Please go to moderngirlskitchen.com

Modern Girls Kitchen has officially moved! Please click HERE to go to http://www.moderngirlskitchen.com or cut and paste this address into your web browser!

Prepare to enjoy Modern Girls New Home!

Mistress of Her Own Domain

Modern Girl is now mistress of her own domain. www.moderngirlskitchen.com, to be exact.

Stay tuned for details - but the site will be moving soon, so please update your browser and be patient while I figure out exactly how to do all this!

(Anyone with experience in "site moving" is welcome to offer assistance.....pretty please....)

Soup, Soup, Glorious Soup!

It could be the weather, it could be the season, it could be a minor mineral imbalance.

Whatever it is, I've been craving potato soup for a couple of weeks now, even buying potatoes on two occasions with the specific intent of preparing it. The first batch ended up chopped and roasted with olive oil and rosemary on my recent roast chicken spree. The second ended up waiting patiently in the fridge until this evening, when rain, cold and the meteorologist's promise of a "wintry mix" (more like a wishful mix in these parts) prompted me to embark on project potage.

I made some more chicken stock just a couple of days ago and it, along with half an onion, a couple of stalks of celery and a bit of bacon desperately in need of use, was loitering in the fridge just waiting for its chance to dive into a giant pot of creamy potato soup, so I finally had everything I needed to make the thick, creamy, ever-so-slightly chunky potato soup I'd envisioned.

Working from the basic potato soup ingredients (onion, water, stock, milk, potatoes), I've come up with the following recipe - it's another work in process (like the Chicken/Whie Bean Soup I posted recently) - but it's simple, simple, simple - not to mention tasty, filling and a great opportunity to hit the local farmer's market!

As it turns out, this is definitely another one of those great make-ahead-and-freeze dishes - perfect for those nights when you get home from work and it's already dark and you are far too knackered to cook but your only other alternatives are Chinese takeout, pizza delivery or a tasteless frozen dinner that's been in the freezer since two boyfriends ago.

And by the way, some crusty bread from the bakery would make a nice addition, but given the carb count on this (and its thick, filling consistency), you certainly won't miss it if your mind is already on bikini season and you opt to pass. Or if you recently heard a news report suggesting that the average person gains between five and THIRTEEN pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's - in which case you may want to skip the soup entirely and just enjoy the celery on its own.

Note: It looks like there are a lot of ingredients for this, but they're all basics so you shouldn't have to go on a major shopping spree to get the stuff you need. And if you do, well, you'll find these are all "must-have's" for later!

What You Need:

• 8-10 small-medium yellow potatoes, diced (try organic Yukon Gold)
• 8-10 rashers of market bacon, chopped into squares
  
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 1/4 cup celery, sliced
  
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup white wine
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup skim Mayfield milk
• salt
• 1-2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1 tsp. celery salt
• 1 tbsp. whole black pepper
• fresh ground black pepper
• 2 whole bay leaves
  

What You Do:

1. Go ahead and peel & dice your potatoes, chop the onion and celery and cube the bacon slices.
2. Place the diced potatoes into a stockpot or deep saucepan.
   
3. Cook the bacon in a skillet and place it into the pot with the potatoes. Do NOT drain off the fat - you need it to soften the onion.
4. Soften the onion and celery together in the bacon grease -- you'll know they're done when they become transclucent.
5. Add the onion and celery to the bacon and potato in the stockpot, then pour in one cup of chicken stock and three cups of water. Bring to a boil.
6. Simmer the potato mixture until the potatoes are fully cooked and the liquid is reduced by half to three quarters depending on how thick you want your soup.
7. Add celery salt, salt, ground and whole black pepper and bay leaves while mixture is simmering.
8. Stir in the milk.
   
9. Pour a small amount of the reduced mixture into a food processor or blender (liquidiser) and blend until smooth. Pour the blended mixture into a bowl. If you want a chunkier soup, reserve some of the potato pieces in the stockpot.
10. When you've blended all of the soup, return it to the stockpot on medium heat and stir in cheese and cloves. Add more milk to loosen the mixture or small quantities of corn starch to thicken it depending on what you prefer. You can also add more seasoning to taste.

CHARMING TRUFFLES

Sensuous, Decadent & Oh So Very Modern

You know the problem. It usually begins around the first of December and spreads like a rampant virus through the very essence of your being, leaving you about as energetic and coherent as a sack of wet gym clothes when it's run its course.

