Shoofly!

Howard's been out of town since Friday, so I've been living as a single man, getting into wild hijinks, like drinking alone with an entire frozen pizza or maybe Ramen noodles! I've also taken a bath using what is called a "bath bomb." It sounds violent and wet, but is actually relaxing and smells wonderful. I felt like I was bathing in an avocado. But mostly I settle onto the couch, surrounded by animals, for marathon viewings of Girls and Broad City. Who knows what I'll get up to next?!

Elise graciously stepped in to socialize with me and save me from the insane life I've been leading, and last night we had a sleepover, waking up to make an avocado-feta frittata. Listening to the McGuire Sisters while cooking and talking made me nostalgic for the period we lived together.

Patrick and Chelsea were coming over for tea, and Elise and I made a shoofly pie. It's not a recipe in my Good Housekeeping book, but it should be! Elise introduced me to it, and we used a recipe from Martha Stewart.

I focused on rolling out the crust while Elise made the filling and crumble crust.

I was really proud of the crust. It didn't break, it was enough for the entire pie plate, and trimmed sweetly.

Pre-bake:

Post bake!

"Like a landscape," Patrick said

Chelsea said it reminded her of home; it was very southern. It's like a chess pie, which is a pie I'm familiar with. We all wondered where the name came from: Was it something to do with the expression "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar"? But instead of honey it was molasses? Did it mean it was so good you'd have to shoo flies away?

According to Wikipedia, the shoofly pie came from the Pennsylvania Dutch, and its name may be "because the sweet molasses odor attracts flies that must be 'shooed' away."

All this reminds me of that rather strange, manic folk song medley in Meet Me in St. Louis:

"Flies in the buttermilk shoo, shoo, shoo!"

Tea was nice and relaxing. We spent a long time talking about Leopold and Loeb. Chelsea read For the Thrill of It, which I'm halfway through. We discussed what makes a crime famous or sensational, and also tried to come up with all the famous Chicago crimes we could: The Valentine's Day Massacre, the serial killer during the World's Fair, and Leopold and Loeb. Only after everyone left did I remember John Wayne Gacy! Drat!

Post-pie. Picture Elise sitting next to Patrick!

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon off!

Merryfield Apple Cake

The past weekend was insane at work, a constant juggling act that left me exhausted at the end of each day. Sunday I couldn't stop, though, and came home (Howard was at a writing group) and fed the pets as well as myself while simultaneously making a Merryfield apple cake for our building manager. I don't know where it gets its name, but a Merryfield cake is supposed to look something like this:

Photo from amandascookin.com

Quaint and English, isn't it? A fitting cake to make as I came to the close of George Eliot's Middlemarch. Very Victorian.

I did not feel quite so proper as I measured out flour and then mashed up canned cat food.

My recipe made two cakes, and for some reason the batter is very dry and sticky. I had trouble spreading it out in the pans (and mixing in the diced apples, nuts, and raisins was a feat!). It baked for an hour, which gave me enough time to watch the first episode of this season of Downton Abbey, where by far the winning quote of the episode was the "are they kidding me?" line: "I'm going upstairs to take off my hat." I really enjoyed this summary, where the story is told as a group text.

By the time the cakes came out of the oven I was like -

So after ten minutes cooling in their pans I took them out, put them on my cooling rack, and forgot about them. In fact, I woke up this morning, went into the kitchen, and was surprised to see them there.

Howard and I examined the bottoms of the cakes like they had landed from another planet. They looked like they could have made the journey: They were crusty and dark brown, with crevices from where pieces had stuck to the cake tins on the way out.

"Are they supposed to...?"

"Powdered sugar covers them."

"Powdered sugar won't hide that," Howard pointed to an enormous hole in the bottom. We debated for a hot minute how stuffing a bit of the other cake into it would look: More or less terrible?

Then I flipped the cake over and we were like "Ohhh!" and cracked up. It was a lot better. A softer, lighter brown, with white squares of apple. We tasted the other cake and it was good.

The crowning moment of a Merryfield cake is when you sprinkle powdered sugar through a doily.

"I need a doily," I said this morning, and then: "I never thought I'd say that!"

"Really?" Howard was skeptical.

But where does one find a doily? So we folded up coffee filters and cut out shapes like we were kids and we were making snowflakes to decorate our daycare's windows, but the filter didn't want to lie flat, so I put it under a pile of board games and left it for Howard to do in the afternoon.

I came home and asked him how it looked before he gave it to Tom. Basically, it was a clumped mess and didn't look like much of anything. It'll still taste good, though.

(Unlike my Christmas pie. Sorry, fam.)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Tom and Wife! Thanks for letting us live here with four animals. And thanks for the free storage space in the basement! Do you know whose moldy fur coat that is?