Treats for appetites of every size
I’ve been at my summer job for two weeks and haven’t brought in any baked goods yet. Last week I was baking for a cookout. The week before I baked for school friends who were still around. This week, I’m finally bringing something into the office: Coconut Cake.
Yesterday was hot. The kind of hot where you either need to be at the beach in close proximity to the ocean or inside in the AC – no other options. And we were having a cookout.
Sometimes, I have my first free weekend in literally months and all I want to do is bake a super time-intensive, beautiful-to-look-at, I-have-to-go-back-for-fourths treat. That was not this weekend.
Cakes seem like they have it pretty good. Always out on display in bakery windows, drawing people in. Frequently the centerpiece at special occasions. Oohed and ahhed over when they’re particularly well designed. But I’d argue that they actually get the short end of the stick when it comes to baked goods.
I really like cookbooks from famous bakeries. They always use some new technique or ratio that I never see in recipes online, and they unashamedly own their copious use butter. There’s also something nice about having a physical cookbook – crumbs get stuck in the pages, well-loved recipes open easily, you can flip through the pictures until something jumps out – you don’t get any of that online.
First day of Spring, and we’re due for a snow storm tonight. If that doesn’t perfectly capture New England weather, I don’t know what does. But that’s not going to stop me from moving forward with my lighter, more summery desserts – a week in sunny Florida definitely has me in the desserts-I-can-eat-with-a-spoon mood.
I am currently in London, watching The Queen after spending a day at Stonehenge. Obviously, I am unable to bake at the moment. So instead, I’ve decided to enlighten you all on a dessert that America is missing out on: soft serve ice cream with Flake, a Cadbury chocolate bar that takes the place of jimmies, or chocolate sprinkles. I first had this in Ireland when I was 12, and absolutely loved it. It’s actually the lightest type of ice cream dessert that I willingly eat – usually I go for flavors along the lines of cookie dough. When I …
Full disclosure: I made these on the 3rd of July, not the 3rd of August. But as I mentioned earlier, when you don’t have a staff room to drop the treats off in on Monday morning, you have to save some recipes for later if you want to save yourself from death by diabetic coma.