I'm talking (of course) about the holidays. Christmas. Kwanzaa. Hanukkah. Some druidic turn-of-the-year celebration. Whatever you choose to observe, it somehow invariably involves food. And entertaining. And decorating. And often gift-giving. Which brings with it an entirely new set of problems to keep you up at night: to whom do you give a gift? What do you give? Where you get what you give? How do you wrap what you give in the most interesting, unique-yet-festive-and-certainly-not-generic manner? The list goes on.

And despite all efforts to counter-act this annual attack of holiday anxiety - a "phenomenon" widely reported as "news" by our ever-vigilant media (who appear completely unaware of the fact that their time would more usefully be spent reporting stories that demonstrate just how fortunate we are to have such a "problem" in the first place) -- it's virtually inescapable.

Which is precisely why, dear modern girl, I have a perfectly modern solution. Truffles. Yes, that pinnacle of chocolate indulgence, that extravagant bon-bon of a delicacy, that most decorous of all small-sized sweets!

And no, I haven't lost my mind. They are easy - FUN, even - to make - and there's practically no limit to the array of flavours, textures and combinations you can create. Just host a viewing of that gorgeous Juliette Bincoche/Johnny Depp film Chocolat to get you in the mood, then set about creating some chocolate covered magic of your very own.

What You Need

- Two 16oz bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips (the highest quality you can afford - Ghiradelli is ideal)
- Two 8 oz bars of dark, milk or semi-sweet chocolate (again, Ghiradelli is perfect - just make sure it is at least 60%)
-1/2 pint heavy whipping cream
- Two 8oz bars of the highest quality white chocolate you can afford
- "Fillings" like ground almonds or hazelnuts, candied orange peel, crystalized ginger, coconut and glace cherries
- Liqueurs like creme de menthe, creme de cassis or creme de cacao
-Icing for decorating (you can also use more melted chocolate - it depends on how competent you are with a piping bag!
-A cake tester or long, thin skewer
-A double-boiler or two saucepans, one small enough to fit inside the other (this is what I use!)
- A couple of cookie/baking sheets, some wax paper and, if you want to get fancy, a couple of silicone ice cube trays in different shapes (like hearts or shells).
- A few small mixing bowls (cereal bowls also work well)

What You Do

1. Just fill your large saucepan about half full of water and bring it to a boil (or simply fill your double-boiler and get it going). Place the smaller saucepan inside the larger one doing your best not to let it touch the water (at the very least, it should touch only minimally).
   
2. Put 1 bag of the milk chocolate chips into the small pan along with a drop of cream to help the chocolate loosen and melt. It is very important to remember that it is far easier to make the chocolate more liquid than it is to make it more solid! Aim to get the chocolate loose and smooth with the consistency of a thick milkshake.
3. Place one of your "fillings" in a small mixing bowl - 1/2 a cup full of crushed hazelnuts, for example, or 1/2 a cup of shredded coconut and some chopped glace cherries.
4. Add a few tablespoons of melted chocolate to the filling. Think of the chocolate as the "glue" that will pull the filling together -- in other words, the ratio should be about 2 parts filling to one part chocolate. The mixture should come together quickly and easily into a small ball, much like dough. Don't freak out, give up and eat it all if you don't succeed with this at first -- although that's always a tempting alternative -- instead, just keep adding small amounts of filling until it thickens up.
5. Now you have a choice: you can either form the mixture into small balls with your hands (use 1 tablespoon, roughly) and place them on a baking sheet lined with wax paper, or you can fill the cavities of a silicone ice cube tray with the mixture (this will help you to form the truffles into decorative shapes like hearts, shells, pears, even penguins if you're so inclined -- of if that's the only ice cube tray in the freezer).
6. Place the tray or baking sheet in the refrigerator for a few minutes until the chocolate sets.
7. In the meantime, take another small, clean, dry saucepan, place broken up pieces of the solid chocolate bars (either white or dark) into it and melt it over the double-boiler. Because this is a higher percentage/quality chocolate than the chocolate chips, this chocolate will melt a lot faster and will have a much more velvety-smooth consistency. You should NOT add cream to this chocolate.
8. Remove your trays from the fridge. If you're using ice cube molds, pop the chocolates out from the cavities. Skewer each one and gently dip it into the chocolate you've just melted, turning carefully to ensure full coverage.
   
9. 
   
