Single's Appreciation Day

Christmas was a bit of a let-down for me this year. I spent it with a few friends and ate a lovely meal, but it wasn't the completely enthralling, October-November-December-consuming holiday of my childhoods. Same for Halloween (I used to start planning my costumes in June). Which means that what I'm about to tell you about may be, in fact, my favorite holiday.
I went to college in Maine for a year, at Bowdoin College, to be precise. While there, my friend Doris imparted to me her own (very wise) riff on February 14: Single's Awareness Day. Together, we began the ritual of eating lots of chocolate, watching Boondock Saints, and appreciating being single and having such good friends.
Fast-forward another year: I'd transferred back West, and I'd begun introducing the holiday at my new school. I'd changed the name to "Single's Appreciation Day", but of course I'd kept the chocolate and the Boondock Saints. Emily and I had a small celebration with our friend Eira and her roommate.
And now we're in 2008. My beloved holiday is taking on a life of its own; one that involves pre-planning, and email invitations, and baking the night before. Brenna, Zoë, Emily and I are hosting a viewing of the movie at The Miracle (the house where Em and I live), and expecting many a Singles-loving person to show up.
The Rules, as I sent them out: "ASD is a day for glorying in the single life. There will be no bitching about being single. There will be no discussing of significant others. Should anyone have the gall to show up with an S.O. in anything but faking a "This is my distant cousin" sort of way, they will be immediately subjected to doubtful looks and criticism ("Are you sure about that choice?", "When ARE you going to be single again, anyways? You can't put it off forever, you know..."). Enjoy watching two attractive men with accents kill people and eat some chocolate and be with the people you love (your friends)."
I will be doing my part by baking one of my favorite means of chocolate consumption: Gâteau au chocolat fondant.



Gâteau au chocolat fondant
adapted from my recently acquired, and dearly beloved copy of Je veux du chocolat ! (ok, so, I'm full of lies. I actually have the English version. It was $20 cheaper. But really, the French title just sounds SO much better than I Want Chocolate! which, let's be honest, sounds like a bratty five-year-old more than anything else). I love this cake. I LOVE this cake. I made it for this year's Christmas dinner; and Orangette over here used something like it for her wedding cake, which is about the most delightful thing I can think of. Maybe I'm just a bit too fond of fantastic yet slightly homely products in high-falootin settings (we did go out to pizza for my Senior Prom dinner), but if I were going to get married in the next decade or so (well, I suppose we never know...) I'm pretty sure that that's one idea (of many) I would be stealing.

7 oz best-quality dark chocolate
14 Tablespoons butter
1.25 c. granulated sugar
5 eggs
1 Tablespoon flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Use 8 inch round pan (or cupcake pans, if you want to, say, hand out individual small cakes)

Melt chocolate and butter together (in microwave or in double-boiler). Let cool slightly (I grease and cocoa* the pan at this point). Add sugar, blend until the sugar is somewhat dissolved. Add eggs one at a time, incorporating each completely before going on to the next. Add the flour. Batter should be delightfully blob-ish (mine always sticks together in the coolest, most gelatinous, horror-movie kind of way).

Deposit batter in to pan, bake for around 22 minutes. The middle will still be somewhat jiggly, as this is a soft, fondant cake.



*cocoa-ing in place of flouring, since it's a dark cake, and flour would look a little out of place

Photo by the generous and ever-lovely Emily F. Samstag.

Awe in Mouth

In case you were wondering, this is the trendy week to have the flu. What can I say, all the cool kids are doing it, and when there's a good trend, I just can't help myself.
Ok, so, that last sentence is entirely untrue. But the part about the flu is pretty accurate.
Wanted to pass along a couple of super-important bits of information:
The first... I am now a daring baker. Oh, yes. (Do you even know how long I've been waiting to describe myself in such an awesome way?? Ten billion years or thereabouts, I would say). I've actually just last night signed up to be a Daring Baker. There will be more on that later, when challenges actually roll around, but for now, I'll be all glowy with the thought of actually joining myself to other bloggers in some way.
The second is Luna & Larry's. I tend to shy away from product reviews, mainly because I'm just plain not interested in them, but Coconut Bliss, as the word "Bliss" implies, really needs a shout-out. They, and their lovely dessert, are all from my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, which is pretty damn cool in and of itself. I remember a few years ago when they started up, and all of a sudden Sundance was posting signs for having sold out, and Sweet Life was judging them good enough to sell right next to their gelato. Despite all of this, I'd never actually tried Coconut Bliss until I wandered into my local co-op last week and wasn't able to get the phrase "Cinnamon Chocolate Flake" out of my brain. I bought it, pulled out a spoon and... was sadly disappointed. I'm going to blame this one on my penchant for ice cream (in all its dairy-having glory), but the Bliss seemed a little, well, anemic would be a good word for it. Thin, and without anything in it to pack a real oomph. I was disappointed, but, shamefully, not incredibly surprised. However, if there's anything my hippie roots will lead me to do, it's to give a vegan product a second try. And so, half an hour later, I was back at my freezer, spoon in hand, and awe in mouth.

