I love the idea of stuffed mushrooms: savory, bite-sized morsels that you can serve at a party. Love the fact that they spare no parts of mushrooms, since the stems are chopped and sautéed to stuff inside the bowl-shaped undersides. But I rarely love the outcome: bland-tasting, greyish-colored, and lacking in texture.
I had an I-Can’t-Believe-I-Made-That moment when this cake slipped out of the new bundt pan. Its surface was like a helmet of crisp, melted sugar; it hit its final destination of a plate with a slight spring. A wave of warm, buttery caramel, with citrus and spruce filled my nostrils. It looked like an Art Deco sculpture of sorts. It was a real moment of victory. And I can’t wait for it to happen to you, hopefully, too.
I once ordered a stack of “harvest pancakes” from the menu of a small diner. They came to my table beautifully browned, light and fluffy, and studded with dried, sweetened cranberries and kernels of canned corn. Well, it’s “harvest time” now, and instead of reaching for these preserved legacies of previous ones, I’ll make use of the fresh bounty, with tart cranberries just in season and sweet corn on its last ears of the year.