When I lift it into my hand, it disintegrates; the petals crinkle into tiny pieces that fall onto the living room carpet. At the bottom of the chest is what looks like a wedding dress. It's yellowed and moth-eaten, but I imagine it was once stark white and beautiful. As I lift it, I can hear the lace swishing as if to say, "Ahh." Whoever wore it was very petite. The waist circumference is tiny. A pair of long white gloves falls to the floor. They must have been tucked inside the dress. I refold the finery and set the ensemble back inside. Whose things are these? And why have they been left here? I thumb through the recipe book. All cookies, cakes, desserts. She must have loved to bake. I tuck the book back inside the chest, along with the photographs after I've retied the twine, which is when I notice a book tucked into the corner. It's an old paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' I've read a little of Hemingway over the years- 'A Moveable Feast' and some of his later work- but not this one. I flip through the book and notice that one page is dog-eared. I open to it and see a line that has been underscored. "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." I look out to the lake, letting the words sink in. 'Is that what I'm trying to do? Get away from myself?' I stare at the line in the book again and wonder if it resonated with the woman who underlined it so many years ago. Did she have her own secret pain? 'Was she trying to escape it just like me?