Thanksgiving Memories

Here you see images of a huge failure (the Italian style squash tart with chocolate, caramel and rum that was featured in Portland Monthly last month- I almost wonder if they ever tried the recipe, it was so bad, no offense Portland Monthly!!), and some beet pickled eggs that are destined to be deviled. Those were tasty, though I found that the pickling made the eggs a little... tough. Next time I will only pickle them for one day rather than three.

Busy Day Cake

This is before I dropped it and found out it was raw in the middle. But don't worry, I just put it back in the oven in smashed pieces and let it cook a little more. Then I served it with plain whole milk yogurt and it was just delightful. From failure to dessert! No problem.

Busy Day Cake
adapted from Edna Lewis, via Orangette, tinkered with by me.

1 stick of butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract or almond extract
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of cardamom
1/2 cup cream

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy, and then add the eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Alternately add flour mix and cream to the sugar and butter mix. Don't over mix. Spoon batter into a 9 inch springform pan. Bake for 35 minutes or so.
I served it, broken, with Nancy's whole milk honey yogurt and that was my favorite part. This cake is easy and you probably have the ingredients at your house to make it right now. Go do it!

Yogurt: A Failure

I tried to make yogurt, and I fucked it up big time. It came out curdled and watery. I think I added too much starter to the milk, and I don't have a thermometer to get exact temperatures. Heres how I did it:

1 quart whole milk, 1/2 cup plain yogurt. I heated the milk until it nearly boiled, let it cool down until it was just a little warm. Then I added the yogurt (it was too much- I'm sure of it now) and put it in the yogurt maker. 8 hours later- watery. 12 hours later, watery. 20 hours later, watery. 24 hours later, I'm trying again. This time I'm only adding 2 tablespoons of yogurt as a starter, and I brought the milk very briefly to a boil.

We'll see.