Cake. No, not the band. And then some...

I wanted a nice, simple cake. Nothing too crazy. Just some basic elements that everyone loves. Almost like peanut butter&chocolate, but not... You get the idea. So, there was the thought of pudding (yumola) & a basic spongey cake (mmm mmm) & a little bit of chocolate (who doesn't love that?). Wouldn't you know it? The French have already thought of it. Except, a Frenchie thought of it while in Boston, while working at the then Parker House Hotel atop School Street downtown, right across from King's Chapel. They called it Boston Cream Pie. Except, of course, it's a cake. Now, I'm not sure whether to blame the misnomer on the Frenchman or on Bostonians in general, but whichever is at fault, I'm not surprised. Two additional little facts about the cake and its aura. First, the hotel kitchen that created it is also known for another ubiquitous table accoutrement: the Parker House dinner roll. Yup, that piece of white bread, crunchy&golden on the outside, tender&white on the inside, came out of the very same place as Boston Cream Pie. The Pie is also the official dessert of this great Commonwealth. (One more thing: the hotel itself was quite the place to be in Boston's literary heyday... check it out sometime.)

Anyway, the recipe I used came from Martha Stewart. It can be found here. I essentially followed it to the letter, thinking it would be no-fail. Well, I forgot that Martha's actually not a native of Massachusetts... which might explain the not-quite-no-fail attributes of this cake... Regardless, a few fuzzy pictures follow. The mise-en-place is first, naturally. (Note the sleek black Kitchen Aid.)

And so, it went well, generally, except for the cakey bit... of which only the top half (which became the bottom half) turned out cooked. The bottom half (which became the top half) was a dense mess. Edible, but hardly worth it. You wouldn't have known it by looking at it.

Even once assembled, it looked quite yummy. I will say that I didn't have the proper cake plate, which made the presentation slightly less than aesthetically pleasing. In any case, the pastry cream, which I made the day before, was outstanding. I would definitely, most definitely, use this recipe again. It can be found just off the link for the cake recipe, above. The chocolate glaze is a no-brainer (semi-sweet chocolate and heavy cream.... yeah, how is that not good?). I will find a new spongey cake recipe, or split the batter before baking. If anyone has a good basic cake recipe, please pass it along! I definitely aerated it sufficiently... Might not be enough flour... Or, who knows? There's a reason I'm not majoring in chemistry.

On another note: my older brother actually asked for seconds of the cake. That easily was a first for him. A first! And I don't think he was doing it to be nice.

Finally, what, pray tell, did I do with all those whites? Did I throw them away? Tsk tsk. That would've been wasteful. Instead, behold, a sea of meringue...

Chocolate Revel Bars

In the midwest, we have an entire category of dessert called "bars." I've been told you might recognize them as "cookie bars" or "squares," but really they're just bars, and they make up an entire category in my grandma's old tin recipe file. Pretty much any ingredient can be made into a bar: there are those based on cereal (Rice Krispie bars, Special K bars), fruit (rhubarb bars, fireside fruit bars), nuts (pecan pie bars), and of course chocolate. And as much as I love to roll my eyes at many of the '50s recipes handed down to me, lots of them are pretty darn good.

Chocolate revel bars have been a go-to recipe "to feed a crowd" in my family for as long as I can remember, and the recipe's origin had always been a mystery to me until last night. I'd imagined that one of my pioneering, intrepid ancestors had scraped together her nickles, gone into town and bought sweetened condensed milk and chocolate, donned her apron, mixed them together to discover that it's really really sweet and really really delicious, and then passed the creased and stained recipe card down to her daughter's daughters. But last night Ariel discovered a suspiciously similar recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook...so I guess my family didn't invent this one. However, the slight differences between the Better Homes and Gardens recipe and ours are an interesting history in themselves - along the way someone incorporated some extra butter, nuts, and chocolate, and added some salt.

As I said, this feeds a crowd - you bake it in a 10 x 15 inch jelly roll pan and could probably get 5 or 6 dozen bars out of it. And since this no longer a secret family recipe, I'll share it with you.

Dough part:
1 c butter, softened
2 c packed brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2.5 c all purpose flour (can sub with some or all whole wheat pastry flour, if you're into that sort of thing)
3 c rolled oats (calls for quick cook; I use normal with no problem)

Chocolate part:
12 oz chocolate chips
14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 c chopped walnuts or pecans (we've always used walnuts - optional of course)
2 tsp vanilla
2 T butter
1/2 t salt

Cream the butter and sugar, then mix in the baking soda, eggs, and vanilla. Mix in as much of the flour as possbile (it's quite thick by this point) and stir in the rest by hand. Stir in the oats (this takes a little muscle). Then, in a saucepan, melt together all the chocolate filling ingredients minus the walnuts. Pat the dough into the jelly roll pan (again, this requires some muscle), reserving as much as possible for the topping. Spread on the chocolate mixture, sprinkle with the walnuts, and then drop the rest of the dough on top in blobs for the topping - you won't be able to cover the entire surface but it'll spread a little and all turn out in the end. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.



Mixing in my beloved KitchenAid.



Another new toy for my birthday - a newfangled version of an old-fashioned nut grinder from my aunt. I'd never seen one, but apparently my grandma had one. It worked pretty well - a little finer than I would have liked for this purpose.



Spreading the chocolate filling.

Carrot Soup

The other week, Payal and I went to the Copley Square farmers' market (aka the happiest place on earth) and bought these amazing purple carrots. I've read that the original carrots were actually purple, but an orange mutant so captivated the Dutch (who were quite into breeding) that they bred it to conquer the carrot world. Too bad, in a way, because there are also red, blackish, almost white, and yellow carrots out there - but thankfully, these varieties are available if you seek them out or happen upon them!

To show off the color and try out one of my new birthday toys - an AWESOME immersion blender - I decided to make a carrot soup. The carrots themselves are sweet and delicious and I believe would make a very pretty purple soup. I didn't have quite enough purple carrots so I used about half purple and half orange - guess what color that makes!

I just did the simplest version possible (not even any pepper - but that's just because I couldn't figure out how to refill my cheap pepper grinder), but there are many possibilities here. Add some fresh ginger at the beginning? Creme fraiche at the end? Coconut milk? Indian spices? Fancy toppings - cilantro, croutons, fried cheese cubes?

Here's what I did, but this is really just an outline:

2 onions, chopped
1-2 T butter or olive oil
3-4 c vegetable broth or water
2.5 lb carrots, cut into 1-inch chunks (ehh...maybe 15 medium carrots?)
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onions in the butter or oil until translucent, then add carrots and broth. Cook until the carrots are tender enough to blend, probably about half an hour. Blend in an immersion blender or food processor, then return to the stove and season to taste. Really, that's it.