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Those of you who have been visiting so patiently, hoping for a trace of the prose promised before the weekend...you are good and patient souls, and I'm sorry to disappoint again.  Here I am with a spanky new laptop, and all I can do is look at it, enraptured, murmuring "look at the pretty fonts!" in a voice much like Gir from Invader Zim.  (If you're not familiar with Zim, or with Gir, trust me, it's a funny voice.  Gir is my sweetheart.)

Tonight, I am headed out on an after-work adventure, so I'll have to save all of those juicy topics for another night.  For now, though, dear friends, it's the same old story in the same old way:  Elk Candy Company, an Upper East Side mainstay in the vein of Schaller and Weber and the late, much-missed Paprikas Weiss, closed its doors forever on Saturday, following a spike in their rent.  You have heard it all from me before, so I won't say it now.  I'll just ask you to take a moment to think of another sweet, singular piece of New York, now a piece of history.

(Did you notice how I did not rant about Elk losing its lease when the rent spiked to nearly triple what they are paying now?  Or how I did not revisit my continuing rant about how all that is most unique in New York City is meeting a similar fate, or that while these businesses, which used to attract visitors from around the world, are disappearing, New Yorkers are lining up in the rain to shop at Trader Joe's?  Or that I certainly did not confess to having what the diplomats call "a full and frank discussion" with two women in their 70's, who stood outside of Elk on its last day of business and complained about the price Elk was charging for a hand-molded, hollow chocolate Easter egg, halved and filled with a generous chocolate assortment -- essentially an edible box of chocolates? Yes, I kept it friendly.  No, I didn't drop the f-bomb on my elders.  No, I wasn't nearly as strident then as I am being now.  Really.)

Dear friends,

Ten days, shmen days.  Lloyd found me a laptop, a better laptop at a better price than the one we initially ordered, only to have the order cancelled due to an error the seller made in the credit card processing.  We still have to establish net-readiness on the new machine, and transfer all of the stuff what needs transferring from the old laptop to the new one (email addresses, photographs, the colossus document entitled "egg research", but we did take it for a little test run last night, and oh, I had forgotten how much easier it is to work when you don't have to fight with your tools for 40 seconds of every minute.  Just thinking about it makes me feel ten years younger.

I realize that I have much correspondence on which to catch up, both in this space, on email and at Bakerina Kitchens.  If you grant me a bit more forbearance, I will share various and sundry tales, including but not limited to "Hot Cross Buns:  Contrary to Their Name, These Should Be Eaten at Room Temperature," "Laptops Old and New:  Tools of Industry, Tools of Satan," "The First Rule of Socks That Rock Club is That You Do Not Talk About Socks That Rock Club," and the perennial favorite in my household, "My God, Woman, When Are You Going to Go to Estes Park and Give Me Some Peace, Fercryin'outloud?"  It might even be worth the wait. 

For someone who spends every blustery subzero February singing to the universe to bring spring forth already, I have not been adjusting well to spring this year, dear friends.  I had thought that the arrival of longer days, bright yellow sunshine and ridiculously-saturated blue skies would have been just the thing to clear winter's cobwebs away, but instead all that sunshine has done is illuminate just what a poor job I've done keeping those cobwebs from forming in the first place. It's not that there is anything wrong, outside of the usual collection of irritants and whimsies of which life consists; it's just that my attitude about it all has been so terrible.  To call it pessimism is to miss the mark slightly:  not only is the glass half-empty, but if I had been a better person I would have remembered to buy more water so that the glass could always remain full.  You may be thinking by now that Lloyd must be a towering fortress of strength and forbearance to live with such a mercurial and just-barely-sane woman.  You would guess correctly.

