Viva la Torta! Fudge Torte

The most recent baked confection was an experiment of sorts. Thanks to all of those who participated in the research phase and provided such helpful feedback. What brought it on was the want to give something to my vegetarian friend as thanks for volunteering to help us out another night at the TH. Maybe like bartering - this torte for five hours of your life. Anyway.

It contains (nearly) no animal product and also no flour. I'm not sure why I went the no-flour direction, but in any case, that's how it ended up. I think it was a good choice.

So the torte is mostly legume: bean curd and lentils. Chocolate was the next important thing, and cocoa powder, a little sugar, leavening and vanilla and salt [Salt is so important! Especially in chocolate things. And especially in hot cocoa with vanilla. You must add salt.]. It baked in a spring-form pan for nearly 70 minutes in a medium oven, and when it was done it had all these deep cracks and crevices... beautiful. I covered them all in ganache, though. We tried it the next day - dense and moist and fudgey. That's when I decided it must be a torte and not a cake. The most common negative comment was that the texture was a bit mealy, but no so much that you wanted to stop eating it. [As a note, the second trial I used black-eyed peas instead of lentils, but I think the lentils may have been better. I also added ground and chopped almonds to the batter, and while I like almonds I didn't like how the bits broke up the texture.]

So all in all, I think it was a success. Hooray for experiments.

cakes - frogs - cacti

I made a ridiculous chocolate cake last night... it took me until midnight to finish, but I find the whole process very satisfying. And then I get to feed it to my dear friends. It wasn't anything fancy or unique, just really fudgey: four layers of a pretty deep and somewhat dense chocolate cake with dark ganache between layers and covering it. I had some today and found it to be a pretty intense chocolate experience. I'm not sure what it should be called; maybe the "Good-Thing-I-Didn't-Give-Up-Chocolate-for-Lent Cake."


Earlier in the day before cake I went on a long run, which was good because it was warm! But it was kind of aweful too. It was just hard, mentally and physically. There were good things in it, though, like: 1) it was sunny and warm; 2) I did run anyway, even though it was hard; AND 3) in the swampy sections before The Plains I heard MANY spring peepers (little frogs that show up early spring). I'm always surprised by them, they show up so early. They give me hope that seasons of cold and grey and seeming deadness and immobility may be the needed passage toward new seasons of warmth, of verdant places, of growth, of hope realized a little more. I really need these visible reminders in order to keep some kind of perspective when life feels bleak.

I have a Christmas Cactus - Schlumbergera x buckleyii - that is also teaching me this. I thought it was dead and broken and was a little mad about it. I wrote a silly little ditty about this experience...

---

It's been sitting
in that corner
over a year
doing nothing.

I thought
maybe the cat
had chewed the life
out of its stems -
that blasted cat -
teeth marks still
white and pocked.

I thought
maybe I didn't
pay enough attention
to its needs
for water
light
dormancy.

I read something about those things once in a book.

Hey! Aren't you supposed to flower once a year?
Ridiculous cactus.

We mainly snuck glances of disgust at each other.
Or maybe just I did.

So, you can imagine
my surprise when
rosey tapered buds
appeared.

Surely not -
not after I'd given up.

I monitored it tentatively, questioningly.

One morning I woke
to be met by
that elusive flower -
an explosion,
a dragon glowering fuschia,
a holy creature
covered in flaming tongues.

Who knew that
scaly, bracketed stems
could have such
an unexpected ending?

---

a quiet and chilly morning

many things are new. it's even a new year now, according to our calendar.

through this east window at my parents' house i see the warm of the horizon slowly grow, the leafless trees a dark mangle of lines before its deepening brightness.

i like the following poem. i don't really feel this way right now - more unanswered, sorrowed, wondering about this life-business - but i appreciate it as a hope.

-------

"Why I Wake Early"
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety -

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light -
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
(mary oliver)
-------

this week i have done two things: finished the children's book for my mom and looked at seed catalogues. the book is a story about two friends, a heron and kingfisher, who live by a river. i did all the illustrations in watercolor, and i'm really delighted by how it turned out. i also plan on binding it myself, thanks to a friend who taught me how. the seed catalogues make me even more excited than before about this year's garden... and make it hard to choose what variety of anything to grow. i want to grow bok choy, kale, and collards; green beans and shell beans; tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers (i found aji limo seeds!); zucchini and a winter squash; cucumbers for pickling, and chinese cabbage. and maybe try eggplant again. it's hard to decide.