It’s birthday season in our neighborhood. Last week, we celebrated Michael’s New Decade Birthday. Michael is a foodie and one of the best cooks I know and I like to make over-the-top cakes. Michael asked for a cake with berries and cream. I decided to make a not-too-sweet, white cake that would show off bright pink raspberries.

The magic of science in the kitchen is why I like to bake. I have always been fascinated by chemical reactions–vinegar and baking soda volcanoes, milk curdled with lemon juice, sugar changed to an amber solid with enough heat. Cake recipes must be followed much more carefully than recipes for soups or salads because, when you bake a cake from scratch, you are a chemist in the kitchen. Substitutions are possible but they must be made with an understanding of the role each ingredient plays in the cake. Precise measurement and proportion are even more important to consider when baking cakes.

My kitchen is well equipped, I have a stand mixer, an oven with an accurate thermostat and timer, a dependable refrigerator, measuring cups and spoons, and, assorted pots and pans. Until last week, my kitchen was lacking a user-friendly kitchen scale. I found a measuring cup with a built-in scale at my favorite kitchen supply store and bought it. This was just the tool I needed to turn my American kitchen into an international one. Except in recipes written for the United States, measurements are given in weight rather than by volume. Not only is it a more precise way to measure, but with the right scale, it’s much easier. The scale I bought measures in ounces and grams as well as by volume. The Raspberry Buttermilk Coconut cake I made for Michael is the first recipe I have written using this scale. Here’s how I made it: … read more

I wanted to use the rhubarb that came in my CSA bag to make something incredible. I like rhubarb in pie, as sauce, in quick bread but my goal was to make something exotic with this reliable, New England, early spring offering. The most exotic ingredient I found in a recipe was nutmeg. Nutmeg – sure I like nutmeg and use it when I make a rhubarb pie but it wasn’t the zing I was looking for. When I  wondered what Julia (Child) would do, I thought of butter. And when I wondered what James (Beard) would do I thought of butter and cream.  An idea was coming into focus.

I would poach rhubarb in butter and sugar and then nestle it into meringue shell and top it with whipped cream to make a rhubarb pavlova. Here’s how I made it: … read more

Last May, I made a perfect Mother’s Day brunch even though I had forgotten that it was Mother’s Day. I had found strawberries and local yogurt at the market and decided to make a sweet Yorkshire pudding for Sunday breakfast for our friends Annie and Andre who were spending the weekend with us.

Andre and Charles had shared an office and architectural practice in Washington, DC, and Annie and I were pregnant at the same time. We talked late into the night about Annie’s current theatrical role, Andre’s newest project, Charles writing, my blog and shared the latest news about our children. Bleary eyed, we agreed to continue our conversation at breakfast.

We began with cups of tea and coffee and considered how we would spend the day. Breakfast was a cooperative affair – Annie set the table, Andre worked a Sudoku puzzle, Charles cleaned the strawberries and cooked the sausages, and I made the sweet Yorkshire pudding.

It was easier than making a traditional breakfast of eggs and bacon, pancakes, or omelets, and more festive than bagels and cream cheese. The batter, a combination of eggs, milk, and flour, is similar to a crepe batter and not temperamental. It will wait patiently until everyone is awake, showered, coffee’d and ready to eat, to be put into the oven to bake. Half an hour later – breakfast is served!

Here’s how I made it: … read more

We had been invited to a gathering on Sunday afternoon and I roasted the last of the carrots as a base for a hearty carrot spread I took to share.

I haven’t figured out what to call it but it was delicious. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Last week, as I was serving my favorite chocolate cake, I remembered that my fascination with chemical reactions began when I was eight. Every Saturday morning, I watched Mr. Wizard explain the science behind ordinary things on our fuzzy black and white television. He said that chemical reactions made cakes rise. I wanted to be a chemist at work in the kitchen. It was time to move on from transforming copper saucepans from dull brown to garish, peachy pink with lemon and salt.

I was ready for more than powering my green plastic boat across the sink with a chemical reaction of baking soda and vinegar. Curdling milk and making my sister cry by adding blue food coloring to her milk were child’s play.

I would become a baker/chemist. Kitchen experiments would be well received if the end results were sweet and tasty. After all, my sister always smiled when she saw a cake. My first cakes began as powder in red and white boxes from the grocery store. I measured water, broke eggs and mixed. Not much chemistry there. I moved onto the more complicated angel food cake mix and enjoyed transforming white powder into fluffy peaks using a primitive, hand operated, eggbeater. That was a bit more fun but I wanted to really make a cake, I wanted to “Start from Scratch!”

The first cake I made from scratch was a Chocolate Wacky Cake. I knew that this was the recipe for me when I read the part about creating a volcano with vinegar and baking soda to give the cake its ‘lift’. I had found a way to have both a chemical reaction and a sweet reward. I branched out and created brownies and pound cakes in my search for even more interesting recipes.

When I was nine, I saw a recipe for a walnut, chocolate chip, date cake in a small cookbook from the grocery store. I had only eaten dates at Christmas time and couldn’t imagine how the cake would taste, but with chocolate chips and walnuts, it sounded delicious and it was. I made it a couple of times before I lost the recipe and moved on to the challenge of perfecting tapioca.

Nearly ten years later, I saw a recipe for a chocolate, date cake in a newspaper column. With minor adjustments, this is the cake I have baked for many parties. I always use a Bundt pan and slather the cooled cake with unsweetened, heavy cream that has been beaten to stiff peaks. Last week, I topped the cream with sliced strawberries and promised our guests that I would share the recipe. Here’s how I did it:
… read more

On Thursday, Charles and I are flying to Sicily for our son’s wedding. Matthew and Alison will be married in Siracusa. Sicily is known for its lemons and also for Limoncello – a lemon flavored liquor server over crushed ice.
I met a woman at the farmers’ market last week and she said the most difficult part of making Limoncello is the waiting. It takes at least two weeks between step one and step two. A perfect recipe for me since I will be far away from my kitchen for two weeks. Here’s the first step. … read more