This week's Chattering Nonsense From My Conscience, in addition to the usual hit parade of "how can you be given so many opportunities and advantages in life, only to waste them all so consistently?", consists of variations on the theme of "Let's see, this time two years ago you were getting ready to go to Arkansas...this time last year you were getting ready to go to Scotland...what are you doing with your life this year?  Ah, yes, that would be NOTHING!"  The kind and excellent writer Anne Lamott refers to this phenomenon as Radio Station KFKD, or K-Fucked, the single greatest impediment to writing, or any sort of creative work, known to man.  Out of the left speaker runs a continuous stream of self-aggrandizement and laurel-resting; out of the right runs a hash of self-loathing and fear.  It should be an easy thing to just turn the radio off, but my own personal KFKD is a high-frequency station, and I haven't figured out a way to shut it off that doesn't involve burning the radio station down and then salting the ground so that nothing more may grow upon it.  Nevertheless I know I need to figure it out, because if there is one thing worse than morose torpor, it's realizing that you have given up the past week/six months/ten years of your life to morose torpor.  So I am turning the radio off now, reminding myself that the laptop imbroglio means more than just another bill, one that will be paid with the money we earmarked for paying off the mattress:  it means that in 10 days I will have a sweet new computer, one that won't shut down in a blaze of kernel stacking errors at the very moment that I'm trying to finish my nice new blog post.  I am also reminding myself that all of the recent irritants and whimsies are just that, just irritants and whimsies, and not the huge financial catastrophes they would have been had they occurred when Lloyd and I were newlyweds, earning just above minimum wage.  I remind myself that even the worst occurrences I can think of are leavened considerably by Lloyd's presence by my side.  And lest I think that this year has nothing to compare with years past, I should remember that I have finally got my act together and am taking it on the road, specifically to the Estes Park Wool Market, where I will hobnob with the knitterati, including but not limited to Snow, Kristi and Margene.  I am ever so slightly stoked about this turn of events, yes.

But first things first.  A dear friend, and a well-meaning one, asks if maybe I am eating an imbalanced diet, and if maybe all this talk of pie and cake and white bread is to blame.  Well, sort of.  I am in an overfed and underexercised place right now, and I *am* eating an imbalanced diet, woefully short on deep green leafy and bright orange tubery vegetables, and much too long on almond M&M's and little bags of SmartFood popcorn from the vending machine at the office.  What I'm not eating too much of is chocolate kuchen, or lemon pie, or ginger cake.  Whenever I bake something I haven't baked in a while, or when I get the urge to try a new recipe, I have the bad habit of just baking it, without figuring out whether Lloyd and I can eat all of it.  Often we can't, and trust me, there are fewer sadder sights than a moldy half-loaf of raisin bread or a bitter, ropy cake or a spoiled pie consigned to the rubbish.  I have been trying to bake smarter, freezing anything we can't eat in a couple of days, sharing anything that can't be frozen, as I did when Julie came over to bake at our house.  Sometimes, even with our best intentions, we still discover that half of the pie that was baked last weekend is still sitting in the fridge, proving that even with pie, out of sight can still be out of mind.  So to answer my dear friend's question, yes, I need to make some changes, I need to remember that I love my veggies and I like going to the gym and watching the Type A boys beat the stuffing out of each other on the basketball court while I bore away at the escalator climber, but until a medical professional tells me that my heart or brain will explode if I eat one more critical-mass slice of pie, I will continue to make a place for it in my kitchen.

Speaking of pie, Luisa asked, so I am answering.  It's time for pie.

Shaker Meyer Lemon Pie

(makes 1 9" pie, serves 8-15, depending on the delicacy of your eaters)

