Let Them Eat Cake

Maria, playing with salt dough.  Her apron was a gift that Donnie bought during his trip to Assisi. He bought a matching one for me :)

Maria has a long-standing interest in cake. Not that she has eaten many cakes in her life (until recently). We think it began last summer when she saw an older neighbor girl making "cakes" in the sandbox by our building.  Whatever it was that sparked the interest, eating cake and making cake have been recurring subjects in Maria's imaginative play.  When my parents gave Donnie some Ideal Blox, for his birthday back in November, she commandeered them and made pyramid cakes. Later in the winter, she stripped off her legwarmers to make legwarmer cakes.  Our experiments with playdough and salt dough all led to more cakes.  Some kids makes cities.  Maria makes cakes.

So it was that in late May, while scouring the shelves of our lovely, but expensive local toy store for Maria's birthday gift, I latched onto this little set.   The set includes of three mini-discs stackers, where the discs represent cake layers. The child experiments with different ordering of the layers to come up with new confections. The layers are wood and felt, but the end results resemble the exquisite creations on display at the patisseries in town.  The set seemed a little pricey for a bit of play food, but I justified the expense, saying that not only would this be a beloved toy, but a souvenir of France.

The purchase was a good one.  Maria has enjoyed this toy and still comes to me, holding out one of her creations, "Mommy, a cake for you."

Maria's birthday cake set, along with play baked goods made from salt dough

In this way, Maria had been thinking of cake and building "cakes", but her interest in real baking took off during our visit to the US.  Maria and Muschi made muffins almost every morning, to the delight of all. And once we transferred over to the Sheehys, Maria "helped" Meme and Colleen in several baking projects.

Returning to France, we've been met with a series of unseasonably cold, wet days. Baking has turned out to be a great way of keeping Maria occupied and everyone in good spirits. We've made cookies. We've made several rounds of rhubarb cake.  One afternoon, we made salt dough and rounded out Maria's  inventory of play food by adding croissants, a baguette, a boule, and a number of brioche buns.  For me and my little toaster oven, this qualifies as a streak.

And then, last week, I began reading Bringing Up Bebe, a book that has been making the rounds in the Anglophone playgroup we attend.  Bringing Up Bebe explores the differences between French and Anglo-American parenting styles, and highlights the positive aspects of the French approach.  It was with  pleasure that I learned that family baking sessions are a weekly or bi-weekly ritual for French families.  The author sees baking as one of the ways French families encourage their children to develop patience and self control:

All this baking doesn't just make lot of cakes. It also teaches kids how to control themselves. With its orderly measuring and sequencing of ingredients, baking is a perfect lesson in patience. So is the fact that Franch families don't devour the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven, as I would do. They typically bake in the morning or early afternoon, then wait and eat the cake or muffins as a gouter --the French afternoon snack.

The gouter (pronounced "goo-tay") is a facet of French life that we'd already come to enjoy.   It's less of what we tend to think of as a snack--which in my mind has a rather informal connotation.  It's more of an established mini-meal, at least for children.  It's my understanding the gouter is when many of the luxuriant, flour-rich sweets come into play: cookies, cakes, crepes, chocolate-stuffed croissants, pastries, madelines, etc.   Boxes of cookies come printed with chirpy serving recommendations:  "four cookies + half a mango + a cup of milk = a balanced gouter!"

I love that in French eating culture has a special, ritualized place for this type foods, where they take center stage and are not tacked on the end of a complicated meal.  If the French are any indication, giving cake its due place on the weekly menu--if not daily menu--seems to encourage moderation.

So I'm delighted to find that Maria and I have happened upon a pastime that ties in with an aspect of French dining culture.  I'm looking forward to trying the carrot cake we baked yesterday during today's gouter.  Yes, it's lovely to eat cake.  Now the challenge is not over-doing it...

Maria enjoying her apricot and rhubarb yogurt cake

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Pamela Druckerman writes that the first cake French children learn to bake is gateau au yaourt, or Yogurt cake.  Yogurt is added, then the empty yoghurt tub is used in lieu of a measuring cup.  The recipe is simple and forgiving--very nice for young children.  We've made it once, adding fresh apricots and chopped rhubarb to the basic batter.   

Gateau au Yaourt (Yogurt Cake) from Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bebe

2 tubs plain whole-milk yogurt (the individual portion-sized tubs, about 175 g/ 6oz)
2 eggs
2 tubs sugar (or just one, depending on how sweet you like it)
1 tsp vanilla essence
just under 1 tub vegetable oil
4 tubs plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Use vegetable oil to grease a 9-inch round pan (or a loaf tin).

Gently combine the yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil. In a separate bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to wet ingreidents; mix gently until combined--don't over-mix!
You can add 2 tubs fozen berries, a tub of chocolate hcips, or any flavouring you like. Cook for 35 minutes, then 5 minutes more if it doesn't pass the knife test. It should be almost crispy on the outside, but springy on the inside. Let it cool. The cake is delicious served with tea and a dollop of creme fraiche.