10. 
11. Gently place the truffle on a waiting sheet of wax paper to set.
12. Decorate by piping melted chocolate over the top (use white chocolate on dark and vice-versa), or use small pieces of nuts, ginger or swirls of colored icing -- the sky's the limit.
13. Place in miniature cupcake cups, arrange in a small gift box or my favorite, a red Chinese takeout carton. Give these as gifts to friends and co-workers (if they're really, really good friends, pair them with a good bottle of red wine for the ultimate in modern girl gift-giving chic).
    

Note: Truffles can be stored in the fridge for up to one week - at which point they need to be eaten. Completely. No questions asked. (If you reach this juncture, go ahead and drink the wine while you're at it - you may as well go all the way if you're going to indulge).

Thanksgiving & the Pursuit of Perfection, Part Two

In addition to re-publishing the post prior to this one (Thanks, But No Thanks), I thought it wise - and timely - to offer an update. After all, what modern girl among us is not caught up to one degree or another in the pursuit of elusive perfection, whether in terms of appearance, physique, demeanour, career performance, culinary prowess (especially, perhaps, culinary prowess!) or all of the above. Admit it or not, you want it. It's hard not to.

The desire to achieve perfection - to become flawless, peerless, matchless, dauntless - sneaks up on us. It weaves and winds itself through our lives, slipping between magazine imprints and media airwaves, insinuating itself into our interactions with others; it slides between the sheets with us at night, whispering in our ear...Tomorrow! Tomorrow I will make an Italian Creme Cake that is perfectly level, perfectly moist, perfectly perfect...

And while it's a voice we can so often quell during most of the year, there's something about the holidays that makes us acutely aware of its presence. Something about the pressure of this one day - this Thanksgiving, this Christmas, this Hanukah, this New Year's Eve - that forces us to succumb to otherwise latent ambition. Forget the fact that you can hardly cook a hotdog the rest of the year, you're plucking, stuffing and sauteing your own special-ordered, $50-a-pound heirloom heritage turkey this year by god. And when you do, it's going to be better looking and better tasting than any turkey that's ever graced all the covers of Living, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Apetite, Cook's Illustrated, Cooking Light, Oprah and Real Simple put together. Period. After all, that's what the holidays are about, right? If we can't have a perfect meal with our perfect family, well then, it we won't enjoy it and we certainly won't be happy.

Or will we? What's so wrong with a little imperfection? What's so wrong with a few under-done vegetables, an over-cooked bird and a wonky cake? And will our worlds fall to pieces if our families aren't smiling 100% of the time and the dog eats half the pecan pie when you're not looking (true story, another time)? Probably not.

Probably, they'll be a hell of a lot happier that way. Because as T.S. Eliot explains in one of my favorite essays, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," true art lies not in perfect imitation, but in allowing your own unique characteristics, experiences and values to express themselves through the creation of something that both follows tradition and departs from it at the same time. The same can be said of cooking -- especially of preparing an important dish or celebratory meal. It's not about pedantic recipe obeisance; it's about letting go of the fear of imperfection and embracing, instead, the possibility that a few "flaws" could (gasp) actually be better.

I learned this last Christmas as my then future in-laws arrived to spend the holidays with my family. It was, in many ways, an amazingly happy and exciting time. It was also the singlemost stressful holiday of my entire life. The lurking - and at the time I thought "healthy" - "respect" (read: fear & intimidation) I felt for my Swiss future mother-in-law drove me to try to deliver the most picture-perfect meals and baked goods I could provide -- at the expense of some of my sanity and some of the harmony between me and my former fiance. The thing is (and this is the thing I forgot), she wasn't there for the food. (Turns out she wasn't really there for me, either, but that's another story). And while the holiday was certainly memorable, what I recall most is the nagging pressure not to put a foot wrong. To dress immaculately. To make sure my house was spotless. To make sure that the food I prepared was beyond reproach in texture, taste, seasoning, appearance.

The end of my engagement came six months later, not through any fault of my own and not, I hasten to add, as a result of that holiday. But as I approach this holiday season, it is with a set of new eyes. There will be no rush this year. No hustle and bustle, no mad decorating or over-production of more baked goods than any one person can dispose of (no matter how many book clubs and supper clubs she's in); no worrying about future in-laws (or fiances or boyfriends, for that matter). No worrying about gifts - my parents, sister, brother-in-law and I are spending the holidays in England and foregoing gifts of "things" in lieu of the gift of time together.

I won't fib here and say that this year has not "aged" my thirty-one year-old self in some ways. It has. And I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that, on the eve of Thanksgiving, I can't help but think back to the excitement of last year, to the not-yet-engaged-but-almost excitement of being with the person I thought I'd spend my life with. That some part of me does still wish she could go back and do it all again - hopefully with a happier outcome this time.