There are two tricky things about this pie:  1.  You really do have to slice your lemons to paper-thinness. 1/16" is about as thick as you can safely get.  This means that you have to slice them with the sharpest knife you own.  If your knives are dull, sharpen them before you start this.  Chef Karen Barker, whose recipe this is, recommends using a serrated bread knife, while Ken Haedrich, whose all-butter crust is my pie crust staple, says that if you have a mandoline, it is perfect for the job.  (He's right, but I must append his advice:  If you have a mandoline, and you mostly use it for slicing ginger to make pickled ginger, for the love of Mike Nelson, get your mandoline blade sharpened.  Do not be like the Bakerina, who soldiered on for years with a dull mandoline blade like the sap she is.)  Whatever you use, just make sure it's sharper than sharp, slice the ends off your lemons, cut them in half lengthwise, take a deep breath and go to town.  The sense of accomplishment you will feel when you are done is like nothing else -- at least until you pull the final pie from the oven the next day, which brings me to 2.  You have to remember to slice the lemons the day before you want to eat this pie, because they must macerate in sugar for 24 hours to take the bitter edge off the peel.  I have done it in slightly less time (16 hours), but please believe me when I tell you that the longer the macerating time, the better.  The good news is that once you've sliced your lemons and let them soak in the sugar, the rest of the pie really is as easy as pie, and the results will make you feel like the most accomplished baker in the world.

Pie crust dough

1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) all-purpose flour

2 cups (8 oz.) pastry flour (or use all all-purpose flour if you can't get pastry flour)

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

2 tsp. salt

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter

2 egg yolks

10-12 tablespoons ice water, as much as you need to make a coherent dough

Make your pastry as you like (by hand, in a mixer or a food processor; I usually use a food processor, taking care not to overprocess, and kneading everything together by hand for less than a minute, just until it comes together).  Let it rest for at least four hours, up to 24.

Meyer lemon filling

3 Meyer lemons

2 cups (14 oz.) granulated sugar

pinch salt

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

Egg wash made from one egg beaten and thinned with a little water

Using a sharp knife, cut the ends off the lemons; then cut them in half lengthwise.  Slice each lemon half to paper thickness, discarding any seeds you might find. Halve the lemons again lengthwise so that you have wedge-shaped quarters, and place them into a medium-sized nonreactive mixing bowl.  Be sure to include any juice they have yielded.  Add the sugar, mix thoroughly, cover and let macerate for 24 hours.  Stir them two or three times over the macerating period to help the sugar dissolve.

The next day, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4) and move a rack to the lowest level of the oven. Roll out your bottom crust and place it in the pie plate.  Add the salt and eggs to the lemon and sugar, and stir to combine.  Pour this mixture into your pie shell, top the pie with the top crust, apply the egg wash, cut some steam vents into the pie, place it on a baking sheet and bake for at least 45 minutes.  (I gave mine an extra 7 minutes and it was perfect.)  Let it cool completely before you slice into it.

Ginger-glazed chocolate cake

(yield depends on size of cake -- and again, the delicacy of appetites, or lack of delicacy thereof)

After all of that slicing and macerating, you deserve something easy, and this wonderful cake is about as easy as it gets.  This is the creation of Jill Cornfield, the editor and publisher of Cooking on the Edge, a zine whose presence is sorely needed in this era of worry and distraction.  (Not that I would ever put any pressure on Jill to resume publication, as she and her husband are more than a little busy these days -- and while I'm linking to Jeff's book, please, dear friends, consider giving it a look.  It is not always easy reading -- in fact, it is often harrowing -- but it is always good, illuminating and suffused with love.)  This is the recipe whose ingredient list starts with "1 chocolate cake (how you get it is your business)", which is the reason I love it so.  If you love to bake cakes from scratch, you can bake your own chocolate cake.  If you don't love to bake, you can use your favorite bakery or supermarket cake, and it will still come out just fine.  The magic ingredient in this cake is ginger jam, or ginger preserve, a jellylike spread with chunks of candied ginger.  Jill recommends that after you melt the jam, you puree it in a food processor to de-lumpify it; she's right, but again, if an extra step is not part of your plan, the cake will still be fine; the finish will just be a little less smooth.  If you have a 9"x 13" sheet cake or larger, you may want to double the jam and glaze quantities.  Or not.  It's a user-friendly cake, and it tastes like happiness made manifest.

