Sunday, June 17, 2007



A dud.

A huge part of baking is improvising and testing out recipes, fine tuning the good ones into excellent ones and just crossing the bad ones off your list. I had some plums in the house from my produce delivery, and like apricots, I just don’t eat plums raw. It is that same thing as with apricots, the tart skin that gets me every time. I am starting to think that maybe I just don’t like tart. So, I found a recipe from this great book with a beautiful and delicious looking photo of a plum cake. It looked like a coffeecake, and the plums were juicy and oozy..almost caramel like. I decided to bake it for T’s arrival home this week.

I started to wonder if the baking goddesses were hinting at something when I discovered a LARGE spider crawling out from underneath the pages of my recipe book only to disappear into the endless wicker of my desk chair. (Three days later, and I think that he is still there) Then, the moment after I committed myself to baking the cake, I realized that I didn’t have any regular sugar in the house. (for which I subbed brown sugar) Then, when I went to melt the last of my butter, all perfectly measured out, it blew up into a fat bomb all over my microwave, giving me less than the amount that I needed. (for which I subbed olive oil)

I just wasn’t feeling it, the love, the rhythm, the good feelings when you know that you are making something that kicks a**. It was more of a ho-hum feeling. A ‘Gee, I hope this doesn’t taste terrible’ feeling. It just wasn’t looking good.

So, I shouldn’t have been at all surprised, when I pulled the cake, hot from the oven, cut myself and big wedge, and ho-hum.

It was ho-hum boring.

I suppose that it could have nothing to do with the recipe, from which I had completely strayed, but I feel hesitant to waste the time on it again, when I know that there are much better recipes in my note book, tried and true.

the cake, 4 days later. I finally threw it out.

1 comment:

amy said...

ho hum plum, i like that. too bad that cake sucked. sure it wasn't that bad. i'll eat it....

how bout plum jam next time?