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It was about this time last year that I was a woman of few words.  Once again I am a woman of few words, albeit for much different, much better reasons.

I had thought that the adventure started once I finished my applications and sent off my fees.  That only goes to show what I know.  Now the adventure starts, namely, how in the world am I going to pay for this?  (There are options, of course, but I dare not disclose them for fear of hexing them.  There are also four other schools from which to hear; out of the same fear of hexing, I am being cagey about them.)

Of course, I have the rest of the spring and summer to figure out how I’m going to pay for this.  Today I can read and reread these letters, and be thankful that the word “regret” does not occur in either of them.  I can’t think of a better way to spend the day than that.

On Friday it was a loaf of bread—or, rather, eight loaves of bread—and an opportunity to spend the day doing something I loved.  Today it is a moral dilemma, and possibly an exercise in decadence.  Of course, it was a moral dilemma, and possibly an exercise in decadence, long before this weekend.  It was only this weekend that my conscience finally caught up to reality.  I realize fully that my conscience is a little slow on the uptake.

The plan had been simple:  Make a batch of pain brié as I’d been taught to make it in culinary school.  Tell an amusing story about how, back in school, I had beaten that damn dough for half an hour and it had never, ever smoothed out.  Discover that the first batch I’d made in ten years was spoiled by an overproofed sponge and a surfeit of flour (I had forgotten that my instructors who had written our bread curriculum had built 10% additional flour into the base recipes, and I had forgotten to leave it out).  Make another batch, then decide to make a control batch with a lower-protein flour, to see if I could achieve a smoother dough.  Spend a day in the kitchen, rediscovering how malty and clean is the scent of flour and water being mixed together; how satisfying is the whole shaping process, turning par-shaped loaves into bâtards, feeling air bubbles pop under gentle pressure, how thrilling it is to draw a razor blade against the top of an oven-bound loaf and get it right on the first whoosh.  Bake the breads.  Pull them out of the oven.  Love the way the hot crust crackles in the cool air.  Note ruefully that the bottoms are burned thanks to one of the oven racks being placed too closely to the bottom of the oven.  Let it cool.  Let it rest.  Taste it.  Discover, sadly, that the loaves made with bread flour taste like nothing, while the loaves made with all-purpose flour taste only marginally better than nothing.  They’re definitely not reflective of the work I put into them.  Still, there’s nothing shabby about having a freezer full of sandwich-suitable bread, and a story to tell about it.  Vow to try again with an overnight-risen dough.  Tell the story, all of it.

Now, I realize I’m talking about all of this as if it has occurred in a vacuum.  It has not.  Long before I decided to embark on this little baking adventure, the price of flour was increasing, and I knew this.  I confess now—and I’m embarrassed to confess this—that I didn’t pay too much attention to root causes.  Ever since oil prices began to climb, I took it for granted that eventually these increases would result in higher prices for food.  When the price of milk began to climb, I knew that it was due to a combination of increased fuel costs and increased feed costs:  as more corn is being used to produce ethanol, less of it is available for animal feed.  I started seeing a news story here, an email from my flour company of choice there, an occasional news report in between:  the price of flour is going up.  I didn’t pay too much attention.  I would be still be buying all the flour I needed; I’d just be paying more for it.  It’s all about the fuel.  Nothing to see here.

It’s not all about the fuel.  Thanks to this article in Sunday’s New York Times, I know just how wrong I was.  Fuel pricing is a factor, of course.  So is the diversion of land from wheat crops to corn crops to feed the growing market for biofuels.  So is the weak dollar.  So is the drought in Australia, which has proven devastating for Australian wheat crops, and which has sent the buyers of Australian wheat to look to the U.S. for exports.  So is the growing global demand for wheat-based foods like bread and noodles, even—especially—in countries where they have not historically been staples.  All of these factors have made wheat a dear commodity, growing dearer by the day, and have plunged the U.S. grain reserve to its lowest level since 1947.

I went to bed on Sunday, contemplating all of this.  On Monday morning, I walked past the bakery around the corner on my way to the laundromat and found this article, laminated, hanging in the front window.  It was then that I realized just how dire the situation has become.  We now have 30-year-old and 50-year-old bakeries in the city, pleading with their customers to remain patient, and to understand that nobody is getting rich off that extra 40 cents being charged for bread.  We have decades-old businesses, well established in the community, facing closure because they can’t continue to absorb these increases indefinitely, and there does not seem to be any end in sight.