1/2 cup ginger jam

1 chocolate cake, your choice

4 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely.

2 oz. (4 tbsp.) unsalted butter

Melt the jam over low heat, stirring to keep it from burning.  When it is entirely soft, puree it in a food processor or blender -- or don't.  Spread the warm jam over the cake and let it sit until it is sticky to the touch, but not wet.  In a double-boiler or bain-marie, melt the chocolate and butter together.  Stir just enough to combine, but not so much that you put a lot of air bubbles into the glaze.  Set the cake on a cooling rack over a sheet pan to catch drips.  Pour the glaze over the top of the cake and spread it with a spatula until the glaze runs down the sides.  Et voila.

It was not a bad week, dear friends (except for Lloyd's developing a horrible toothache that led to a root canal, poor love -- but he's feeling much better now), but it was a relatively busy one, and as much fun as it was, I'm relieved for a bit of quiet time.  I did, after all, promise to share a recipe or four.

Focaccia al' olio

(makes 1 10"x 15" focaccia)

Once upon a time, I took a five-session spa cuisine avocational class at the school where I would eventually enroll in the career baking program.  Our instructor was a terrific cook, teacher and writer named Bonnie Lee Black, who at the time was also teaching a five-session breadbaking class, so she and I would talk a lot of breadbaking shop as we steamed our quinoa and baked our light lemon-raspberry souffles.  At the final class, she presented me with some of her favorite recipes, including a recipe for a thin focaccia made of olive oil and white wine.  I am almost always made happy by a new loaf of bread, but it's a special loaf of bread that can surprise me, and this focaccia was a delightful surprise:  even as I know that wonderful things can come from flour, water, salt, yeast, olive oil and white wine, I couldn't believe how wonderful this was.  Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Bonnie from which book she got the recipe (she gave me a photocopy), and by the time I thought to ask her, she had joined the Peace Corps and was working in Africa.  For years, I held onto the recipe, tweaking it here and there, experimenting with varying yeast levels and fermentation times, and generally driving myself to distraction wondering from where the recipe had come.  Then one day, while browsing at Kitchen Arts and Letters, I happened to pick up Focaccia:  Simple Breads from the Italian Oven by Carol Field.  The instant I cracked it open, I noticed that the font looked familiar.  Sure enough, there it was in the index:  Focaccia from Genoa, the exact same recipe as the one in my now oil-and-flour-stained mimeo.  The bad news is that this book is out of print; the good news is that copies can still be found on Amazon.com, as well as used bookstores and specialty stores.  The variety of focaccie to be found in here is impressive:  plain and elaborate, thick and thin, stuffed, savory and sweet (the Florentine orange-scented focaccia and the elderflower schiacciata are rich and gorgeous).  Everything I've made from this book has been a winner, but I find myself returning to this one, the focaccia that has been a staple in our house for 10 years.  (Yes, this is the one I made during Blogathon last August; if you go to my August 2005 archives and scroll down, you can see pictures of all stages from the mixing of the sponge to the pulling of the finished bread from the oven.)

Sponge

140g (1 cup, measured by dip-and-sweep method) all-purpose flour

3/4 cup lukewarm water (you may not need all of it)

1/2 tsp. instant yeast (or 3/4 tsp. active dry yeast, dissolved in a little water)*

In a medium bowl, combine flour and yeast.  Add water until a stiff dough is formed.  Cover and let ferment until the sponge is loose, bubbly and just beginning to pucker in on itself, about two hours.

*Carol Field's original recipe calls for 2 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast, the equivalent of a packet of dry yeast as sold in American supermarkets.  This will produce a sponge that is ready to use in 1/2 hour.  I like using the smaller amount of yeast and a longer fermentation time, as I think it yields a more complex taste and a better crumb.  But if the thought of waiting around for a sponge is not your idea of fun, you can certainly use the full amount of yeast, and the resulting bread will still be terrific.

