Merry Christmas Eve Resistors!

I tossed and turned last night and dreamt of moths. No anxiety dream, though, as I went to bed reading about moths. They build scaffolding, web-like things, lurk in dark closets burrowing into grains and stained clothing. They've been flying around our house like they own it. I've done the clean out the cupboards and throw away the open boxes, spray down the shelves with vinegar. I dislike their papery wings, their longing for water and light.


I figure baking and writing go hand in hand.** I've baked ten gingerbread forest cakes and am working on my fourth coconut cake this morning. My cottage industry gig, Everyone Needs Cake,™ has helped to fund Christmas this year. If there's a grosser phrase than help to fund Christmas, write it down in the comments because what's grosser than Consumer Christmas? My tiny men-children and daughter will reap the benefits of my returning to my pastry roots, and so has my writing. I wasn't writing at all the last few months, not so much paralyzed as overwhelmed and disgusted by the meaninglessness of all of it. Not just my writing, but the whole full catastrophe of Terrible America, fueled by the POSPOTUS* and his band of billionaires and Eddie Munster and The Turtle and all the rest of the Kochacracy (that's you, Susan Collins, and Murkowski, too, with the selling off of the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to oil).

Anyway.

The writing and the baking go hand in hand, here in the gingerbread forest with confectioner's sugar snow, papery moth wings, and coconut clouds on the pale blue dot of home in the vast galaxy around it.

Merry Christmas Eve, resistors!

#RESIST




















*Piece of Shit President of the United States. Yeah, I know it's Christmas Eve and all is hallowed, but the acronym still stands.

** No moth infestation in the products used for Everyone Needs Cake™ -- just in my dreams.

Armageddon and Cake

Salted Caramel Cake

I made one yesterday from a recipe in a magazine. It called for 8 yolks and 4 eggs, nearly four cups of sugar and 1/2 pound of salted butter for the cake alone. The icing was three cups of brown sugar and two cups of confectioner's sugar and more than a pound of salted butter. It had five layers with more than a cup of icing between each layer. I know -- that's not even sort of gross.  I felt guilty making it, especially given that it was for a crowd of fifty-somethings. I guess there's a case to be made that given the fires just to the south, the crude oil spillage in a nearby neighborhood (where, evidently an above-ground pipe burst and crude oil was knee-deep in some places), the outrageously dry and hot conditions here, the insistence by many that global warming is a liberal hoax, the Clippers fiasco, the rumors of Beyonce and Jay-Z having trouble -- well, why the hell not eat Salted Caramel Cake? And throw some rose petals on top that you've plucked off a wilting rosebush as a final devil-may-care gesture.

Let us eat cake.

All I've got is cake, some Emily Dickinson (who loved to bake them) and some Lord Byron (who loved another kind of cake)

Love's oven is warm

Emily Dickinson

 (from one of her letters)

from Don Juan, Canto 1, Stanzas 60-63

60

Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes)

   Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire

Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise

   Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire,

And love than either; and there would arise

   A something in them which was not desire,

But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul

Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole.

61

Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow

   Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;

Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow,

   Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,

Mounting at times to a transparent glow,

   As if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth,

Possess'd an air and grace by no means common:

Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman.

62

Wedded she was some years, and to a man

   Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;

And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE

   'Twere better to have TWO of five-and-twenty,

Especially in countries near the sun:

   And now I think on't, 'mi vien in mente,'

Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue

Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty.

63

'Tis a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,

   And all the fault of that indecent sun,

Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay,

   But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,

That howsoever people fast and pray,

   The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone:

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,

Is much more common where the climate 's sultry.

Padded Walls and Cupcakes

This happened:

Remember the foam that my father bought and intended to use for Sophie's walls last Thanksgiving? Please. Read about it again and then come back.

Well, looky look!

There's beautiful upholstered padding all around the room so Sophie's falls and head bangs will be a thing of the past. (Unless, of course, she goes for that nice thin strip of window frame.) Thanks, Mom and Dad! There's even padding on the sills, and over the next few days I'm going to slowly get rid of all the crap we've been using to shield her from injury.

To tell you the truth, I could use some padded walls.

This is happening right now:

Eight dozen cupcakes and one birthday cake for one of my best friend's sons' bar mitzvah tomorrow. I'll post photos when they're all frosted.

What's happening in your parts? (not pants)***














***One of my readers read that question once as "what's happening in your pants?" and I just love that 'cause, you know, I'm Virgo the Virgin.

End of the World Dessert and Champagne Party Preview

Genoise for Buche de Noel

Swiss Christmas Cookies

Pecan Puffs and Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Winter Wonderland Cake

Gingerbread Cake with Coffee Glaze

Eggnog Cupcakes with Pink Buttercream

Citrus Salad Makings

The Husband and I haven't worked together in over five years, but we're producing, ya'll! I'll be back tomorrow with more pics.

