high-bar baking

I’ve officially got to catch up on these posts, because I’m starting to forget what my opinions are. And a me without opinions…. I shudder to think about it. 

Thankfully, I took notes! Even ones as terse as “yes.” ‘Nuff said. 

Also, only 1.5 tsp of baking powder in Salt Lake, and “dollop” the top half of the batter on top of the jam. Sarah says to just “top” the jam with the remaining batter, but if I made a note of it, it means that I had a damn hard time getting it to spread out. It means I got a little mad. People think baked goods are filled with love.

What world are you living in? 

My best friend loves to make pie dough. She finds the act of squishing cold butter into smaller and smaller pieces to be soothing, meditative. Fun. For the umpteenth time this week, I wish we lived in the same city, because I would outsource all that garbage to her. My unscientific hypothesis is that I hate making pie dough because I have to put a lot of force into my hands to smoosh the butter (it’s cubes, but they’re hard, frozen little suckers, ok?). And because I’m a person who carries all the tension in my body in my shoulders, they kick into overdrive to allow all the necessary force to transfer into my hands. Then my body does the confusing feedback loop thing where because a physical process is occurring, it throws the corresponding emotion at you. 

We saw this all the time in boxing. If you get popped in the nose, your eyes water. That’s how the ducts work (probably. Don’t consult me on this sort of thing, what do I know?). But for some reason, your body can’t just leave well enough alone. It reads the situation and says, “ooh, we’re crying. Ok, ok, I can work with this. We must be…. SAD! We’re sad! That’s it!” And floods your system with sadness emotion (told you, not a doctor) to explain the situation. So now you’re sobbing on a bench in The Pit trying to figure out why you’re sad when you acquitted yourself very admirably in that spar. 

Or, in my kitchen, I generate mechanical tension in my shoulders and then think that I’m emotionally stressed. Which (shockingly) I do not enjoy. 

I don’t know why you got my pie dough conspiracy there. There’s no pie crust in Sarah’s Jam Filled Doughnut Cake. It’s a good cake. Jam is yummy. No frying is required. It’s one that sneaks up on you. You think it’s nothing special, and then four slices have mysteriously disappeared. 

It uses more jam than I was expecting, so maybe save your special Carmelite nun jam for your toast and use something else here. Or don’t. Life is short. 

Eat the good jam.