Final dough

sponge

1/2 cup tepid water

1/3 cup olive oil, your preference (I use an extra virgin olive oil from Crete that is dark green, peppery, flavorful and modestly priced)

1/3 cup white wine (any basic white table wine is fine)

1 tbsp. kosher salt

360g (2 1/2 cups, measured by dip-and-sweep method) all-purpose flour

(This is easiest made in a stand mixer, but if you don't have one, have no fear; although this is a soft, sticky dough, it will come together with gentle kneading.  Just keep your hands and counter well-floured; give yourself plenty of room and be patient and kind, both with the dough and yourself.

In the mixing bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl, pour in the sponge.  Add the olive oil, wine, water and salt and mix until the dough is broken up and the liquid is milky.  Using your hands for this job works brilliantly.  Add the flour in three increments, mixing with the paddle each time.  When the last of the flour has been added, switch to the dough hook and knead for six minutes; by hand, it will probably take closer to 8-10 minutes.  Turn the dough into a well-oiled bowl, cover and let rise until doubled.  With the full amount of yeast, this should take about an hour; with less yeast, it may take 2 hours or longer.  This is actually a good dough to make if you have other things to do and need to leave your house for a while.  It's a forgiving dough. 

When the dough has risen, knock it down gently.  Leave it to rest in the bowl while you preheat your oven to 425F (Gas Mark 7) and move a rack to the center of the oven.  Liberally oil a 10"x 15" sheet pan and turn the dough onto it.  Stretch it to the corners.  If it springs back and won't stay put, don't panic; just cover it with oiled plastic wrap, let it rest for 15 minutes and try again.  Eventually the gluten will relax enough for you to stretch it further.  When it is fully stretched, stipple the dough (i.e. poke it all over with your fingertips until the surface is bumpy all over), re-cover it and let it rise until it is just starting to reach over the top of the sheet pan.

When the dough is thus risen, uncover it, stipple it once again, drizzle some more olive oil over it and sprinkle it with coarse salt if it pleases you (or not, if it doesn't).  Bake until it is a deep golden brown and smells like toast, about 30 - 35 minutes.

This is best on the day it's baked; it gets a bit soft on day 2, but it does re-crisp nicely in a 350-degree (Gas Mark 4) oven.

Fanny's Special Chocolate Kuchen

This amazing celebration cake comes from another out-of-print book worth seeking out, Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet: A Memoir With Recipes by Lora Brody. If you are acquainted with Lora Brody via her excellent bread machine books, I recommend highly that you try to get your hands on this book (or on her other memoirs with recipes, Indulgences and Cooking with Memories). Mrs. Brody is a generous soul and a genuine hoot, and she really knows her way around chocolate. This particular recipe was once the exclusive provenance of her aunt Fanny, who used to bake it for extended family gatherings; not a Rosh Hashonah, nor Thanksgiving, nor Chanukah, nor wedding or bar mitzvah or shiveh or Fourth of July went by without Fanny's kuchen making an appearance. As Mrs. Brody tells it, Fanny would not give out the recipe for love or money, causing her female relatives to "suppress the murderous rages that were welling up in their usually gentle bosoms." Fanny managed to hold onto the secret until she was 51, when she met and married the man of her dreams. A wedding without chocolate kuchen was unthinkable; Fanny's wedding, doubly so; but how could she serve hot kuchen at her reception without arriving at her wedding ceremony in a state of dishevelment? She tried to share the recipe with her sister on the grounds that the recipe would be kept secret, but her sister knew better than to try to keep this recipe a secret from the relatives. Two days before the wedding, Fanny relented and shared the recipe with everyone; six months later, at Thanksgiving, Fanny had a brand-new secret recipe.

