Easter 2008

Adam and Isabelle gave us a set of beautiful antique French linen napkins. They are exquisite. Now, I do believe in using and enjoying things. Life is too short to put beautiful things away lest something happen to them. However, having had the napkins such a short period of time, and knowing gravy is part of the Easter meal, I decided to pair them with yellow napkins and suggest that the latter be used when the meal starts. Oh, I can hear the collective groans!

And, at last, a successful dessert! Good old fashioned apple cobbler.

Baking Disasters

My baking disasters started the weekend before Easter when the Rutherfords and Rachael were coming over for supper. I put together a cheesecake chock-a-block full of cream cheese and sour cream. The recipe said to bake this seemingly 20 pound monstrosity at 250 degrees F., which, on reflection, was probably a tad too low a temperature. I took it out of the oven about five minutes past the one hour mark called for in the cookbook and set it on a rack on the kitchen counter. I loosened and removed the ring around the springform pan and proceeded with kitchen cleanup. I happened to glance up a few minutes later and watched with morbid fascination as a huge crack formed down the center of the cheesecake and the front half oozed off the rack and over the counter edge. I quickly gathered up as much of the molten -lava-like batter that I could hold in two hands and had wild thoughts of reshaping and covering the entire mess with A LOT of cherry topping. The cake had more sense and simply refused to cooperate. It exited the kitchen via the recycling bin.

On Good Friday, I decided to make the Easter dinner dessert well ahead of time and chose the Rocky Road pie recipe from Epicurious.com. Dear God, what was I thinking? Pounds of layered chocolate crumbs, chocolate ice cream, marshmallow and whipping cream, melted Lindt chocolate and whipping cream and toasted walnuts later, I realized this was Death by Fat and Suger. I'd kill the dinner guests. I froze it per recipe instructions and think I will wait till we have a crowd of 200 here before slicing and serving it in tiny slivers. It looked so light, so airy, so mousse-like in the website photo...

Refusing to save myself from myself, I carried on with the baked yeast doughnut recipe that I already had underway. I am an old hand at putting together sweet dough recipes and I found a lovely photo of baked doughnuts on Elliphantom Knit's website. And sweet dough just seems so Eastery. Think of the European Easter breads that are so pretty and so traditional. The doughnuts turned out fairly well but the sugaring process was not as successful as Elliphantom's. Instead of looking and tasting as though they had been dusted by fairies with cinnamon sugar, they tasted as though they had been in a collision with a three ton truck that dropped its sugar load in the process.

On a more positive note, my knitting has vastly improved.

Hot Cross Buns On A Blustery Sunday

The results of a keep-busy project on a cold, cold Sundary are not, however, good for weight control as the temptation is there to eat them hand over fist.
As Easter approaches, I am reminded that we spent the first Sunday morning of Lent attending a Matins service at Westminister Abbey. It was just a few weeks ago but it now seems like another lifetime and another world. The grass was green in London. The daffs and crocuses were in bloom and people were sitting on the grass in St. James Park, reading books. And Sophie, in France, sent a picture this past week of her garden and how I envyed her the greenery and the long, long growing season.
Outside the kitchen window here, I will not see the knee-high ferns fully unfurled or the leaves fully out until sometime in late May or early June!

What To Do On A Bitterly Cold Sunday In March

We had a snow storm yesterday afternoon and evening. Typical of the entire winter, the snow was followed by lashings of rain, with a drop in temperature again for a freeze up that will make walking outside tricky. Today was grey and cold with the wind picking up the snow and blowing it around. A good day to cast on a red sock.

And a good day to get out the red bread bowl and set a batch of sweet dough to rise with the promise of hot cross buns by nightfall.