Dear friends, I am confounded.  I do not know whether I am part of the problem or part of the solution.  Is it better to keep buying flour, to continue patronizing a company whose product I really like, to help keep them afloat through the rough waters of a grain shortage?  Or should I realize that I am part of that insistent global demand for wheat and wheat products, and modify my flour purchases accordingly?  Do home bakers use enough flour to even register as a blip on the radar of world commodity markets?  Is this all, in fact, an exercise in decadence?

Good morning.  Happy Friday.

Lest you think I have finally lost all sense of time now that I don’t sit in a cubicle anymore, I promise that I know it’s Friday morning, and not Sunday afternoon.  I’d like to say there’s some bright and clever story behind the Sunday afternoon cake love series, but the truth is pretty prosaic.  I’d had the idea last Sunday to write a big ol’post about cake, and include three recipes, one for the Roland Mesnier applesauce cake, one for the pistachio-nougat torte I made for Julie’s birthday party the previous week, and one for the famous Elizabeth David flourless chocolate cake that inspired so much conversation around here.  Alas, I’d had this brilliant idea at about the same time I’d had the idea to start experimenting with the pain brié that I hadn’t made since culinary school.  Two hours later, I had only got as far as the applesauce cake; the pain brié starter was overfermented, the resulting dough was overfloured and sharp-smelling, and I was filled with the vague sense of guilty self-loathing that always comes with not planning well.  (Confidential to e:  Yes, I seem to remember promising something about no more self-loathing.  Hey, these things take time.  You can’t just jump into ‘em.) That was the moment where I decided that Sunday afternoon cake love would make a super three-part series.

I know I’m breaking at least one heart by not posting the pistachio nougat torte recipe this morning, but in my infinite genius, I forgot to take a picture of the one I’d made for Julie’s party.  (In my defense, I had also made a pair of Trianons for the same party; by the time I finished the finishing on the torte, I was a little addled, to say nothing of sticky and cream-covered.  This was not nearly as attractive as it sounds.  Give it up, already, you perverts.) Fortunately, it’s easy to put together and will keep in the freezer (although the original recipe doesn’t specifically recommend this).  The only thing keeping me from making it right now is an insufficient supply of pistachios, but a quick trip to the Greek supermarket around the corner will fix that sharpish.  In the meantime, I do have the fixings for the Elizabeth David cake.  I made the one in the photograph on Tuesday afternoon.  Lloyd and I finally killed it last night.  It took everything in me not to make one for breakfast, but even I have my limits. 

Elizabeth David’s Gâteau au chocolat et aux amandes (from French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David; also found in More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin)
makes one 8” cake

Note: As is the standard operating procedure around here, the recipe is Mrs. David’s, but her instructions are rewritten in my own words.  I have also changed the methodology a bit, most ly by adding some of the sugar to the egg whites during the beating process.

4 ounces (115g) bittersweet chocolate (I used Green & Black Dark, which contains 85% cocoa solids; this gives a slightly bitter, very intense chocolate flavor.  If you’re not wild about bitterness in a chocolate cake, you can use a less-dark chocolate, although I think semisweet makes this cake a little too sweet.  Unsweetened chocolate is, to my taste, much too bitter for this cake.)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon espresso or other strong coffee (I used 1/4 teaspoon of espresso powder from King Arthur Flour dissolved in a tablespoon of water—this is strong stuff.  If you have access to a decent instant espresso, like Medaglia D’Oro or Cafe Bustelo, you can up the ratio of coffee to water a bit.)

1 tablespoon brandy

3 ounces (85g or 6 tablespoons) unsalted butter

3.75 ounces (106g or 1/2 cup) granulated sugar (After you have weighed/measured the sugar, measure out one tablespoon.  This will be added to the egg whites; the rest will be added to the chocolate mixture.)

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (not in the original recipe, but I think it boosts the flavor nicely)

2 5/8 ounces (75g or 1/2 cup) ground almonds

3 large eggs, separated

Set a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 300F/135C/Gas Mark 2.  Butter an 8-inch springform or loose-bottomed cake pan (which is what I used).

