sweet life bakery, eugene, or

It was a craving for diner food that made my friend and I pull off the I-5 in Eugene OR. First the iPhone sent us to a creepy town across the river from Eugene, the kind of town that can only be the setting for that old fiction topic The Stranger Comes To Town. Well, we were the strangers and we rode out.

In Eugene we found a newfangled diner and purchased elaborate burger sandwiches and fried goods. Tempted by the sign on the door that read Pie Happy Hour 3:30-5 we asked out server to explain, which is how we found out about the Sweet Life Patisserie, who supplied Happy Hour pies.

thanks gina pina
It would be open till ten or eleven. We would fine a line outside the door, she assured us. And it was not to be missed! So we paid, crossed town to the bakery, and waited in a very long line. Maybe you've never been to Oregon or maybe you are one of those people who only goes to Portland, so it bears explaining here: the majority of rural Oregon has a problem with the gays. Sure, Eugene is a college town, but we'd seen neither hide nor hair of queer culture and a whole lot of fundamentalist bigot radiom and the only gay bar in Eugene had closed down 2-3 years earlier.

Once we made it into the Sweet Life we tried to decide between the gelato, chocolates, cookies, cakes, creme brulee, pies and other items. When bakeries have a lot of items I tend to get nervous, because you can't reasonably expect one chef to excel in all those areas.

I went with the mixed berry pie (blueberry, blackberry, ollalie and marion, which prompted a discussion on Marion Berry...my friend thought it was a joke) and he got the chocolate strawberry cake, basically a chocolate version of strawberry shortcake (whipped cream frosting, ganache, strawberry compote). Coffee drinks to go.

My pie was great. They heated it up for me and gave me a generous slab (for $4, I'd hope so), although they didn't offer whipped cream or anything I guess you could buy ice cream to get it a la mode. The cake was moist, the berries flavorful.

Here's what was so exciting about the Sweet Life: it offered a place for the smart kids, the geeky kids, the gay kids to go and hang out in a town that didn't seem like it had much cultural escape to offer. The cashier at the sweet life was totes gay. And the day before our visit, the Sweet Life bakery had participated in Bites for Rights, a fundraising program that donated 15% of the day's sales to Basic Rights Oregon, an equality organization.

As if being progressive on the issue of equality isn't enough of a reason to love Sweet Life, here's another:

the bakery is super conscientious of those with food allergies and dietary restrictions. Vegans and gluten-free girls, little signs in the case will tell you which products you can eat, so you don't have to hold up the line asking.

the three strikes bakery rule

When trying out a new bakery, I almost always follow the three strikes rule: no matter how I feel about something on the first visit, I'm not allowed to rule it out until I've made two more visits. There are so many variables that could affect the initial impression, ranging from my mood or the weather to an overly salty batch of dough the kitchen made or a slightly stale cookie.* I might visit with a friend and try a few items; in that case, I'll relax the rule a bit.

Last night in the Castro, I told my friend something vaguely upsetting as we were walking back from dinner. Surprising, no. Upsetting, yes. He clutched my arm and, rather than respond to what I'd been saying, demanded cake at that very moment. Let's Go Into Cafe Flore, he said, pointing at the Castro landmark.

image from aweigend.

I've been to Cafe Flore many times, and quite enjoy it for a lingering coffee with friends on a rare sunny-AND-warm San Francisco day, or for late-morning brunches. The eggs are always good, and I respect a tiny postage-stamp of a kitchen that can stay on top of their game. Over the years I've had a couple of their desserts and been lukewarm, most notably for the chocolate violet souffle cake that tastes nothing like violets. Chocolate cake does not need violets, no, not at all. So if you are going to create a violet-chocolate cake, please make sure it actually tastes like something? ok?

We skipped the cheesecake, considered the chocolate cake, and decided to share a slice of the banana foster pie.

What looked like a simple custardy confection ended up being a four-layer pie that, if slightly too sweet, was rich and creamy and perfect for sharing. Deep cookie-crumb crust got a layer of caramel, and another one of rum-vanilla custard. The pie finished with a banana cream and a caramel drizzle. The pie was one of those occasions something tastes better than it looks, the flavors rising above the ho-hum prissy bakery presentation that we all groan over. Lucky for Cafe Flore, this was my third visit.

I'm often considered a snob about food and other things, and I am, sure. That said, there's a place for the ok, the humble, the merely good. The pie was as good as some items I've had from places like Tartine and Citizen Cake. Sometimes we don't want to think that way. It helps, when paying Tartine prices, to believe you are getting the absolute best there can be. There are days when all you want is a sweet and uncomplicated piece of pie, a little sunshine, an outdoor table, and a dose of queers.


