Food Porn XII

“COVID Cooking”

Enough already! I can’t eat any more and there’s no space in the freezer! And yet it seems wholly appropriate that in this tapsalteerie world, I have baked an(other) upside down cake.

It came after a crumble and two batches of cookies, and before a batch of muffins. The cookies were an experiment (plus I was bored with my tea treats): a basic cookie dough adapted for GF flour was riddled with chocolate chips and peanuts, and turned out so well that Ter and I had to do another batch to ensure the recipe would work with different add-ins. Baking is a science, after all. Chemical compounds can alter the outcome of the simplest recipe if you’re not careful. The white chocolate/cranberry dough baked up perfectly, but we’ve agreed it needs a hit of orange next time (and there will be a next time!) Maybe for Christmas, because now I have a zillion cookies to munch through. Ter isn’t a sweet fan, so I’m on my own.

The corona virus has taken us through rhubarb season. And what rhubarb! The stalks Ter’s brought from the grocery store have been two feet long, and she doesn’t skimp on the number of them, either. I’ve stewed it, roasted it, frozen it, and baked it into the aforementioned crumble. It also topped the bottom of the upside down cake, liberally dosed with chopped candied ginger and delicious with a scoop of Dulce de Leche Haagen-Daaz. Admittedly, the cake still tastes a little dusty from the GF flour. I haven’t figured out how to improve on that, but perhaps next time (and there will be a next time), I’ll put the ginger in the batter rather in than the under-topping.

The muffins were going to be “rhuberry”; that is, rhubarb and blueberry, until Ter confirmed my mental yellow alert and suggested that maybe blueberries wouldn’t be the best add-in for the rhubarb-based batter. “There are strawberries in the freezer, though,” she reminded me.

Problem solved ... you’d think.

Though whole when stirred into the batter, the strawberries melted in the oven, creating chasms in the final product. I popped a muffy from the pan and it promptly fell over on the cooling rack. They ended up topside down on the rack, which is actually more appealing than the right side up. The rhubarb compote I used in the wet ingredients has made for a weird grayish hue that cries to be hidden by some form of frosting. Maybe cream cheese?

I’m not the only one in the COVID baking groove, either. I don’t frequent the grocery store by any means, but each time I’ve accompanied Ter of late, the hunt for dark brown sugar has been futile. Flour, sugar and chocolate chips have surpassed bottled water and toilet paper as the hoarder’s supply of choice.

Just as well. I need time to consume what already exists before I crank up the hotbox once more.

maybe these have in fact been somewhat nibbled