Melt the chocolate, vanilla, coffee and brandy together in a double boiler.  If you have a heavy saucepan, you can heat it right in the pan as long as you keep the heat low.  Stir everything together gently.  The liquids may cause the chocolate to seize up a bit.  This is nothing to worry about; it will all smooth out once you blend everything together.  Add the butter, sugar, salt and ground almonds.  Stir together until the butter is melted.  Remove the pan from the heat.

In a medium bowl, beat the egg yolks until they are lightened in color ("lemon-colored," in Laurie Colwin’s words).  It’s fine to do this by hand with a small whisk.  Add the beaten yolks to the chocolate mixture.

Using either a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites.  Begin by beating them slowly while simultaneously adding, slowly, the tablespoon of sugar you held back from the rest.  Once the sugar has been added, turn the motor to high and beat the egg whites until they just hold stiff peaks.  Take a spoonful of the egg whites and stir them into the chocolate mixture to lighten it a bit.  Fold in the rest of the egg whites gently.

Turn the batter into the prepared pan.  Bake the cake for 45 minutes.  When it is done, it will be slightly risen (but will sink back down upon cooling) and dry to the touch, but a cake tester will not emerge cleanly.  Cool on a rack; remove the side of the pan once the cake is thoroughly cooled.

Before anyone becomes too excited, or feels inclined to pat me on the back for baking this cake (or any of the cakes that will follow in this series) on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I feel bound to point out that I’m not actually baking this cake right now.  This is not to say that I’m not baking at all right now, because I am.  Inspired by Bunni‘s New Year’s resolution to cook or bake something new every week, I have decided to do something similar...only different. This year marks 10 years since I quit my day job to attend culinary school.  I would be fibbing if I said that life post-culinary school is what I had hoped and worked for, but I don’t regret having tried, not for one minute.  Without indulging in too much rose-colored-glassvision, I will say that I worked harder in pastry school, in restaurants and in bakeries than I have ever worked anywhere.  I made clumsy, silly mistakes, I was yelled at on a near-daily basis and I cried more than any 30-year-old woman should ever cry, for any reason, but even on top of all of that, I had a blast.  Should I ever have the opportunity to do it again, I shall jump on it in a heartbeat—right after I make arrangements to hit the pool and a weight room with a trainer to whup my ass into fighting shape.  It was always a point of pride with me that I could lift a 50-pound sack of flour without throwing out my back.  I’d like to be able to continue doing that.

Once again, to nobody’s surprise or shock, I digress.  While cataloguing some of my little-used cookbooks before packing them for storage, I found the binders that served as my textbooks in culinary school.  Paging through them brought it all back to me:  walking to school from the 86th Street IRT stop during a surrealistically hot summer; walking through the door of the pastry kitchen and feeling the temperature drop 40 degrees; hours and hours of chopping chocolate and boiling sugar and whapping pounds of butter around in Hobart mixers; studying our finished desserts and breads as we learned to evaluate them critically; tasting, tasting, tasting; packing everything up and either taking it home or sharing it with the school staff and the mechanics at the garage next door; and scrubbing down every surface in the kitchen with sanitizing solution (1 tablespoon chlorine bleach to 1 gallon water), longing to be done with the day’s work as the chlorine smell settled on our hair and skin.  I lived, ate and breathed all this stuff, spent all of my waking life consumed by poached pears and nougatine and three different formulae for ganache—and then I graduated into a soft job market, learned that the company for which Lloyd worked was on the verge of collapse, knew that there was no way I could support us both on a pastry monkey’s salary, and returned, cap in hand, to packaging.  Even as I shifted my focus away from pastry and toward bread, even as I researched and drafted and redrafted a business plan, I never opened my school textbooks again—until yesterday, that is.

In short, I’m in a mood not only to revisit, but also to share, which is why I have a sponge for pain brié working in the kitchen even as we speak.  Pain brié is a rustic French bread, made from a relatively stiff dough that is not only kneaded but beaten with a heavy rolling pin for 10 minutes to develop the gluten.  I’m sorry to say that my only memory of this bread is that the dough refused to smooth out when my team made it.  I ended up beating it so vigorously that I was nearly jumping up and down with the effort.  (A chorus or two of “Unbelievable” by EMF would have been not only appropriate, but also welcome.) I’m keen to try it again, to see not only how the recipe works but also if any of the additional baking trucs I’ve learned over the past decade can help make the bread even better.  And so I shall.