*Note to cooks and kitchenworkers: it's actually really important to taste everything you sell every day (sauces and such, maybe every 2 days, unless they're fruit-based). I've seen anglaise go bad in the squeeze bottle during a service. I've also worked at restaurants that serve, day in and out, horribly stale versions of Claudia Fleming's brownie cookies, which is not only gross but completely disrespectful.

happy thanksgiving

It's rather adorable, isn't it? My sous chef and I are going to thanksgiving at our coworker's house. She's 22 and has never cooked thanksgiving dinner on her own before. Too cute. The restaurant is pretty cute these days. Yesterday the sous chef made pumpkin pie for our chef and the night before I made flourless chocolate cake with whiskey-soaked cherries for one of the line cooks to use for a catering gig.

I've got one persimmon pudding courtesy of a Shuna Lydon recipe and gifted persimmons. One pear frangipane galette courtesy of FH. One old school trivial pursuit and a beat-up Scrabble board so we can finally get our word games on.

Thank you to all of you, you know who you are, who saved my life a dozen times Tuesday and Wednesday. Who looked at me with grace, humor, and a little compassion as I worked in and out of kitchens at all hours of the day and night, who answered my phone calls, made sure I was fed and slept, taught me new things, watched the cutie pie for me, and stood by me in general. I'll do a Thanksgiving recap later, because there are sure to be more stories and there are already so many stories I want to tell.

What is a memory worth?

What is a holiday worth?

In time, in money, in labor, in goods. Who holds the power?

I just got home from work and I'm making a cake. A Ukranian torte to be exact, commissioned by a friend of a friend. This torte has a shortbread-like "crust" and three layers of filling--applesauce, apricot and chocolate. The dough I made this morning and am baking off. I'm in between batches right now, waiting for the cake pans to cool enough so that I can re-use them. The applesauce was started this morning and is continuing to simmer down on the stove. The chocolate layer is simple and will be made tonight if I've got the energy. Tomorrow the apricot layer will be made, and the whole thing will be assembled and frosted with whipped cream. The recipe is from Comfort Food for Breakups.

I wasn't sure what to charge for it, how much considering it was for a friend of a friend, but also the week before Thanksgiving. And my time is pretty precious this month. So I costed out the recipe and names a price--not as high as I wanted, but enough to ensure I'd clear some profit after the ingredients were bought, enough to hopefully be worth the time put into it in after- or before-work hours when I'd rather be sleeping or reading a book.

I've done some commissioned baking before. My first job was a wedding cake. Three months into culinary school. I flat out told one of the grooms I couldn't do a tiered cake (when he asked why, I explained because we hadn't gotten there in school yet). We discussed cake options and he went with a white sponge cake, soaked in rum, with strawberries and vanilla buttercream. His only specification was that I incorporate the color lavender into my decorated, so I made some lavender-colored white chocolate shards and decorated the main cake (there were 3 or 4) with fresh flowers. I even bought a 2-groom decoration for the top from the cake store. I didn't know how to properly re-cream buttercream then. Back in the day.


Then I did some Thanksgiving stuff last year. Caramel apple pie, pumpkin pie, cranberry cheesecake. That was super fun when the cutie pie ate one of the pies the night before and I had to give away my only spare pie!

When you bake for commission unless you have baked that thing a hundred times, there's an element of guesswork and surprise and having things break or not work out. That wedding cake, I used new cake pans and didn't spray them well enough to get the cake out, so one of the layers fell apart. I didn't have enough time or money to make another, so I was forced to patch out a couple layers. Non-bakers might be surprised to know exactly how much their food is sometimes handled. I stayed up till 2 am working on the cake. There may have been a blizzard, it being a cold New England winter, but I can't quite remember. I was working half the time on a table my roommate had built for me out of plywood. I went to bed without having finished the decoration, got up at six am, called in sick to my job, and was shortly thereafter greeted by my roommate who was making enchiladas and fried chicken for the wedding dinner. We shared the kitchen and I finished the cakes in enough time for him to take them over to their house. The grooms were drunks and fell asleep in bed while the guests, mostly catering people we'd worked with, got drunk and raved about how the cake was the best thing Ever. It took them a month to pay me, cause I thought it's be crass to make them worry about money on the day, and when they did they stiffed me ten bucks or so.

The shortbread's baked now and the applesauce is finished. I'm getting up early again to bust out the other layers before work so when I get home I can assemble the torte and send it off with the nice Ukranian folks.

