Homemade Bread: The Overnight Method

Ah, How to Be a Domestic Goddess. It's gotten me into trouble before. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic cookbook. I've taken some of my favorite recipes from it, and I'm addicted to the way Nigella Lawson writes. When I read her recipe introductions, I can always taste just exactly how that cake or cookie or loaf of bread I'm baking will turn out.

Unfortunately, Nigella's tricky sometimes. Like any cook, her recipes don't always turn out as easily as she says they will.

This time, she convinced me to attempt my first loaf of homemade bread. Try it, she says. It's easy, she says. Everyone should do it, she says. Just mix the ingredients together, knead for a few minutes, and chuck the dough in a bowl for the night. Give it a slow, cold rise, she says.

But, alas, things didn't turn out quite so simply!

First, the dough didn't behave itself. Mixing it was difficult, much more difficult than mixing the cinnamon roll dough I made a few weeks ago. I had a hard time making the liquids combine with the dry stuff, and I was worried about soaking the dough in too much potato water, so I left it a little dry.

Then, the kneading was rough, which I'm sure was due to the dough's dryness. My muscles actually ached afterward.

 

The dough looked fine after kneading, though, so I threw it in our cool garage to rise overnight.

Lawson suggests that letting bread dough rise in a cold place overnight is the same as letting it rise for a couple of hours in a warm kitchen. However, when I went to check on the dough a few hours later, it was very, very puffy--it had definitely doubled and was ready to be punched down--but since I didn't want to stay up all night to bake bread, I stuck it in the refrigerator until morning.

This, I think, is where things went wrong. The dough was pretty flat again in the morning, and there was no air to punch out. Still, I had hope. I kneaded it for a bit longer than recommended and set the loaf out for 45 minutes for its second rise.

What did it do then, you ask?

Well, not much. Not much at all.

Still, I threw the loaf in the oven on my mom's old pizza stone and hoped for the best.

And, surprisingly, everything turned out okay. The crust was remarkably crisp, and the bread tasted, well, like bread is supposed to taste, only really fresh and rich and yeasty. However, the crumb was very dense, more cake-like than bread-like.

I'm still not certain of the culprit's identity. Was my bread fail due to. . .

A. a lack of moisture in the dough? Did I put in too little potato water at the beginning, which lead my little yeasty friends to die of thirst?

B. the cold rise? Does this method only work if you're a brunette British bombshell with an uncanny affinity for baked goods?

C. the dough rising too much too early? Did I shock the yeast by letting them feast and then shoving them into a cold refrigerator?

I'm leaning toward C. Are there any expert bakers out there who can help me pinpoint my problem?

Despite a so-so first attempt, I'll definitely try homemade bread again--the smell of it baking alone was worth the time and effort!--but I'll skip the cold rise next time and hope that the traditional method serves me better.

Writing Sample: Press Release

Press releases are common public relations tools. They're basically brief articles about a product, service or company which are distributed to newspapers and other publishers in the hope of gaining free publicity. Press releases are supposed to read like news stories, and they have to have a "hook"; the hook is the newsworthy tidbit that will attract newspaper reporters, newspaper editors, and the public.


Below is a press release sample I wrote for my copywriting portfolio. I tried out several ideas before I decided to write about Claire's Cakes and Cookies, a fictional bakery I created for a previous writing sample. For this press release, my hook was the free cinnamon rolls, though the 90th anniversary celebration of baking in the Schlitterwhooster family was another big focus in the article.

I really wanted to focus on writing something that was very clear, very clean, and very easy to read. Most press releases I found on-line were nearly impossible to hack through, and I usually found myself losing interest in their "news" during the first or second paragraph. Sometimes I even got bored just reading the title!

This piece is 361 words long and formatted like a traditional press release would be. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement!

