While muddling about in the kitchen this Advent season, it suddenly occurred to me that we needed to start our Christmas baking.
Immediately panicked and designated this week Baking Week. The kids and I baked for five solid days non-stop. That is to say that I baked during every waking minute that wasn't spent on errands, chauffeuring kids somewhere, cooking meals or laundry, and the kids chipped in to help when they were home from school. Baking Week this year was quite the mega-activity, carried out in lieu of the usual random Christmas crafts that the kids have now completely outgrown. We decided that making obscene amounts of treats and packing them into pretty boxes to deliver to friends, neighbors and teachers was much more fun. And tasty.
To kick off Baking Week, I attempted -yet again - the very temperamental semolina (sugee) cake. I've baked it before here in Minnesota, as has mum when she visited us some summers ago. But in spite of following our original recipe, we both failed (and Mum never fails) at reproducing the texture and taste that characterize this delicacy in Singapore. We decided that some translation had to happen between ingredients in making a North American version of a Singaporean/commonwealth recipe.
Which meant experimenting. And producing some very odd-tasting interim products before even approaching what I was looking for. There were so many variables, all of which varied independently of every other variable, and randomly!
For instance, the butter. Which I've analyzed to death in the past, so let's just move on. Then there's the sugar - differently sweet and different-sized crystals. We use slightly coarser granulated sugar from sugar beets here in the US; we use the much finer cane sugar called caster sugar back in Singapore. Next, we don't seem to have this elusive deep yellow paste-like baking aid known as emulsifier in the US (or maybe I just haven't looked hard enough) that stabilizes cakes. And the eggs! How can one even begin the guess at the differences in multi-continental poultry?
The sugee cake page in my recipe book is plastered with mini post-it notes full of notes written to myself: "Increase butter from 10 oz to 13 oz", "Add 2 oz sugar and 1/2 tsp salt", "Too eggy - decrease number of egg yolks to 6 but keep same egg whites" and even "Use lowest rack and increase oven temp by 5 degree and bake half an hour less". Invaluable, those notes, because months go by before each subsequent experiment and I forget what went wrong or right the last time.
Well. On Monday, I made a sugee cake that tasted as close to home as it will ever be. Finally. It's practically a brand new recipe by the time all the conversions and adjustments had been made. It still sank a little in the middle, which means the next time around, I will have to try a differently-shaped pan or else work the batter less. But there was no separation of layers this time, which sometimes happens when one is working with flour as dense as semolina, mixed with the heavy ground almond bits. Hurrah.
And the flavor! Buttery. Almondy. Grindy and moist and sweet and salty. I have eaten almost the entire cake by myself. I had to forcibly freeze the last quarter of it, just to feel like I'd attempted some self-control.
Today, on the last day of Baking Week, I made banana bread. Lots of little loaf pans of it. It is ridiculous how easy it is to bake these no-fail cakes/sweet breads by comparison. A person could do it with ice-cold eggs and frozen butter and scooping random amounts of flour with one's hands and feet and it would all still work. No skill required. I love baking stuff like this!
And now, I must put trays of white chocolate macadamia nut cranberry (what a mouthful) cookies in the oven and make frosting for sugar cookies which the girls can work on after school. And with that declare Baking Week, bookended by two very different kinds of cake, over. The tally: 9 different cookies and 2 cakes (one of which is almost all gone - burp).
This weekend, we assemble treat boxes!