Since I have no bread to share just yet, I can at least share the cakes that have made their way through the PTMYB kitchens over the past few weeks, like this beauty right here:

Warm Applesauce Cake with Cranberry Syrup (from Roland Mesnier’s Basic to Beautiful Cakes by Roland Mesnier and Lauren Chattman, Simon & Schuster, 2007
makes 1 10-inch tube cake, serves 12

Those of you who know how tetchy I am about things like chemicals and box mixes and fake foods may be surprised to see me countenancing a recipe that calls for maraschino cherries, a frankly-weird food that I have not enjoyed since I was eight years old, when the bartender at the restaurant where my folks and I used to go for pizza would throw them into my Coke.  Normally when I find something like this in a recipe, I opt right away to substitute something more to my liking, like bottled sour cherries marinated in brandy, or dried cherries plumped in a little boiling water or tea.  This time, though, I decided to trust Chef Mesnier’s judgment and make the cake as he directed it, and I had to admit that not only did the maraschino cherries not ruin the cake, they added an interesting fillip to a moist, spicy, fragrant cake.  I might try it again with the aforementioned brandied cherries, just to see how they work, but I wouldn’t think twice about buying another bottle of maraschino cherries for this cake.  Only for this cake, though.

For the light syrup (to be used later in the cranberry syrup:

4 cups water
2 cups granulated sugar

Combine water and sugar in a medium saucepan, place over heat, stir to dissolve the sugar and heat to boiling.  Let cool to room temperature.  You will have more syrup than you need for this cake.  Leftover syrup can be sealed and stored at room temperature for up to two weeks; it’s great for poaching fruit or for adding to tea instead of regular granulated sugar.

For the cake:

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup canned crushed pineapple, drained
1 10-ounce jar whole maraschino cherries, drained, patted dry and stemmed

*Normally when I try a recipe for the first time, I measure and weigh the ingredients, and make a note of the weight for future reference.  This time, though, I let laziness get the better of me.  Very often, when recipes are converted from weight to volume measurements, you will see odd measurements (x cups plus or minus x teaspoons or tablespoons).  This happens particularly with recipes written by French chefs, who write their formulae to metric weights.  One of these days I’ll get my act together and plug the weight measurements in.

Set a rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 375F/170C/Gas Mark 5.  Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

Sift the first five ingredients together into a medium bowl.

Using either a hand mixer or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth, light and fluffy.  Beat in one of the eggs and half the applesauce.  Stir in half the dry ingredient mixture.  Beat in the remaining egg and applesauce, add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir gently but thoroughly to combine.  Stir in the raisins, pecans and pineapple.

Pour the batter into the tube pan and smooth the top.  Arrange the cherries on the surface of the cake and press them in gently, but do not embed them (the cake will rise around them, and they will sink below the surface).  Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.  Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack.  Do not remove the cake from the pan.

For the cranberry syrup:

1 12-ounce bag fresh or frozen cranberries
4 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 cups Light Syrup

Combine the cranberries, 4 cups of the water and the sugar in a medium saucepan over high heat.  Bring to a boil, turn the heat down to medium high and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the berries are very soft and nearly all popped.

Strain the syrup into a large bowl.  Press on the solids with a spoon, forcing as much of the strained solids into the syrup as possible.  Add the remaining 1/2 cup water to the solids in the strainer and keep pressing on them.  When as much of the pulp that can go through the strainer has done so, return the solids remaining in the bottom of the strainer to the syrup.  (As you may have noted, the objective is not to produce a clear or smooth syrup, but a deeply-flavored one.  Chef Mesnier is a big fan of not wasting flavorful pulp.) Stir in the lemon juice and the light syrup.

Preheat the oven to 150F/60C/Gas Mark 1/2.

Place the cake pan (with the cake still inside it, natch) on a rimmed baking sheet.  Pour about 1/2 cup of the hot cranberry syrup over the cake and let it sink in.  (The effect you’re going for is akin to watering a houseplant, where you let the water sink into the soil before adding more.) Add about 1/2 cup syrup at a time, in 5-7 minute increments, until the cake is saturated.  Chef Mesnier doesn’t specify how much of the cranberry syrup you will need; I found that I had a lot left over.  If any syrup leaks from the cake onto the baking sheet, pour it back into the pan and reheat gently.