---------------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Claire's Cakes and Candies Offers Free Cinnamon Rolls, Celebrates Heritage with New Location

Olathe, KS, October 23 2009--Claire's Cakes and Candies, a bakery and confectionery owned by Olathe native Claire Schlitterwhooster, will celebrate the 90^th anniversary of Schlitterwhooster baking by opening a second location on the Country Club Plaza. Both store locations will celebrate by giving away free cinnamon rolls with any purchase or order from October 26-30.

Why cinnamon rolls? “My great-grandmother Annett Schlitterwhooster was a baker in Germany before she and my great-grandfather moved to America,” says Schlitterwhooster. “She started her bakery in 1919, which specialized in classic German pastries like strudels, cinnamon buns, and berliners.”

Since then, the Schlitterwhooster women have grown up baking classic German treats as well as American favorites like chiffon cakes and cookies.

But Schlitterwhooster was the one to take the family tradition to the next level. She attended culinary school in 2000 before opening the original Claire's location in 2003. She chose to focus on custom cakes for weddings and celebrations because she noticed a dearth of professional cake bakers in southern Johnson county.

“When my friends were getting married, they were driving up to Leawood or Kansas City to get their cakes. I saw an opportunity to add something to the Olathe community that wasn't readily available,” Schlitterwhooster says.

In 2006, Schlitterwhooster added a storefront to the Olathe location to offer same-day sheet cakes, ready-made cupcakes, and gift chocolates. The new Plaza location will focus on wedding cakes and ready-made cupcakes in a variety of traditional (chocolate, white, and red velvet) and adventurous (mango lassi and strawberried rose) flavors.

Schlitterwhooster has been planning the Plaza location's grand opening for several months and is excited for the upcoming celebration. “I'm honored to bring these two great traditions together: my family's long history of baking and the classic elegance of the Country Club Plaza. It's a great match, I think, and I can't wait to see what happens.”

Claire's Cakes and Candies has locations at XXXX Zero Street in Olathe, KS and at YYY Nada Lane in Kansas City, MO. Their staff has over seventy years of combined experience making custom celebration cakes, cupcakes, and candies. Please call 123-456-7890 for more information.

Contact:

Lesley Owens

098-765-4321

# # #

Mother Earth News and Un-Smart Choices

I recently discovered that Mother Earth News, the nation's largest magazine focusing on sustainable, DIY, green living, is published here in Kansas. I take this as further proof that Kansans are the most awesome people ever. Even though the premise of the magazine is environmental, its focus is positive and practical. Mother Earth's articles are about what people can do in their homes to reduce their impact on the environment, improve their lifestyles, and become reinvested in the land they live upon. The magazine is half hippie and half traditional farmer, a mixture that appeals strongly to my Midwestern dislike of wastefulness.

I love their website, so I decided to follow their Twitter account to get their updates more efficiently. Their most recent tweet took me to Jennifer LaRue Huget's column for The Washington Post. Huget writes on health and food for the Post, and today's column "Smart Grocery Shopping: Check! No, Wait . . ." is all about the flaws and foibles of the Smart Choices Program.

Smart Choices is trying to put check-marks on the front of all processed foods that they deem healthy. Like Froot Loops.

Yeah, those Froot Loops.

The Program is clearly faulted; not only are Froot Loops high on sugar and low on nutritional value, but Huget points out that only companies that buy into the program will be rated, which means that much more healthy foods won't be given a check mark, while less healthy foods from paying members will be.

Huget reports that Smart Choices is taking a break to regroup after the Froot Loops fiasco and will be working with the FDA to create better standards for its foods. But Huget suggests that the FDA drops Smart Choices and endorses something closer to her own favorite program Guiding Stars, which is a universal rating system (meaning it's not limited to paying companies) monitored by a panel of scientists.

Near the end of the article, Huget mentions in passing that "we could adopt something like the traffic-light system that's been in use in Europe for a few years (green for stuff you should eat lots of, red for foods to eat in moderation)." I love this idea. Not only is it incredibly simple and easy-to-understand, it's also keyed into a system that most of us already respond to instinctively; we all know that red stands for stop and green stands for go from the flash cards parents waved in front of us when we were three years old.