But if I did do it all again, one thing is certain. I wouldn't worry about my profiterole's "puff quotient" quite so much. Or whether the fondue was as authentically Swiss in flavor and consistency as it could be. Or whether my house was decorated like something out of the pages of House & Garden. Much like lasting relationships, these things either happen or they don't, and not usually by force. Or our own hellbent design. And when they don't, it doesn't mean that something is wrong, that you aren't worthy or valued or important or talented. It simply means that you are fortunate enough to have discovered what it means to be alive. And that is perfection all by itself.

Thanks, But No Thanks Redux

A Word About Thanksgiving and the Pursuit of Perfection
(re-posted from earlier this month)

If you've ever been accused of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses a little too often, you'll understand when I say that so many meals always seem better in anticipation and in memory than they do while they're in progress. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are good examples of this phenomenon. In fact, I'm already looking at the cover of Bon Apetite's Thanksgiving issue, mental chef's hat pulled firmly on, imagining how easily the meat will fall under the sliding knife, how the potatoes will be creamed just so, the parsnips roasted to sweet, understated perfection, the carrots like pasta al dente - still with enough of a bite, and the desserts, oh, the desserts! The glorious array of homemade-made-from-scratch-from-an-ancestor's recipe pecan and pumpkin and apple pies.

The reality, of course, will be nothing like this at all.

To start with, I'm British and therefore not technically encompassed by the holiday (though now that I have lived here long enough to acquire citizenship this is, indeed, a mere technicality). Second, however, is the small fact that because I'm British, I don't actually have pecan and pumpkin and apple pie recipes passed down from my own mother - let alone any stalwart grandmothers or great grandmothers - so I'm on my own in that department. And third, I'm not even entirely sure where I'll be spending Thanksgiving this year -- so planning a menu is a little bit of a stretch.

But no matter where I spend the holiday, one thing is relatively certain. Thanksgiving is simply one of those meals that (much like holidays themselves) builds in one's imagination throughout the year, spurred on by the early arrival of the November issues of the aforementioned Bon Apetite, Martha Stewart Living, Gourmet, Real Simple, even Oprah (word is she cooks a mean corn fritter, by the way).

And this year - as with every other year - the more I gaze adoringly at that immaculately golden-skinned turkey dressed to perfection on the cover of Bon Apetite, the more I begin to believe that I too could pull of the kind of holiday meal usually reserved for Food Network specials and the pages of J. Crew's fall catalogue. That my friends and family will gather at my table wearing coordinating chinos, tie belts, wool skirts and cashmere sweaters adorned with little brooches. That each and every dish will be prepared and on the table at the same time at the same temperature. That the meat won't be too dry or the sweet potato casserole too sweet. That the bottle of wine will have been fortuitously opened exactly at its peak and there'll be just enough leftovers - but not too many.

Yes, this is the meal I believe I can create. Not just at Thanksgiving, for that matter, but year-round - you know, for dinner parties, brunches, those "quick weeknight dinners with friends" that Nigella and Jamie and Ina are so fond of writing about. In short, I will be the living, breathing, support-staff-free embodiment of all these celeb chefs combined. My name will be synonymous with gatherings pulled from the pages of Gourmet and Food and Wine! My food will be lauded by all who taste it! I will live in a state of glorious perfection!

Or perhaps not. If I am honest, the thought of working to pull off a meal like that (a feat I've attempted on numerous occasions) is certainly enjoyable (I'm a cook, after all) but it's also grueling, hard on the blood pressure and not, as it turns out, entirely necessary. After all, my parents and friends don't care if the greens are a minute late hitting the table, and while they might make a comment about the turkey if it's dry, they're certainly not going to criticize me for refusing to match my skirt with their chinos or forgetting to chill the wine let alone open it. And while good food and good presentation go hand in hand, I'm pretty sure that when given the choice, they'd rather enjoy a few extra minutes with me than a few extra seconds admiring my stacked plating technique.

And as far as the pecan pie, well, my mother buys that at the Fresh Market.

Cat Blog Dog Blog Mod Blog

Photographs? Again???

Between the Italian Creme Cake and the Roast Lemon Ginger Chicken and an endless supply of work deadlines, well, Maggie (above) and Wellington were just plain worn out...but not so worn out that they couldn't WELCOME BACK CLARE!!!