Remove the cake pan from the baking sheet and return it to the warm oven.  Keep the cake in the oven until serving time, up to four hours later.  When you are ready to serve it, just invert the cake onto a platter.  It should pop right out of the pan. (I’ll admit to some trepidation when Chef Mesnier assured that it would happen, but odds my bodkins, he’s right.) Slice and serve with sweetened whipped cream, if you so desire.

Since I’ve been feeling all introspective and keen to turn over a new leaf, particularly after Monday’s restaurant adventure—many, thanks, incidentally, to everyone who commented or sent email with feedback on the resulting post—I thought that I would try something a little different this morning.  It’s not so much a call for advice as it is an opinion poll, a chance for you to share your points of view and to tell me, purely and simply, what you would do in a given situation.  (Yep, it’s a never-ending party around here.)

The situation is question is not an earth-shattering situation; in fact, it’s so low-key and almost inconsequential that one would be pardoned for wondering why I’ve thought about it, on and off, for close to 14 years.  Low-key as it is, though, it does touch on some significant issues with me, including education, enlightenment, competition, kindness, skill and standards of performance.  (Whew.) For me it serves as a point of reference in conversations I’ve had with teachers, bakers and visual artists.  And yes, it is a true story.

Oh, do not ask “what is it?” Let us go and make our visit.  (Sorry, Tom.)

Long, long ago—okay, 14 years ago—I was a newlywed, a brand-new resident of Beautiful Uptown Astoria and a brand-new employee of Big Ol’ Cosmetic Company, where I worked in the purchasing group, starting my long slow slide down the razorblade of consumer packaging.  At the time I didn’t even consider that I could bake for a living, and culinary school wasn’t even an option.  I had spent the better part of the previous six years in underpaying, unstable jobs, deeply in debt and petrified about making my rent, so at the time, just having a steady job and knowing that the bills would be paid was a dreamy luxury.  I was perfectly happy to be what the Bread Bakers Guild of America calls a “serious home baker,” and because that was the year I discovered the King Arthur Flour Bakers Catalogue, I was doing some serious home baking, sharing the results with my co-workers.

Back in the 90’s, Big Ol’ Cosmetic Company used to hold company picnics in the summertime.  We’d charter some vans and trundle up to some nice big park in Orange or Dutchess counties.  We played volleyball and soccer and other vigorous outdoorsy games, we’d roast meats, we’d have a bakeoff, a good time would be had by all.  When signup sheets for volleyball teams were passed around, I signed up.  Then disaster struck:  four days before the picnic, I sprained my knee in a dance class.  (Actually, my knee popped out of joint, then back into joint, in the space of 2 1/2 seconds, but since it wasn’t actually dislocated when the EMT’s showed up, the knee was officially sprained.  It hurt like a mother, though, and since I am now covered in a freezing-cold sweat at the memory of the pain, I think I’ll stop talking about it now.) I hobbled into work the next day and told the picnic coordinator that I’d be right out for volleyball.  “Well,” she said, “it’s not too late to sign up for the bakeoff.  Do you want to bake something?”

Heck, yes, I wanted to bake something, and moreover, I knew what I wanted to bake:  Elizabeth David’s flourless chocolate cake, the recipe for which I found in both Mrs. David’s French Provincial Cooking and Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking.  To say that I love this cake is such a weak, pallid statement for this kind of cake love. This cake is the pure essence of chocolate, with the barest whisper of almond flavor and scent.  It has just enough brandy and coffee to be interesting, but not so much as to be painful.  It takes 20 minutes to put together and less than an hour to bake.  It doesn’t require any complicated pastry skills; in fact, all it needs to look spectacular is a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.  Best of all, it’s the perfect choice for a bakeoff where people will be tasting a lot of desserts; it’s small, so it doesn’t require an advanced engineering degree to box up, stabilize and drive to a park, and because a little taste goes a long way, there would be more than enough for the judges and anyone else who could be convinced to Leave the Damn Diet at Home.