Because this labeling latches on to a symbolic system so deeply embedded in our culture, I think red/green labeling could have a dramatic impact on the way we eat. Think of how guilty you would be when you tore open a red-striped bag of Little Debbie cakes, and how self-satisfied a sack of green-banded Sun Chips would make you feel. Maybe the color red would start to repel you if you were on a diet: you would begin to associate guilt with seeing red, while green would become attached to your sense of responsibility and healthiness.

I'm not sure that we need a labeling system at all--I've never had a problem reading nutritional panels or understanding that Oreos will make me fatter than a bag of broccoli crowns--but if we choose to use one, it certainly needs to be clear, simple, and rigorously evaluated.

Just as long as no one is evaluating anything I bake. I'd weep if I saw my cinnamon rolls robed in a pall of red cellophane. 

Cinnamon Rolls

Warning: The post you are about to read contains food porn. Please cover children's eyes and place a bowl beneath your lip to catch the drool.

 

Homemade cinnamon rolls. Yesssssss.

I've been wanting to make cinnamon rolls for a couple of years now. I decided to try Paula Deen's Cinnamon Roll recipe (from www.FoodNetwork.com) on a whim; I had some free time and a craving and a lot of faith in the way Southern people use sugar. I also liked this recipe because it's very basic--there's no fuss here, no funky ingredients or nutty bits or cobblery little berries secreted away inside. These rolls are made just the way I like them, with good, old fashioned cinnamon, sugar, and butter. And a little more butter. And maybe just a touch more.

Oh, heck, just throw the whole stick in there!

Anyway, I'm especially proud of these because I've never made cinnamon rolls solo before. I've watched other people make them. I've made Pilsbury's sad little replicas. I've made monkey bread and baking soda/baking powder cinnamon thingies. But I've never tackled cinnamon rolls alone before.

I've also never worked with yeast in a rising dough, which means I've never kneaded or punched down dough. I was worried I'd muck things up somehow, but despite my inexperience, I found these to be foolproof yet phenomenal.

These are not the soft, squishy type of cinnamon roll. The filling is rich and dark and sweet but not syrupy. The dough has substance, backbone: instead of being a doughy, damp mess at the bottom, these rolls have crispy, caramelized little bases that come from a well-greased pan sprinkled with white sugar.

My favorite thing about working with yeast was watching the changes the dough went through. I started off with an ugly, unpromising sort of dough ball with lots of cracks and lumps.

After ten minutes of kneading, I had a smooth, moist ball of dough that didn't look nearly large enough for a whole pan of rolls.

After an hour and a half to rise, I had a huge puff of stretchy, almost rubbery dough.

After punching out the excess air (which was extremely rewarding, by the way), I rolled the dough, poured a wide slick of melted butter over it, and sprinkled it very, very (very!) liberally with the cinnamon and sugar.

After it was rolled and cut, I had a very wimpy little pan of raw rolls.

The looked like a hot mess, but after forty-five more minutes of rising, they started to look respectable.

By the time they were done baking, they had expanded to fill the cake pan from side to side, and they grew from one inch tall to two and a half inches high at their centers.

But as fun as these were to make, they were also epic: I started baking at 9:45 in the morning and didn't get the rolls out of the oven until 1:15 in the afternoon. They were worth the time, but I understand why these don't get made fresh too often!

The glaze was good but not amazing. I wish I had made it with less butter, a little milk, and more hot water. Following the recipe, it was just too rich; the cinnamon rolls had such a nice flavor and texture that the frosting glopped on top just weighed them down. (As you can see in the first picture, I kept two rolls at the front of the pan pretty dry for Charlie, who believes in moderation when it comes to frosting. I wish I had done the same for the rest of the pan!)

Besides reducing the amount of frosting on each roll, the only thing I would change about this recipe is the filling. I like my cinnamon rolls to have a dark, caramely flavor that plain old white sugar can't provide, so I would replace most (or all) of the white sugar in the filling with brown sugar. That's it. Everything else here is crispy, sugary, melty, cinnamony, toothsome perfection.