Explore more food blogs and see more foodie pets at Eat Stuff's Weekend Cat Blogging and Sweetnicks' Weekend Dog Blogging!

Cake a Complait

Closing the Book on Italian Creme Cake (for now...)

In case you were wondering what happened to the whole Mod Girls Book Club/Italian Creme Cake saga, you can once again sleep at night!

Although pressing deadlines and a slew of new projects precluded my attendance at book club this week (after all the hype it was a little bit disappointing not to get to go)...instead, I finished the cake today as a finale to dinner with friends -- part of my "Sunday dinner revival" project.

Luckily, my taste-testers delighted in the cake -- a last-minute-moment-of-inspiration shot of espresso added to the icing proved, apparently, to be the piece de resistance, and a real cup of hot black coffee proved to be the perfect accompaniment to this rich dessert.

Even better, making this cake - and icing it - is a whole lot easier than you might imagine, not to mention great fun!

• 

What You Need for the cake...

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup Crisco
• 2 cups fine white sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 & 1/3 cup shredded coconut
• 1 cup crushed pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts
• 5 egg whites whipped until they are very stiff
• Three (3) 8-inch non-stick round cake pans
  

What You Do to make the cake...

1. Cream the butter, crisco and sugar until smooth. A food processor is great for this, as is a mixer, but you can do it by hand with a wooden spoon or with a hand-held electric whisk just as easily.
2. Add the egg yolks and vanilla.
3. Mix the flour and baking soda together with your hand (just swish the soda into the flour) then alternately add the flour and the buttermilk to the butter/sugar mixture from step one, blending well each time.
4. Once the flour and buttermilk have been added, blend in the nuts andcoconut.
5. If you're using a food processor or mixer, remove the bowl and gently fold in the egg whites by hand using a spatula. The easiest way to do this is simply to add a big dollop of egg whites at a time, then fold the cake mixture over the whites until they are mixed in but have not disappeared. You'll notice that the mixture "grows" as you add the whites, and you'll also notice a few white swirls - this is what you want.
6. Divide the batter between your three cake pans and bake on 350 for 25 minutes until done.
7. Cool the layers, wrap individually in foil and/or cling wrap and freeze overnight or until needed (not more than one week).

Note: Creating a "mise en place"(everything in place) makes this cake even easier to create - simply measure out each of the ingredients you need then put the rest away. Placing each ingredient in its own bowl on the counter not only makes the whole process go faster, it helps the kitchen stay cleaner. It also decreases the likelihood of having to interrupt the process to hunt down an ingredient, say, or whip the egg whites.

What You Need for the icing...

• 16 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 4 or 5 times 1/3 cup organic unbleached powdered sugar
• 1 demi-tasse of espresso brewed and cooled
• 1-2 handfuls of crushed nuts (use the same nuts as in the cake mixture)
• shredded coconut, whole nuts & glace cherries for decoration

What You Do to make the icing...

1. Mix the cream cheese, butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar together.
2. Add the espresso and 1 or 2 handfuls of crushed nuts.
3. Continue adding powdered sugar in 1/3 cupfuls until the icing reaches a consistency and sweetness you're happy with. The trick here is to get an icing that is thick and can hold itself together, but is "loose" enough to spread easily. Just go easy adding the sugar and remember that you can always add but you can't take away!

to ice the cake...

1. Place a sheet of parchment or wax paper on top of your cake stand, then place the first layer of cake in the center of it and spread a layer of icing across it about 1 cm or 1/8 inch thick.
2. Place the next layer on top of the iced bottom layer and repeat.

3. Place the third or "top" layer on the second layer of icing, then use the remaining icing to cover the top and sides of the cake.

4. Sprinkle crushed nuts and coconut over the cake, then decorate with whole nuts and glace cherries.
5. Refridgerate for at least an hour, then use two broad spatulas (or a "cake lifter" if you are lucky enough to have such a thing!) and gently slide out the parchment paper from underneath, leaving your cake stand clean beneath your freshly iced cake!
6. Allow about an hour for the cake to come up to room temp. before serving.

Note: Thaw the cake layers for about 30 minutes prior to icing - don't worry at all if they are still pretty cold - this will actually help the icing and the cake itself will come up to room temperature by the time you serve it. I actually put an ice pack on top of the layers I am not working with to keep them cold until I need them.