I try, I really try, not to engage in hubris, but even I had to admit, as I unpacked the cake and placed it on the bakeoff table, that I had done well. Sitting among the other desserts, the kitchen-sink cookies and the oatmeal bars (of which I ate an appalling amount) and the Toll House Cookie Pie, I knew that I had a winner on my hands.  My little cake looked not only as if it had just arrived from Paris, but also as if it had had a little nap on the plane, emerging refreshed and ready to play.  It was a good cake.  It could be a winning cake.

“Oh, look what you brought!,” said one of my coworkers, who I will call Nicole (not her real name).  Nicole was a marketing assistant, one of the sweetest women I knew; openhearted, soft-voiced and blond, she was rather like Georgette on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, only not at all ditzy, like Georgette was.  Even when she was having a terrible day, she radiated kindness.  And now we were here at the bakeoff table, I with my little Elizabeth David cake, she with an impressive-looking chiffon pie.  The chiffon filling was obviously the flavor now recognized as “cookies and cream”; the crust was made with crushed Oreos and the edge was studded with Oreos cut in half.  Because I have a soft spot for Oreos, I thought the pie looked great.  I hoped it tasted as good as it looked.

“Look at your cake!,” Nicole exclaimed again.  “Oh, that looks *so* good.  And you can smell the chocolate!  Ah, I’m embarrassed to be in the same bakeoff with you.  I’ve never even baked before.”

“Don’t you dare be embarrassed,” I answered.  “Your pie looks beautiful.  That *is* Oreo filling, right?”

“Sure is,” she said.  “Do you want to try some?”

She cut me a little sliver.  I took a taste.  Even before my brain registered the taste of Oreo, it registered something else, the unmistakable steely chemical taste that I recognized as Box Mix.  I have tasted it hundreds, if not thousands, of times:  in box-mix cakes made by friends’ mothers, in the chocolate muffins at the deli where I would occasionally get breakfast, in party cakes from supermarket bakeries.  It was not a flavor I was anticipating finding in a chiffon pie, but there it was.

“Soooo...” said Nicole, her eyes looking bright and expectant and a little worried.

Don’t be a jerk, said the little voice in my head.  She told you she’s not a baker.  She obviously respects your opinion.  A box mix is not a crime against humanity.  Do the right thing.

“It’s really good,” I answered.  “It’s beautiful.  It’s full of Oreos.  The crust is nice.  This is great, Nicole.”

“Oh,” she said, visibly relieved.  “I’m so glad you like it.  I was afraid I was going to screw it up.”

“You didn’t screw it up.  You did well.”

“Awww, thanks,” she said, and then moved closer to me, whispering conspiratorially.  “Believe it or not...it’s a box mix.”

Do not, said the voice in my head, under any circumstances, tell her that you knew it was a box mix.  Do not rain on her parade.

“Really?,” I said, trying as best as I could to sound surprised.  Fortunately, I was spared any subterfuge by the arrival of the three judges.

“Oo, chocolate,” said the first judge, one of the package engineer, a decent and friendly guy.  “My favorite.” I tried not to grin like an idiot as I cut him a slice—which was good, because his response was not what I expected.  “Whoa,” he said, recoiling a bit.  “There’s some booze in this cake, isn’t there?”

“Just a little,” I said.  There was a tablespoon of cognac in the whole cake.

“Oh, it tastes like there’s a LOT more than just a little in there,” he answered.  “Hoo boy.” I started to get nervous.  Could I have accidentally put more in there than I thought?  I could swear that I only put in the stipulated tablespoon.  I cut myself a tiny piece and thought about the flavors emerging against my palate.  Chocolate, lots of it, then coffee, then brandy, then that little hit of almond. Nothing fought against the chocolate, or against each other.  I hadn’t screwed up with the brandy.

The engineer moved on to Nicole, and to the Oreo chiffon pie.  The look on his face after the first bite of pie was that of a man in love.  “Nicole,” he said, “that is the single best dessert I have ever eaten, ever.”

To my credit, I did not let the incredulity show on my face, which was good, because it happened two more times, as the other two judges tasted the desserts, and then happened more times than I could count, as the rest of the picnickers lined up for tastes.  I heard a lot of variations of “I think there’s some alky-hol in that cake,” with maybe one or two compliments on the chocolate flavor.  The Oreo pie was devoured; compliments were rained on Nicole’s sweet, blushing head.  Of course she won the bakeoff.  It wasn’t even close.