And if you want an overnight cinnamon roll recipe that won't force you to get up at 5:00 a.m. to serve breakfast at 9:00, I've heard great things about Alton Brown's cinnamon rolls!

---------------

Paula Deen's Cinnamon Rolls

From www.FoodNetwork.com

Ingredients 

Dough:

• 1/4-ounce package yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup scalded milk
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup butter or shortening
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour

Filling:

• 1/2 cup melted butter, plus more for pan
• 3/4 cup sugar, plus more for pan
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup raisins, walnuts, or pecans, optional

Glaze:

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 to 6 tablespoons hot water

Directions

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and set aside. In a large bowl mix milk, sugar, melted butter, salt and egg. Add 2 cups of flour and mix until smooth. Add yeast mixture. Mix in remaining flour until dough is easy to handle. Knead dough on lightly floured surface for 5 to 10 minutes. Place in well-greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size, usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours. 

When doubled in size, punch down dough. Roll out on a floured surface into a 15 by 9-inch rectangle. Spread melted butter all over dough. Mix sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over buttered dough. Sprinkle with walnuts, pecans, or raisins if desired. Beginning at the 15-inch side, role up dough and pinch edge together to seal. Cut into 12 to 15 slices. 

Coat the bottom of baking pan with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Place cinnamon roll slices close together in the pan and let rise until dough is doubled, about 45 minutes. Bake for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned. 

Meanwhile, mix butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Add hot water 1 tablespoon at a time until the glaze reaches desired consistency. Spread over slightly cooled rolls.

"For this is love and nothing else is love"

Over at Easy Street, Mrs. E posted an “assignment” for her readers. We're supposed to make a list of simple things that we love and take for granted. I would have posted a list anyway--I always do my homework, Mrs. E!--but I'm feeling blue today, and I think it'll help cheer me up!

I've also posted one of my favorite poems below: "A Prayer in Spring" by Robert Frost. It's a poem I love for a lot of reasons, but it seemed unusually appropriate to Mrs. E's assignment.

---------------

I love the burbling sound the coffee maker makes, and the faint plunking of rain on the kitchen skylight. I love hoodies in autumn, and sweatpants and dusky mums and orange leaves bright against black bark. I love the sound of pop music on my car radio and memorized poems murmuring in the back of my head (“Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today . . .”). I love the library, the stale smell of old books and yellowed pages, the margins scratched with strangers' notes. I love the way that cookie dough always tastes better than baked cookies do, and being surprised by the generosity of strangers. And I love curling into bed next to my cat, her eyes squinted shut, plush and warm and purring faintly, and the way the moon cools as it rises, paling from gold to white to silvery blue.

---------------

A Prayer in Spring

By Robert Frost

OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,	5
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,	10
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,	15
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Pinsky Comes to Town

Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States, is coming to Kansas City this Thursday. I'm going to try to attend, but this week's a little busy, so who knows?

I've seen Pinsky read before at AWP. He's a great reader: he performs his poems with energy, modulation, and charisma. But, more importantly, his poems are great: they're intellectual, clever, meandering, and delightfully strange.

My favorite work of his is a chapbook titled First Things to Hand. Each poem in the collection is based on an object that the poet can see from his desk. Though he begins each poem with a familiar object, his mind wanders far and wide in each poem, leaping back and forth between the familiar, the imagined, and ancient mythologies, including the Hindu and Norse pantheons.

My copy of First Things To Hand is packed right now, so I won't include a sample poem here. But I will leave you with this clip from "What Shall We Teach the Young?", a lecture Pinsky delivered in 2002. Throughout his career as a poet and as poet laureate, Pinsky has served as an excellent advocate for poetry as a part of everyday life (for example, he initiated the Favorite Poem Project and edited An Invitation to Poetry and Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud). I love what this essay says about why people should read poetry, especially children, and why verse is such a vital part of human culture.