Julie/Julia ...and Me

Well, I did it. I broke down, bought Julie Powell's Julie/Julia and read it. How could I not? After all the fuss that has been made about it (not all particularly complimentary) I had to see for myself - and I make no bones about my curiousity or my lack of willpower when it comes to holding out against the double-barreled velocity of marketing and media (after all, when it comes right down to it, I'm one of those marketing/media people anyway).

But back to the book. If you can call it that. It reads like a copy of some excessively long, intermittently coherent email. Then again, I suppose that may also be appropriate given the book's origin as a blog.

The thing that frustrated me, aside from Powell's brazen narcissism and arrogantly undeserved comparisons of herself to, say, Samuel Pepys (more on that in a moment) and Julia Child herself, was her ability to denigrate philosophically beautiful acts of human existence, like cooking, learning and self-discovery, into something so disgustingly messy (not unlike the decriptions of her dust and cat-hair-blanketed apartment...). Something that, presented in combination with meandering mastications on her friends' sex lives, was at times almost viscerally unappealing.

Granted, not all cooking is beautiful - or fun. Meat preparation, for instance, can be downright primal. But somehow in her efforts to hit the reader over the head with the "deeper significance" of preparing food, she loses sight of what it's all about -- offering, instead, highly contrived, overly self-conscious commentary about brains or, as at the beginning, extracting marrow from a bone.

Now I'm no starry-eyed, rose-coloured-glasses Bergdorf Blondes-and-Nanny Diaries Modern Girl -- there's enough Bridget Jones-meets-Carrie Bradshaw cynicism in me to last a good long while -- but please, if you're going to expound upon the pleasures of food, my god can you at least be articulate about it? And try to sound as if you're enjoying yourself at least some of the time?

What Powell has created with Julie/Julia is the unfortunate result of a good idea taken too far. A blog, sure. A column? Fine. But a la Sex in the City, which did nothing in book form half as well as it did on HBO or in the Post, Julie/Julia the book suffers from a variety of ailments (perhaps Powell would call it a "syndrome"?). Not least the author's inability to write - a fact she bravely attempts to mask with allusions to as many literary and culinary greats as she can deliberately make room for - regardless, it seems, of whether or not they do anything for the book.

Case in point, the random references to the diary of Samuel Pepys, Powell's own reference to her reader as "best beloved" (a forthright self-comparison with Rudyard Kipling) and her rather bizarre effort at reconstructing the love affair between Paul and Julia Child in a secondary narrative that falls so far short of its goal the editor who let get as far as the galley stage ought to be shot -- and Powell ought never be allowed to take up fiction.

Powell's prose is contorted, long-winded and as syntactically self-serving and navel-gazing as the book itself. Not to mention so stuffed with fat (of the verbose kind) that it fairly cooks itself. And now, god forbid, she's calling herself a writer. But as I am sure she would have to agree, one recipe does not a Master of French Cooking make. And one book does not an author make.

By the way, if you just have to buy it, I'll sell you my copy at a discount. Either that, or there are probably more than a few copies lying around at your local used book store.

Bake Your Cake...

As I mentioned last week it's Modern Girl's Book Club time again. And while we usually have a food-related theme, this month's read (James Frey's A Million Little Pieces) doesn't quite lend itself to that approach, so we're going with Italian. For no particular reason at all.


It is I've decided, the perfect reason to make my first Italian Creme Cake - a most appropriate selection, I might add, since this blog evolved from the fact that I am always scrambling for something to make for book club a) on a budget and b) on normally very limited time notwithstanding the fact that I was also born without the "plan ahead" gene.

Case in point, had book club met last wednesday as originally planned, the aforementioned cake would have been sacrificed to the pressures of overdue deadlines and assignment-happy clients (not that I'm complaining - after all, they "paid" for these ingredients!).

Anyway, in an act of either defiance or pathological procrastination, today I did put a couple of deadlines aside (I'm supposed to be working on them now) to make the cake layers for Wednesday's Italian Creme Cake.

I decided to be profesh with this and actually lay out the ingredients beforehand, which made for a faster clean-up and did reduce time spent groping around for the right sort of flour etc. Other than that it didn't make much of a difference - except, of course, to make me feel even more professional. Good practice for my debut on the Food Network...(one day)....

The main challenge, between now and mid-week, is going to be not sneaking into the kitchen and nibbling at the cake layers. Which is why I think I will put them in the freezer. Well, that and the fact that I've been informed (how reliably I'm not sure) that the cake ices better (no pun intended) if the layers have been frozen. Stay tuned - I'll let you know.

Mod Note: Look for the recipe in the next post or follow the link above for a basic Italian Creme Cake recipe.