Country Boys Baking

Mitch and Twinkle Toes, the Little Prince

Yesterday, on the gorgeous, 75 degree day, my southern belle cohort, Mitch, came over to bake a cake. He arrived bearing pot roast and mac-n-cheese. One thing I absolutely love about hanging out with Mitch is that there is always a home-cooked meal in enormous proportions. We eat, usually at least two large helpings, and watch TV mysteries solved by tough, sometimes charming lady detectives. We talk okra, cast iron, and Miss Marple.

Measuring out ingredients while quoting Steel Magnolias, we make a mess at the table. The recipe I picked for today, a self-frosting German chocolate cake, is easy, and we laugh at my lack of supplies. This week, I purposefully picked a recipe that didn't call for high-speed beating.

Our cats enter conversation, about as often as Noreen tries to get on the table. She's as imperturbable as Miss Marple, as difficult to say "no" to.

Mitch wants to write, but struggles to put his words on paper. He has such stories about growing up poor in the south. "Poor or dirt-poor?" I asked him. "Depends on what part of the house you were in," he replied. His memories are peppered with the most wonderful details, for example, how his mother held her newest pet (a baby possum) in a red Solo cup.

Belle Brezing as a child

 Mitch recently returned from my hometown, Lexington, Kentucky, which he visited after the Derby. He brought me back two elegant cake platters and the name for my next cat: Madam Belle Brezing. Belle was a colorful local character from Lexington, a shrewd business woman, generous community member, and she ran the best brothel in the state, out of what is now better known as the Mary Todd Lincoln house. My mom, sister, and I visited the historical landmark on a homeschooling trip, and the tour guide told us it was once a brothel. "What's a brothel?" my younger sister asked. Without a pause, I answered: "A whorehouse." Belle Brezing made a success out of a tough situation, and didn't wait for anyone to tell her what to do.

beetles

We poured melted butter and brown sugar into the cake tin, and then Mitch sprinkled the pecan halves, shells like beetles, into the sweet brown mixture. Then, taking coconut flakes between his fingers, he sprinkled them atop the pecans. We halved the amount of coconut, since I'm not usually a fan. I'm glad we did. It's a great taste, but can be a bit much. With a fork, we beat together the rest of the ingredients, first the dry, and then the wet. I poured it into the pan and baked at just 350 degrees for forty-five minutes. When it came out, we cooled for five minutes, then turned it onto the cake platter. It's top is candied and delicious, the interior soft and moist. 

I fussed about the y-shaped crevice down the center, but Mitch waved it off. "Baking for your own consumption is not about perfection, it's about fun. Celebrate the successes! We made the damn thing with just a fork and a spatula!"

Chocolate Cake with Coffee-Cream-Cheese Icing

Aaron the Baker, who helped me make those beautiful pies a few weeks ago, moved into my neighborhood on Monday. After seeing my pathetic chocolate cake attempt, he wanted to help me make a cake that actually looked like a cake. So this week I picked another chocolate cake out of Good Housekeeping, along with a coffee-cream-cheese icing (using a package of cream cheese from what I overbought for my cheesecake).

He was waiting for the gas people to come to his apartment, so I measured out the ingredients, packed them up, and swung by the grocery store to buy cake tins and some additional ingredients, then walked to his place. It was a drizzling, grey morning, but not cold. This was my first time baking at someone else's house for my project.

On my walk I thought about the book I'm reading that Aaron lent me. It's called Flesh and Blood and is by the wonderful Michael Cunningham. I first read him my junior year of college, when we read The Hours in my postmodernism course. The professor, who I had a raging crush on, said that The Hours was the book he wished he'd written himself. I know what he means. Cunningham's writing is gorgeous. He is like a boiled-down Woolf, specifically a Mrs. Dalloway-Woolf. He writes in such detail about the "little" moments in life that make up the entirety, with a sharp focus on the home and family. Flesh and Blood is about three generations of a family from 1935 to 1995. There are only rare moments described from the characters' work days--for the most part it is all set in homes, and revolves around the futility of the American Dream. There are moments that echo The Hours. One of those is the description of a housewife making a birthday cake. It's a beautiful picture, and like Woolf, he elevates a household task into art. There is a huge amount of pressure the wife feels to make a perfect cake, and a conflict between creating this piece of artwork, made up of dedication and love, for your family, but at the same time feeling suffocated by your family and the need to make a cake.

Aaron's place was covered in boxes. Nothing was unpacked, and the kitchen counters were invisible. We shifted things around and I unpacked my bags and my tiny little "recipe:"

The recipe was simple. You mixed the cake ingredients together on high for five minutes, then pour them into the greased pans and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Then you mix the frosting together and coat the cake when cool. Aaron showed me how to make it in a way that was a little more involved, and would make a better result. In his KitchenAid mixer we whipped up the sugar, eggs, and vanilla bean until frothy, and then added a third of the wet ingredients, then a third of the dry, and continued until everything was well-mixed.

We then poured it into the cake tins and put in the oven. Then we made the frosting, mixing the dry ingredients first, and then adding the evaporated milk. He told me this was more of an "icing," which is thinner than a "frosting." It tasted delicious. Aaron laughs at how old-fashioned my recipes are. I reminded him I'm using a cookbook from the seventies.

He played one of his favorite musicals for me and told me sad stories.