If you like this quote, I urge you to read the whole lecture at the Grantmakers in the Arts website; it's a fascinating read.
---------------

From "What Shall We Teach the Young?"

By Robert Pinsky

“We crave difficulty. Music, and art in general, fills that craving, sometimes profoundly [. . . .] I submit to you that what we now call education in the arts is not an ornament, or a decoration, or a beauty, or a nice thing to do with learning, but that it resides at the center of the process of learning. [. . .] I have a superstitious and abiding sense that insofar as you remove the instrument case [and the ability of a child to perform art], it’s not only a local matter. It’s extending back to defy or abrogate a chain that goes to our origins. Intelligence and learning are associated with art, with all the arts. They’re at the core, not peripheral. The human ability to learn, the relish for difficulty, for physical engagement of difficulty, for something that comes from somewhere—these have profound origins.”

"final as a plum tree"

The family cats are behaving strangely today. Earlier, I heard a mysterious mewling coming from the hallway, but I couldn't find the source. Later, washing my face in the bathroom, I heard it again and opened a cabinet door to find Diego, our staid old man cat, sitting on a ledge shelf, staring at me with his haughty, green, fishy eyes. He didn't want to be let out, just for me to be aware of his impressive existence there beneath the sink. I shut the door and kept on rinsing.

A much younger Diego trying to get himself mailed to the wild Amazonian jungles.

I've tried to write poems about cats before, but like oranges, I can't seem to grapple with them. They're too strange, too lovely to write about. However, the following poem by Charles Bukowski is a very successful cat poem. (You can hear Garrison Keillor read it on The Writer's Almanac archives.) To me, it captures cat-ness beautifully.

It's also a great poem to teach to beginning writers: it's a spare little piece that's easy to "get," but its similes and metaphors are fantastic, transformational. Bukowski turns the cat into a god, a machine, and a plum tree, and each metamorphosis inches us a little bit closer to Bukowski's vision of the cat's essential nature. Each comparison is a little slant; it doesn't make perfect sense that a plum tree is "final," nor does it make sense that a plum tree is like a cat, but we still feel what Bukowski means instinctively. It's a great simile because it's unexpected and brief and strange and oh so right.

When Bukowski walks the cat out of the poem beneath "porticoes of [his] / admiration," we see the cat one last time, sashaying through a temple of worship, as preening and pleased with himself as any Roman emperor or Greek god.

I swear, this cat could have been Diego.

---------------

startled into life like fire


By Charles Bukowski

in grievous deity my cat
walks around
he walks around and around
with
electric tail and
push-button
eyes

he is
alive and
plush and
final as a plum tree

neither of us understands
cathedrals or
the man outside
watering his
lawn

if I were all the man
that he is
cat--
if there were men
like this
the world could
begin

he leaps up on the couch
and walks through
porticoes of my
admiration.

Writing Sample: Christmas Shopping on a Student Budget

After seven years of college and grad school, I'm pretty much the expert on budget-conscious Christmas shopping. I thought I would be well-qualified to write a how-to list on student Christmas shopping, so here it is! This is going to be another piece for my copywriting portfolio. I wanted this list to be brief (468 words!), entertaining, and informative, and I think I succeeded. Please leave any suggestions for revision you can think of!

---------------

Christmas Shopping on a Student Budget

Looking to please your friends and family this Christmas without taking out another student loan? If you think your student stipend can't make for a happy holiday season, think again! With these six tips, you'll be on your way to playing Santa on a student budget.

1. Plan Ahead. You may think that mid-October is too early to start shopping, but beginning early lets you shop sales and compare prices at different stores. Why buy a CD from a specialty store in December when it will be $5 cheaper at Target next week? Besides, shopping in October lets you avoid crowded stores and the rush of finals week!
   