Notes

Last Sunday I finished my first knitting project. It's a collar for Maria to wear in lieu of a scarf. (Those little scarfs do get awfully tight around little necks!) I'm grateful that it turned out to be a wearable garments. There were moments when I thought I probably out to unravel it and start again. When I started, I was in a bit of a frenzy to make something and didn't consult any patterns or instructions. I did most of it in the stockinette stitch, which means that the edges are all bumpy, but I think it ended up working.

There's a little loop of elastic that goes around the button flower and holds it together.

My friend Eva taught me how to cast on, knit, and purl---I'm indebted to her for starting me in what will hopefully become a lifelong hobby. By the way, Eva gave birth to a beautiful baby boy about 12 hours before these pictures were taken. Little Conor is destined for a well-dressed life wearing his mama's beautiful knitting!


Sunday evening, we had Moirin and the Wrights over for dinner. Dinner was grilled flank steak with homemade flatbread with green chutney.

I have little expertise in dealing with large cuts of meat (for budget reasons, we usually stick to chicken thighs and ground beef), but there's a marinade recipe that I'm very fond of. The marinate is a bright green and has a wonderful tangy, herby smell. It makes the preparation almost as pleasurable as the eating!

On Monday, Maria and I joined Lynn and Gracie for some strawberry picking. The strawberries were pretty sparse--we filled about half of the containers we took before the girls needed to stop--but they were oh so sweet and delicately textured. It was hard work, but very satisfying. Berry picking is such a wonderful summer rite! I'm grateful that Lynn asked us along. It was a long trip and we wouldn't have done it on our own.

A little update on Maria. She's been doing a lot of talking. Lately, she has been particularly enthusiastic about the words "button" and "bottle." She's been stringing words together and forming questions "Where da choo choo ball?" (she has a ball with Thomas the Tank Engine on it), and likes pointing out when something is wet ("Mama hand all wet"= Mama's hands are all wet) or finished ("Dada bre all done" = Dad is all done with his food). She's also gotten pretty good at jumping. Now, when she's particularly happy about something, she'll give a little hop to express her pleasure. It's such a joy to see these little developments!

The Innocence of the Vegetarian Kitchen

I subscribe to two excellent cooking magazines, Cooks Illustrated and Fine Cooking. These two publications refine existing recipes, improving the resulting dish or streamlining the procedure for efficiency. I've made "foolproof yellow cake" and "extra crispy roast chicken" and had success with time-savers like "30 minute Tandoor Chicken" and "Improved Freezer Lasagna." While the precision and ambition of such recipes are inspiring, I sometimes pine for my early forays into cooking, before I came under such exacting influences.

I learned to cook during my junior and senior years of college, when I lived, cooked, and ate at the Vegetarian co-op at Princeton University. It was a rare cooking day when one was able to follow a recipe, let alone think about improving it.

First there was the absence of meat; none was allowed in the kitchen*. Those of us new to vegetarian cooking quickly learned how to soften textured vegetable protein and replace chicken and pork with tofu, tempe or seitan. But replacing meat wasn't the only hurdle; the co-op welcomed members with tough dietary restrictions--vegans (modern day ascetics) and people with all manner of food allergies. It was the spirit of the co-op to provide for those with special needs, so we dutifully concocted onion free, garlic free, mushroom free, and vegan versions of our dishes.

There was also the matter of raw materials--the students who ordered the groceries chose items based on price, nutritional value, and environmental friendliness . We rarely saw white flour-- whole-wheat pastry flour was the preferred replacement. Our legumes came dried in bulk, and we usually had only one or two kind of cheese on hand. While our diet consisted mostly of vegetables, some types rarely made an appearance because of their price--fresh tomatoes for instance, and stone fruit. On the other hand, there were times when we were overrun with beets or eggplant, or butternut squash.

Finally, there were the other cooks. You might arrive at your cooking session to discover that another student had commandeered the pasta you needed. Or you might come determined to make a soup and find that two other members of your group had the same determination.

Under these constraints, cooking became something of a flying leap. Improvisation was the norm. Cinnamon rolls turned into cheese rolls. Homemade eggs noodles were swapped for spaghetti. Cheese cake was made from tofu.

There were some notable failures. I dreaded the appearance of eggplant on the grocery list, as almost no one knew how to cook it. Beets were almost as bad. At one point a zeal for cardamon swept through the co-op and it could be tasted in almost everything, from the lentil stew to the cookies.

But aside from these set-backs, we ate remarkably well. Menus could be uneven and dishes might not achieve the desired texture and taste, but dinners were exciting and usually nutritious. And there was something about the novelty that comes from having so many cooks in the kitchen. One person specialized in making refined vegan deserts while another made terrific Indian dahls. One took on baking bread like an addiction. Another added turmeric to almost everything, making her work identifiable by its bright yellow color. We knew our fellow members by the food they made--which turned out to be as good a way as any and better than most.






*a group meeting was once called because a member drained a can of tuna fish into the sink. The member left the co-op.