While the beautiful cakes cooled, we moved some of the boxes and furniture around in his front room so we could put the rug down. Then we arranged the TV where he and his roommate wanted it ("So you could see it wherever you are in the room"). They have so much furniture! I thought about when Elise and I move. We have our beds, a couple of nightstands, and a hand chair. Plus two cats and loads of books.

We iced the cakes in a rustic way, and sprinkled some coffee struesel in between the layers and on top. The cake looks great, and I can't wait to eat it. I didn't expect this blog to become such an occasion for socializing, but I love that about it. Here it is:

This is how you make a pie

First Step: Preheat the oven.

On the day I scheduled to make a pear pie with my friend Casey, Chris decided to pack up the kitchen. Now, Elise and I hadn't lived on our own before the three of us moved in together, and since it didn't make sense for us to get three sets of everything, all the kitchen equipment came from Chris. So when he packed, we were left with no skillet, no spatulas, no saucepans, etc. Gloria Wood's "Hey, Bellboy!" rose to a frenzied crescendo of shriek-like singing while I scrubbed the stove top and he packed away our only mixing bowl. Gloria's needling insinuations were perfectly irritating as he rendered the next five weeks just a bit more difficult for all of us.

Second Step: Mix together the filling.

Casey came over with his own Mary Poppins bag of necessities. He brought all the ingredients and a few of the supplies. Best of all, he brought pears from his family's virile tree in Indiana. His father cans the pears himself, tons of them, Casey says, and they still have bags of fresh pears to give away. We had two beautiful mason jars to work with. Casey has his Polish grandmother's recipe by heart, and has been making this pie since he was a child. There aren't many ingredients, it's a simple, delicious family recipe. He did it almost by feel, which made me apprehensive since all I've known about baking so far is that you have to be very precise. Draining the pears with our hands and the lids of the jars, since the colanders were packed, we then improvised with different soup bowls in order to mix together the pears with sugar and cinnamon.

Third Step: Make the crust.

The dough had sifted flour, milk, and lots of oil. My favorite part of making the pie was shaking the oil and milk together using the rinsed-out pear jar. While I crumbled the dough together between my fingers, Casey urged me to add more oil, which I did hesitatingly, cautiously, making him laugh as he urged me on. I formed the oily dough into a firm ball with no crumbs. We broke it in two and he smashed half of it down onto a sheet of waxed paper, and placed another sheet over the dough patty before I rolled it out. Casey is playful when giving directions, and I can imagine him at the head of his classroom, with the little kids listening to him. They must like him: He talks to you like he believes you can do wonderful things.

Our pie dishes are identical, and they are both slightly larger than what any recipe calls for. The dough, though rolled out paper-thin, didn't quite make it to the top, so we patched it together as best we could. It was cracked and patchy, but we figured it would do.

Fourth Step: Pour the mixture into the crust and cover with a top crust. Bake for forty-five minutes, or until golden-brown.

As we had rolled out the dough, the sugar had started breaking down the pears, and there was more liquid in the mixture. We poured that into the crust and covered it with a top crust. At that point, Kyle rang the bell. I love being around Kyle (who steals the show in a great production you must see!). He's always making me laugh, befriending servers, and telling stories. Kyle cracked jokes while Casey and I padded down the top crust with milk and sprinkled it with sugar. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer for forty-five minutes, and we went out to get Cokes and ice cream.

When we came back, the pie still had twenty minutes to go. We made rum-and-coke floats and had just a deliriously good time waiting for the pie to finish. I told them about the kitchen stuff being packed away, and Kyle looked me up and down with pursed lips and said, "Gurl, it seems you've been busy relying on other people when you should've been believing in yourself."

Fifth Step: When it comes out, sprinkle with sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream!

This is Kyle all over

They showed me the proper way to cut a pie--not into quarters right away, because you don't want to expose the sides to air. The pie was delicious, but Casey and Kyle agreed it should have more sugar. I had misunderstood Casey when measuring out the sugar, and added too little, but I liked it just the way it was. The crust was flaky and the pears were perfect. We ate quickly and jumped into a cab to go to a cabaret show in Wicker Park. The show was in the back of Davenport's (which is the perfect name for a bulldog!) and the audience was made up of intoxicated performers. The singer had a beautiful tenor voice and a very straight collection of songs--Maroon 5, JT, and Allen Stone. It was called "Mixtapes for an Ex-Girlfriend," and whenever he almost made you feel something, he made a joke about it. Like how my grandmother hugged us--she embraced you with one arm, but then put an iron hand against your chest to prevent you from getting too close.

As you can imagine, some of the songs were angry, some were bewildered and broken-hearted, but then he ended with Jason Mraz's "You and I Both." I hadn't heard that song since sophomore year of college. The words came back to me as he sang, but fresh and new. It's a song about splitting up, but it's full of tenderness and forgiveness, and was a lovely ending to the show. It's a pop song, so it's made to manipulate emotion, I know that, but maybe because of all the drinks I'd had...I closed my eyes and they burned and there was Vanessa. There was Andie, and also Elaine. And then Wil and Eric and Dan and Paget and...this procession of people who I loved so much for such a brief time, before we plummeted away from each other into our different narratives.

So this is how you make a pie: You take something you have and something he has, you make it into something new and better, and then you share it with whoever is around you. If you can afford it, you have a couple drinks and a scoop of ice cream. Your friends will go their way eventually, but you'll have that evening to talk about when you run into them again, whenever that may be.