2. Clip Away! I know what you're thinking: coupons are for Depression-era grandparents and neurotic supermoms. But coupons are a great way to stretch your Christmas cash. Put together gift baskets made up of grocery store staples for friends and family. Try a finals week snack box for a roommate or a winterizing kit (lotion, lip balm, hot chocolate mix, etc.) for a family friend
   
   
   
3. Such Talent! Don't forget that you are your own greatest resource. Know how to knit? Scarves for the whole family! Love to write? Record some of your favorite childhood memories, bind them, and give your grandparents copies! And if you're not artistic, you can always make prints of your favorite photos, arrange them in inexpensive photo albums, and give them to family members.
   
   
   
4. Flour Power. Never underestimate the power of baked goods! A tray of festive sugar cookies will melt any neighbor or boss's heart. There are plenty of recipes out there that are inexpensive, easy-to-make, and incredibly appealing (try Rice Crispy Treats or Peanut Butter Buckeye Balls). Can't bake to save your life? Make one of those gift mixes in a Mason jar—just pour the ingredients in, twist the lid, and you're done!
   
   
   
5. Give the Gift of You. When you're living away from home, sometimes the best gift is just showing up. Rent a movie for your mom and promise to watch it with her (no matter how much you hate Steel Magnolias!), or take your grandma out to tea at her favorite tea shop. They'll be happier than if you had given them an afternoon with George Clooney! Well, maybe.
   
   
   
6. 
   
   Personalize It! Pay close attention to your friends' and family's interests before you spend a cent; responding directly to their passions will make a bigger impact than spending a lot of money ever could. For example, if your sister believes in fair-trade and loves the color purple, she'd rather get a pair of lavender bead earrings from Ten Thousand Villages than diamond studs! 
   

   
   Just remember that it really is the thought that counts when giving gifts and you'll be on your way to having a gloriously inexpensive giving season!
   

   
   

A Traditional Carrot Cake

When your Great Aunt Roma tells you to do something, you do it!

That's the lesson of last night's baking session. I had the opportunity to bake my Great Aunt Roma's famous carrot cake recipe. She used to bake this cake for weddings and still bakes it for very special family events.

Aunt Roma's vintage recipe, left small and blurry ON PURPOSE!

I didn't really remember what the cake was like when I started making it. I've only tasted it a few times over the years, so I could recall the hype surrounding the recipe, but not the cake itself.  I'll admit that I cringed when I saw ingredients liked canned crushed pineapple (gack!), flaked coconut (yuck!), and coarsely chopped nuts (ugh!) on the recipe card, but the resulting cake was oh-my-goodness-where-have-you-been-all-my-life deliciousness! The cake comes out enviably moist and riddled with chewy goodness and smelling like Christmas but way, way better.

By far, this is the best, most scrumptious, most authentic-tasting carrot cake I've ever encountered.

The glorious, miraculous carrot cake!

However, it's also the messiest, least-solid, wiliest carrot cake in the world.

The layer cake "sliced."

 

*Sigh* What a mess! Like so many things in the world, this cake's appearance belies its better qualities. The crumbly dampness that makes it so delicious was also its undoing. Great Aunt Roma's recipe calls for baking in a 9" by 13" sheet pan, but did I listen? Nooooo, I was too busy trying to make a fancy layer cake to pay attention to her instructions!

I was carried away because my Great Aunt Shirley had just given me her set of professional baking pans.

Great Aunt Shirley's coveted cake pans.

Like Great Aunt Roma, Great Aunt Shirley also baked wedding cakes back in the day. These pans originally belonged to my Great Great Grandma Higgins (Aunt Shirley's grandma!). They've been in the family for five generations now, which speaks to their sturdiness and quality. Last night, I was just dying to make a layer cake with them. And I had bought a new icing spatula, so I had to practice my frosting technique on a layer cake. And you can make a layer cake or a sheet cake with most cake mixes, so why couldn't I do the same with this recipe?

A "slice" of the cake.

That's why. Oh, the humanity!

[Update: After a night in the fridge, both the cake and the frosting have solidified and slicing is now possible! Cheers!]