This might seem like a lot of drama for a cake, but this is a cake worth the drama. Even before you take a bite, you know that you're in for something good, based on the aromas issuing forth from the oven. It is definitely a celebration cake, as opposed to an everyday-use cake; the ingredients are rich, and the assembly, while not complicated, is a bit time-consuming. Because my oven is small, I make two small kuchens in 9-inch cake pans, as Mrs. Brody recommends, but if you have a large-enough oven, I recommend making this as Fanny did, as a single cake baked in a 15-inch pizza pan. I also recommend using semisweet chocolate chips, but I will also confess that the first time I made this, I used Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips, not usually my first choice for milk chocolate, but they work very nicely here. Be sure to start macerating the raisins in the bourbon the day before you plan to mix the dough.

Dough

1 cup raisins (I like using sultanas)

1/2 cup bourbon

1/2 cup water

1 tbsp powdered instant espresso

1 tbsp sugar

2 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast or 2 tsp. instant yeast

2 extra-large eggs

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp. salt

1/2 pound unsalted butter, melted

20-25 ounces all-purpose flour (4-5 cups via spoon-into-cup method)

Macerate the raisins in the bourbon overnight. The next day, heat the water, dissolve the coffee in it, and cool to skin temperature. Mix the coffee, sugar and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl if you are mixing by hand. Add the eggs, egg yolks, sour cream, salt and butter. Add four cups of the flour and mix until the dough clears the side of the bowl. You may need to add more flour, and you will need to beat for about five minutes in the stand mixer, or about eight minutes with a wooden spoon or dough whisk. Stir in the raisins. When the dough is fully mixed, cover and let rise until it has doubled in volume, about two hours. Knock the dough down, re-cover it and refrigerate it for at least four hours; it may be kept refrigerated up to three days.

Streusel

2 oz. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup ground almonds

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Mix everything together until small lumps are formed. Set aside.

Filling

3 tbsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups apricot jam or lekvar

3 tbsp. bourbon

1 cup chocolate chips, preferably semisweet

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it into a 16-inch circle (or two 10-inch circles). Butter your pan (or pans) and place the dough onto the pan, using your rolling pin as a guide. Crimp the edges into a 1" border. Mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle the mixture onto the dough, avoiding the border. Heat the apricot jam until just warm and slightly softened. Stir in the bourbon. Add this mix to the dough and spread up to (but not on) the border. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the jam. Sprinkle the streusel over the chips. Cover the kuchen with buttered plastic and let rise for 30 minutes.

While the kuchen is rising, place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400F degrees (Gas Mark 6). When the kuchen has risen, uncover and place in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350F (Gas Mark 4) and bake for an additional 40 minutes, or until crust is browned. Mrs. Brody recommends serving this hot -- and it is wonderful hot as long as you don't burn the roof of your mouth -- but I have let this cool all the way down, and it was still worth eating.

Still to come on PTMYB: More cake, a pie, some cookies...

You asked, dear friends, and I said yes.  Granted, I said it about ten days ago, but I still said yes.  "Will you share the recipe for the focaccia/ginger-glazed chocolate cake/kuchen/Shaker Meyer Lemon Pie/apricot jam?"  Why, yes, yes, absolutely, yes!

Eventually.

Tonight, though, I am helping a new neighbor move in, so to speak.  One of my fellow toilers at LuthorCorp is also a world-class bakerina, as well as a cook without parallel.  She is an alumna of the same culinary school I attended (although we attended in different years, and she earned a culinary arts diploma while I earned a pastry and baking arts diploma), she is a hard worker in the box factory salt mines, and she is sharpening her foodwriting pencils even as we speak.  Tonight she takes the great leap forward into blogging, and I'm helping her get started, although, truthfully, she is so smart, and so good at any task to which she sets her mind, that I'm a bit mystified that she thinks that any help from me would be necessary, or even desirable. 

Of course you know that once she goes live, a link will be forthcoming.  I will beam like a proud auntie, and then I will make the observation that a blogday just isn't a blogday without cake...

Edit:It's official! Lynne Marie has gone live. Go say hello, either via her comment field or at queens(dot)cuisine(at)yahoo(dot)com.