Bobulate

Well, Shaun, here’s a chocolate cake for you. it’s very similar to the pecan cake I wrote earlier — but closer to the “ultimate chocolate brownie” recipe that I based both off of.

Chocolate cake for Shaun: Mix three eggs and a cup of (brown or cane) sugar and a tsp. of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt for 10 minutes on high with an electric mixer. Alternately, show the world you’re amazingly buff with a hand whisk. Optionally add chopped nuts. Stir in 100g melted pure chocolate (that’s 4 squares in North America, I believe). Sift one and a quarter cups of flour with 2 tsp. baking powder and sir that through the wet ingredients. Pour into a 9″ round pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F or until a fork comes out clean. Frost with a mixture of icing sugar and powdered cocoa and afew drops of water (if you’re into frosting, that is).

Straightforward simple carrot cake. Still the subject of a classic joke in the Netherlands (“vies hé?”).

Non-straightforward is my latest proposal for fixing the issue of decades once and for all. Obviously the year 1 AD started on December 25th, 4 AD, as calculated by the best scholars. So 10 years later is December 25th, 14 AD. But — and this is important — on September 2nd, 1752, 11 days were skipped, so the end of the 175th decade isn’t December 25th, 1754 AD but 11 days later, on January 5th. It’s a good thing the reform of the Roman calendar under Julius Caesar was done before 1 AD, or we would have to shift by two months to compensate for the newly created January and February, as well. So remember, we can celebrate the last day of the decade in just 1460 days.

One and a half cup grated carrot. Three quarters of a cup of sugar (I use cane sugar). One tbsp. “koek en speculaaskruiden” or an equivalent mixture of cloves and cinnamon. Pinch of salt. Mix thoroughly, then stir in two eggs and half a cup of cooking oil (sunflower or corn oil). Whisk with a fork until foamy. Mix in one and a half cup self-raising flour (or plain flour 1 tsp. double-acting baking powder per cup of flour). Pour into a bread pan (what are the sizes on those things anyway?) and bake at 160C for 40 minutes or until a fork comes out clean. Frost with icing sugar and mascarpone or cream cheese.

Optionally you could add raisins or nuts, but I usually do not: the kids and neighbours don’t like them, and whenever I end up baking I make too much and give away plenty all ’round.

[[ No, wait, let’s make that the new decade’s recipes. I’m with the “convention determines usage” on the decades front: the 80s do not include 1990. Oddly enough, I side with the centuries-and-millennia from one group, so my decades and centuries don’t run in sync. I guess it’s all about the Ordinals vs. the Cardinals (weren’t they from St. Louis?) John Layt, are you going to support that feature too? ]]

So, baking. I’ve taught Mira how to crack open an egg into a bowl for baking a cake without getting bits of shell and gunk into the batter. It cost a half dozen eggs over a bunch of practice sessions, but now I can delegate that bit to her. She’ll be baking bran muffins all by herself, soon. But today we made a pecan cake which turned out really well, so I thought I’d share the recipe. This also serves as a demonstration for what you can get if you’re one of the lucky winners of the Freedom Food donation drive from the FSFE.

Pecan Cake: Mix three (3) eggs, one cup of sugar, half tsp. of salt and one tsp. vanilla extract with a hand mixer on high for about 10 minutes. Add 1 cup of chopped or whole pecans and one cup self-raising flour (maybe a tad more). Mix briefly until all blended, then in the oven at 160C for 30 minutes or until a fork comes out clean. Frost with 100g mascarpone and 100g icing sugar and 2 drops lemon juice.

See, my recipes, like my time-reckoning, use a mix of units and conventions. Basic stuff gets North American units applied, but I’ve never used an oven that didn’t have a scale in centigrade (well, except during CampKDE last year, where I baked cookies for most of the attendees, but that was .. exceptional, shall we say).