Besides making an un-sliceable layer cake instead of a sheet cake, this recipe was pretty much foolproof. I won't publish the recipe here (I don't know if it's a secret or not, but I won't be the one to let Roma's cat out of the bag!), but I will give you a few hints.

The base batter is made of all the basics you'd expect, but the recipe dictates that you sift the dry ingredients together, make a well in the center, and then pour the sugar and wet ingredients on top in a certain order. Wacky, huh? I'm not sure how imperative this is, but pouring the oil directly onto the sugar gave the two time to sort of melt together before the dry stuff and eggs got in the way.

And, of course, you have to grate the carrots yourself. Pre-grated carrot slivers would be too large, which would make for rough texture in the cake. Besides, bagged grated carrots are always so dried out and rubbery--not at all what you're looking for in a dessert!

The recipe calls for flaked coconut, as well, and it was worth it to buy the more expensive coconut since it was visibly moister in the bag. The final fruity ingredient is crushed pineapple from a can, which adds even more moisture and texture. Without the fresh carrots, damp coconut, and sweet pineapple, the starting batter is thick, sticky, and almost dry--much more like banana bread than a cake.

 The mixed batter in the new cake pan.

And, I hate to admit it, but the chopped nuts (I used walnuts) were absolutely essential to the cake's texture. Normally, I'm not a fan of nuts in anything besides M&Ms and Cracker Jacks, and brownies and cakes absolutely must be nut-free. But I loved the crunchy texture and earthy saltiness they gave to this cake, the contrast that they provided against the sweet fluff of the cake body.

The cakes bake much like banana bread: they puff up very quickly, start to brown fast, turn very dark, and then take awhile to solidify in the center. In fact, I had to turn my temperature down half-way through to be sure the crust wouldn't burn while the inside solidified.

Cooling cakes.

Roma's frosting recipe called for lots of butter, a little cream cheese, a ton of powdered sugar, and a dash of vanilla. My modified recipe involved a little butter, lots of cream cheese, a ton of powdered sugar, a dash of vanilla, and a big dash of freshly squeezed lime juice (I like my cream cheese frosting to be bright and tangy, not heavy and buttery).

Brandishing the new icing spatula, ready to do cream cheese battle!

I started baking with my mother when I was very small, so I've always considered baking to be a family exercise, something to be shared and handed down. So I've very much enjoyed the opportunity to work with equipment and recipes that have been in my family for so long.

I know I'll be enjoying this carrot cake over the next week, handing a slice down to whoever is tough enough to brave its crumbly center. No matter how messy it gets, I have a feeling we'll make do.

Scary Funny

This has been the summer of the scary/funny movie. In the space of a few months, I saw Dead Alive, The Final Destination, and Jennifer's Body.

Dead Alive (1993), directed by Peter Jackson and set in New Zealand, is a masterpiece of zombie cinema. It's also an unspeakably silly gore-fest, best-known for making audiences want to laugh and retch at the same time. Zombie ears pop off and tumble into jiggling bowls of pudding. Zombies gnaw the flesh off their victims and each other, leaving wiggling bone stumps. And then there's the lawnmower scene. 

Ah, the lawnmower scene!

Again and again, Jackson escalates the gore; every time you think it couldn't get more gratuitous, you see another blood-covered femur or pile of zombie hamburger or a zombie baby popping out of a human skull.

Neat!

While Dead Alive rips on the goriness of the zombie genre, taking it from gut-wrenchingly gross to gut-wrenchingly funny, The Final Destination rips on its many prequels.

 

You know the premise: a group of teenagers miraculously survives a horrible accident only to realize that they are all destined to die anyway. Fate (or something) picks them off one by one in a series of bizarre sub-accidents while the kids try to break the curse.

I've never seen the original Final Destinations, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the final installment in the series. Each death is gruesome, to be sure, but they're also riddled with gags, surprises, and pure silliness. Take the guy whose intestines get yanked out and spewed out of a swimming pool water pump, or the girl who drowns in a car wash.