Making Cakes on the Autumnal Equinox

I don't have too much to report from Los Angeles. It's now a couple of minutes past the autumnal equinox, which I guess means the days will begin to grow shorter and if I weren't living in Los Angeles I'd be thinking more about dead leaves and cold and a shortage of green. I've just finished decorating a cake. I've another one to finish before the afternoon, and then it's on to multiple loads of laundry and a flag football game in the late afternoon. The air conditioner is humming, Sophie is sleeping after a giant bowl of oatmeal and berries, The Husband and Oliver are in the front yard selling junk, and Henry is hiding from them in his room. In lieu of this post sounding like a child's diary entry, I'll leave you with this poem:

Between Poems

A lady asked me
what poets do
between poems.
Between passions
and visions. I said 
that between poems
I provided for death.
She meant as to jobs
and commonly.
Commonly, I provide 
against my death,
which comes on.
And give thanks
for the women I have 
been privileged to
in extreme.

-- Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

Culmination Cupcakes, Vile Comments and Pablum

Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes with Fondant Checkers

This blog appears to be turning into a superficial baseball and baking fest with a bit of eggsex education thrown in. Where are the grim reports of disability, shitty government and seizures? Where's the poetry? Where's the politics and parenting? Over the last week, I've not only gone to four baseball games, but I've also baked and decorated nearly ten dozen cupcakes and three cakes. I've got four dozen more to go, so anything pithy or angst-driven will have to wait. I'll hope you'll hang around if you're more of the mind for the serious. If you're in to that sort of thing, I was recently baited by a vile commenter who calls himself skunkfeather on a reactionary conservative blog that I visit every week or so to see what the crazies are up to. He uses the word libtard regularly and sort of drives home or confirms my perhaps cynical belief that all the talk of needing more civil discourse and we have more in common as Americans than not is pablum at best and bullshit at worst. I didn't take the bait -- except for here, of course, because I doubt he comes around and seeing my name in his comment made me throw up a little in my mouth (an expression that I usually despise) and want to purge.

OK.

Here's a photo of a cake I made for someone for Father's Day. It's chocolate with dark chocolate ganache filling and white buttercream.

And here's a quote from one of the world's greatest satirists, Jonathan Swift:

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

And this:

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. 

Reader, how was your weekend?

Lacrosse, Cotillion and Cake

A few of you expressed interest and ignorance about the game of lacrosse. Both my boys play it, and while it's a new game on the west coast, lacrosse is a Native American game -- played hundreds and hundreds of years ago by Native American tribes in the northeast and all along the Atlantic seaboard. It's rough and tumble but less so than football and infinitely more fun to watch -- at least to me. I think it satisfies a lot of boy aggression, and at Henry's level (he's thirteen and in the junior high school league) is an exciting, skilled game to watch.

Henry is Number 13

At Oliver's level, it's a bit more mayhem-like, but Oliver is a tank and enjoys "bringing them down."

Oliver is Number 0

And here's Henry, cleaned up and ready for Cotillion. He recently topped me in height, but I told him that he's still my baby.

Oh, here's a cake I baked this weekend, and if you want to check out my updated food blog, How to Eat, here's the link.

Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Buttercream

Laziness, small tests of change, baseball, lacrosse, The Husband, The Mistress and Chocolate Cake

I've worn glasses for near-sightedness since I was about seven years old. When I wake up in the morning, I put on my glasses first so that I can see the world. A little later, I put in my contacts and still later I take them out and put my glasses back on. Now that I'm nearing the half century mark, it's getting difficult to read with just my contacts or just my glasses. So, I had to buy some of those glasses for reading. Except that at night, when I do most of my reading, I have to put them on over my glasses.

Yes, I know. I could get graduated lenses or whatever the hell they're called. But I can't be bothered. Hence, the laziness of the title.

This morning, Oliver woke up very chipper at 7:15. That he doesn't bound out of bed at this time on school mornings is a constant source of amazement to me -- and not a little irritation. The two of us got off on the wrong foot, and I landed up hollering at him for being fresh and taking away his iPod. I had asked him to empty the dishwasher and feed the dog and got what my father would have called too much lip. I told him that his attitude needed to change; I expected more respect and response and he was to think about what he could do to earn back his privileges.  In lieu (there I go, using that phrase again) of prolonging all the drama, I emptied the dishwasher but left the silverware basket on the table.

My intention is to see how long that basket will sit there. Hence, the small tests of change of the title.

Henry has his first pre-baseball season baseball practice this morning from 10:30 until 1:00. Oliver has a lacrosse game from 11:30 until 1:00. Henry then has a lacrosse game from 4:15 until 6:30. The Husband is spending the day and night with The Mistress. I must bake a chocolate cake for a client and ferry these boys to and fro. Hence the baseball, lacrosse, The Husband, The Mistress and chocolate cake of the title.

Reader, what does your Saturday look like?