Riding back to the city in the van, the remaining 2/3 of the cake sitting in my lap, I tasted another tiny piece.  There’s just not that much brandy in it.  It’s not that strong.  Is it just me?

That night I told Lloyd about the bakeoff.  “You’re kidding,” he said in a tone of voice that made me want to kiss him.  “They all loved the pie?”

“They all loved the pie.”

“And the pie wasn’t good?”

“The pie was vile.”

“Which I’m betting you didn’t say to the baker.”

“You’re right.  I told her that it was really good.”

“Just really good, or good for a mix?”

“Just...really...good.” As the words left my mouth, I knew how lame they sounded.  “I pretended to be surprised when she said it was a box mix.  It’s just...she was so nervous, and she looked so happy when I told her I liked it...”

“I know,” he said kindly.  “I know you wanted to do a nice thing, and you *did* do a nice thing.  The thing is...now she can make this pie for other people, and she can tell them that even the scratch baker in the office, the one who’s been baking since she was a kid, even *she* couldn’t tell that the pie was made from a mix.”

I had not considered this, of course.

“Now, look,” said Lloyd.  “You look like you’ve just been caught eating a puppy.  You were doing a nice thing for your friend.” He was right, of course, but I couldn’t unfurrow my brow, couldn’t stop knocking on my head and muttering stupid, stupid, stupid. I had done a nice thing for my friend.  I had also totally compromised my bakerly integrity in doing so.

Eventually I stopped plotzing over it all, and got back to the business of serious home baking.  Nicole brought the pie to the office Christmas party and told me that this had become her pie for family dinners and potlucks.  She was sweetly, shyly proud of this pie, and I felt churlish for being so grumpy after the picnic.  Not long after, we all spun off in different directions, as co-workers often do:  Nicole and the package engineer each took new jobs at different big ol’ cosmetic companies, I went to culinary school, and the bakeoff at the 1994 picnic was officially consigned to the mists of history.

Except, of course, it never really went away.  I think about that day, and about that conversation with Lloyd, at odd times.  I thought about them the first time I read The Taste of America, the book that kicks off with a chapter entitled “The Rape of the Palate.” I think about them whenever I watch Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares or Last Restaurant Standing, which often feature chefs being told, sometimes for the first time, that their food is not what it could be.  I think about them when I am watching something on Cartoon Network and am treated to ads for stuff like GoGurt.  At what point do we decide that oddly-flavored imitations of the real thing are better than the real thing?  Is it worth trying to convince people otherwise?  Is it even possible to convince people otherwise, or do we just end up being humorless martinets, alienating genuinely good people as a result?

It isn’t just food issues that make me think of that day, either.  Every time I talk to Bunni at the end of a bad day, every time she describes the struggle to have her students follow basic, clearly-delineated directions, I think about these students, and wonder how and why they seem so flummoxed.  I am not going to resort to the tired old cliche of the unique and precious snowflake—as far as I’m concerned, that’s a phrase that needs to die, and soon—but I do wonder how they got to this point, how they were able to matriculate into college without being able to communicate clearly.  Were they stuck with indifferent secondary school teachers?  Were they blessed with good dedicated teachers who didn’t hesitate to tell them when their work didn’t meet an acceptable standard, but were impeded from providing real direction—and an accurate grade—by angry parents and nervous administrators?  Did they have engaged teachers and no-nonsense parents, but for some reason the lessons just didn’t stick?  Did they have teachers who were so keen to see any sign of effort that they shied away from negative commentary, opting instead to accentuate the positive?  Or did they have teachers who blurred the line between constructive and destructive criticism, leaving them loath to learn how to think critically?

I have been accused of overthinking all this, yes.  Ultimately, as I said, it was just a bakeoff, a lark among colleagues, and not a sign of the triumph of ignorance over reason and enlightenment.  Nevertheless, it still makes me wonder whether I did the right thing on that day, or, really, if there is a right thing to do...and here, dear friends, is where I officially pose the question.  If it had been you, would you have ‘fessed up and admitted that you knew that you were eating box-mix Oreo chiffon pie, or would you have fibbed, and thus boosted the confidence of a genuinely nice person in the process?

Thanking you in advance for playing along.  Silly stories about food will be coming soon.