That's right, a car wash.

Finally, there's Jennifer's Body.

The premise: a hot chick gets possessed and starts eating teenage boys. The screenwriter: Diablo Cody of Juno fame. The result: a horror movie that combines Megan Fox vomiting black spumes; teenage girls making out; and witty dialog that trashes high school, best friendships, horror movies, indie rock bands, and teenage girl-hood alike. Jennifer's Body never takes itself too seriously, never forgets that it's a movie about demonic possession that puns on the term "man-eater" (har har!).

See it now, if only for the fight scenes peppered with tampon jokes.

But why should you watch funny horror movies at all? Why should you indulge in the admittedly sick pleasure of laughing at squirting blood and eviscerations and cannibalism?

Because truly great serious horror movies are so hard to come by. They're like the poetry of the film industry: it's so easy to make a slasher flick that's bad (red food dye and corn syrup are very cheap), but it's so difficult to make a great one. Great serious horror movies are subtle, restrained, and moody, and have a sound plot and realistic characters to back up their myriad scares. I mean, really, how many brilliant horror movies can you name? The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, The Omen--what else?

But because bad horror movies are so common, the genre is completely worn out. Any horror buff can name the top ten horror movie cliches Scream-style, and we all know what's going to happen when the heroine reaches her trembling hand toward the doorknob. Horror movie fans are incredibly well-educated about their genre; it's almost impossible to surprise them with a new premise or a new scare.

So how can a filmmaker overcome an audience's expectations to give them an experience that's fresh and exciting? 

Well, if you can't beat the genre, you can always play up how funny its failings can be. Instead of trying to circumnavigate the challenges of making a good horror movie, scary/funny movies plow straight into the cliches: they amp up the camp and load on the gags, because it's better to laugh with your audience than to be laughed at, right? The jokes in these movies aren't about finding death and gore funny, they're about genre, tweaking the audience's expectations, and seeing how far a gag can be pushed.

Satirical horror movies don't undermine or pervert the horror movie genre, they're just a sign of horror's continuing relevance and popularity. So while I'll keep watching The Rings and the Quarantines Hollywood keeps churning out, hoping for the next Exorcist, I'll always be more excited for the Drag Me to Hells and Cabin Fevers and Slithers of the world, excited to see yet another genre-ripping, soon-to-be-classic.

"Are you / What I was? What I will be?"

I know, I know! I've gotten complaints from my mother and my grandmother, and, yes, it's been over a week since I've posted. I really am sorry, but last week was just too busy with teaching demonstrations, informational interviews, and weddings. So I had to take a bit of a blog break and let other things take over for awhile.

Today, there's something in the air, that old October melancholy that seems to strike everyone at once. Everyone is breaking out their sweaters, airing out old blankets, and settling in for the winter, even though the temperatures are still firmly in the mid-60s every afternoon. We humans know that winter's coming, somehow, just like the squirrels do when they start plowing frantic little holes all over our front lawns.

Here's a poem that's been on my mind lately as I've watched the seasons changing. It's the first poem in William Stafford's collected volume The Way It Is, and it was first published in Sometimes I Breathe (1992). I couldn't say why I like it--it's a plain poem, with little imagery and few flourishes. But it seems so accurate, somehow, to what the Kansas sky is really like during these October days, so beautiful, and so impassively serene.

---------------

Sky

By William Stafford
From Sometimes I Breathe (1992)

I like you with nothing. Are you

what I was? What I will be?

I look out there by the hour,

so clear, so sure. I could

smile, or frown—still nothing.

Be my father, be my mother,

great sleep of blue; reach

far within me; open doors,

find whatever is hiding; invite it

for many clear days in the sun.

When I turn away I know

you are there. We won't forget

each other: every look is a promise.

Others can't tell what you say

when it's the blue voice, when

you come to the window and look for me.

Your word arches over

the roof all day. I know it

within my bowed head, where

the other sky listens.

You will bring me

everything when the time comes.