(Picture ruthlessly abducted from www.coconutbliss.com, but used with only the best of intentions)
I think the reason that the Bliss is so good (besides the obvious marketing tactic of its name) is because it's less sweet than normal ice creams. Most of the sweetness comes from the coconut itself, and the rest comes from agave syrup, which means that the flavor is much more complex than the normal pint of, say, Ben and Jerry's. It's one of those desserts that feels natural and good, in that it's still, you know, a completely decadent dessert, but it doesn't feel like someone picked up a bag of sugar and ten bags of candy and poured them together for your enjoyment (because, honestly, I of course enjoy those ice creams, too). It's also not a vegan replacement-for-something-better dessert (I hate those). It's lovely entirely in its own right. And I'll say it again a few more times: the flavor is complex. Complex, complex, complex. Complexity is the key word here.
My other worry with a coconut milk-based dessert was that it would taste too tropical, like a Piña Colada or other. Nope. Wrong. The first few bites are a bit strong on the coconut flavor, but them it's just creamy and just sweet enough and flavored with spicy cinnamon and... mmhm. Just go buy some. (I'm not even taunting you with some hippie Oregon product; if you live in Oregon, Washington, Northern California, Hawai'i, Alaska, Montana, or Idaho, there is Luna and Larry's being sold somewhere in your state. That should really motivate you to go on a grand treasure hunt, stat). I'll leave you with the parting inspirational statement that, if I'm encouraging you to buy a product that needs to have its main ingredient (coconut [milk]) shipped from halfway across the world (Thailand), then it's got to be damn good.

[decadent] re-gifting

It's been a strange week.
School started, of course, I've talked all about that. I felt like I dropped off the face of the planet there for a bit, really. I guess nothing was going to compare to the idyllic lifestyle I was leading in December and January (Eden, anyone?), near-constant blogging included. Emily, dearest photographer of my heart, is in LA for the week, becoming some sort of tanned, biking wonder, or so I am to understand. I spent the majority of the past week with my Linguistics reading, and a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal, or several, and not with cookbooks or whisks in hand. All the same, Saturday I couldn't resist baking some bread, and Sunday I went a little crazy and made a huge dinner, complete with pots de crême for dessert. (Butterscotch, no less!)
Unfortunately, I am not the mother, or even distantly related cousin of any of these, since they were all found on other blogs which are far too comprehensive and pretty to need any of my commentary. Thus, I'm using this past week as an excuse to tell you about two other blogs which far surpass my own small grassroots-of-the-grassroots spot, and which you should most definitely be looking at.
The first, Orangette, has probably spawned an entire generation of bloggers. Go anywhere, and you'll see her delightful and shockingly fresh writing style (and its slightest hint of campy naivety) all over the web. This weekend I made her panade, as well as her butterscotch pots de crème which have an addictiveness level which I assume is quite near to crack cocaine. The panade is made with chard, onion, and gruyère, and, while not quite to perfect taste the first day, is pleasingly stuffing-like on the second. I tried the pan-frying of the leftovers as suggested, but, um, really just succeeded in heating them up in a frying pan. I couldn't really handle the thought of involving any more oil in them, so perhaps that was why?
But my real weakness is dessert, and, if you haven't already immediately clicked on that link as you were reading the words "butterscotch" and "pots de crème", well, go now. Even if you are a complete scrooge and hate dessert and sugar and potentially even food itself, go for her pictures. The post is called "pots of gold", and damned if those aren't the most appealing metallic food photographs I have ever seen. They glimmer, people, like they're flecked with actual gold. Mine were delicious and all, to the point of needing to give them away to housemates, but hers. Wow. It appears to be some actual incarnation of the Midas myth. Go try your own, and if you can figure out how to make them look like that, well, get back to me.
But for all the words of excess and delight, the last think I have saved for you is, I think, the gastronomic equivalent of an insider trading tip.
Farmgirl Susan (oh, yes) lives on 240 acres of farmland in rural Missouri. Uh-huh. She used to live in California, and now she has sheep, and a farmdog, and god knows probably even a turkey or two hidden somewhere. I still can't decide whether I'm enchanted at the writing and novelty, or terrified because there's this slight possibility that it could be my future some day. I'm not terribly familiar with the site, having just stumbled upon it with the finding of this recipe, but if you don't mind a cutesy-named animal and the concept of farms, I recommend checking it out. Or, just make the following bread recipe with her in mind as you realize that you have stumbled upon the true definition of "alchemy". I've included the recipe because, well, if I'm ever stranded on a dessert island with just my blog and a six-pack, I'll need this recipe.

Whole Wheat Beer Bread
... IS SO EASY. When I said alchemy, I meant it. I first made this after agreeing to bake with a friend. We were even a little disappointed when we finally sat down and looked at the recipe, because it takes nothing. NOTHING. You mix and stick in oven. We forgot salt and it was still delicious. I made a loaf again the next day (remembering salt) to give to my father, and kept double-checking the recipe since I couldn't even believe my own memory of it being so simple. Read, bake, and be awed.

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
14 oz beer

Mix ingredients in bowl, beer last. Dump into appropriately-sized oiled and floured bread pan. Squeal like it's your third-grade science project while it bakes for 45 minutes at 375 degrees. Let cool for twenty minutes.

Now go, go, GO!