Next week is Thanksgiving and I get daily phone calls discussing various details. But in the meantime I still have a full time job to do. I think, should I have charged them more for the cake? What is my sleep worth? Should I have charged them less, considering I know them? When you factor in my shopping time, and that fact that it's closing in on one a.m. and I should be sleeping, am I treating myself as well as I should be or am I selling the experience my hands hold for too little money, because I am used to the pay scale and workload of my industry?

It's fun. It's always fun. Watching something new unfold in the oven. Making applesauce for the second time in a month and noting how the color is different this time because if different apples used.

This is really funny, too:
I got a lesson today in how to tie my apron. My chef was like, C'mere. Take It Off. Now Put It Here--Or Here. I always thought my apron was flying all over the place cause I've got a potbelly and it just doesn't want to stay up, but apparently not. She and my sous chef laughed at me. When they asked me to turn around I refused. Yeah it was funny...and I was laughing...but it made me feel like such a kid.

odds and ends

last night's word count: 363.
first sentence:I’d met Will at Pride the year before, when our tiny friend groups collided at an after-party in a house off 18th Street, and he’d been a curiosity to me then with his red-tipped ears, wash of freckles, and odd accent.

oh how I've *missed* Grey's Anatomy. Sometimes I feel like being a pastry assistant is like being one of the characters on that show. Sometimes you get to do something you are really familiar with. Sometimes you do something you've never done and it brings up questions. Sometimes you don't have the things you need, sometimes some crisis comes up at the last minute, sometimes you get a very tedious assignment. Every day is different.

Tomorrow should be routine: FH pie baking. Lots of pear poaching. Pies and pears....

word count: 1867.
first sentence:I excused myself from the Gay Mafia and made my way, tripping slightly from all the booze, to Chef.

I took the day off from cooking but I'm trying to get the energy to work up some crepe batter so I can have crepes with apple butter on Sunday morning. Mmmh. Worth the effort but only if I do it tonight because I'm working all day tomorrow. I'm thinking about a lot of things for Sunday...the library, lazy reading in Dolores Park, perhaps the Bi Rite though I swore off them, the crepes, sleeping in, sending my new piece out to journals...

Work is more crazy and more intense, but in good and challenging ways. Except for when my FH manager tries to schedule me for the week before Thanksgiving and my only response is, Oh You Can't Really *Do* That. I Have My Responsibilities To My Other Job And I Don't Know What My Hours There Will Be Yet. I'll Get It Done Somehow...Just Don't Schedule Me. Because things come up so last minute at the restaurant, at least this week. The party is booked the afternoon before, which throws off the prep list. The intriguing items from other countries linger improbably in customs until the very end of the day they are needed. The freezer breaks. I alternate between trying to think about this month and trying not to think about it. I worked for six and a half hours today and went home early but every other day this week it's been nine or ten hours, dropping in and out of kitchens.

This Thanksgiving thing seems like a rite of passage almost. Stay up all night and bake even though you already work seven shifts a week. Test the limits of your batter in the freezer and the refrigerator, see if it languishes or thrives, build your immunity to the intoxicating aroma of the whiskey pie. Test, measure, find the blanks, the variables you don't know. Today we got our first pie shells from the farm in and I groaned. Eight inch disposable shells with a border of leaves where you might expect crimped or fluted edges. These leaves are going to fall off and they're going to break and it isn't going to be my fault because that's what the dough *does*, but it's going to look bad and it's going to bother me.

On a side note I'm reading more Steve Almond stories (The Evil BB Chow collection) and I adore how he maintains such compassion toward his characters even as he's dragging them through the gutter. It's gritty and tender. Unpretentious. His landscape makes me homesick for the slush and snow, the bristled reserve, the geeky intellectual vibe of my home city. It's been a while since I've gotten out of town and I think it's about that time again, time to go somewhere and not on a bicycle.

little moments

Spend the afternoon enrobed in sunlight, the air unmoving, a little sweaty, suggestive perhaps.

Go up to the big hillside and watch the Soapbox Derby. Swoon over Elvis in his white jumpsuit with rhinestones and not care how it makes you come cross.

Discuss baking as a series of difficult decisions. When or how much or how long. Discuss the cryptic text message I know why CF lets the batter rest overnight, the joy it brought, the way to break down the process into the most tiny details. Molecules of air and water. Membranes. Creating things and breaking things down. Remember your boss by the stove the night before, the lengthy discussion of candying, how the line cook with baker envy sidled up to you later to ask what that was all about. How you watched the rinds waiting for the moment of translucency.

Sleep. Sleep in. Discuss the joys of baking again on the way up the hill, get off the phone to meet someone, watch the dance your eyes and arms and legs do. How you move around one another, how you move up the hill and down and find your way into a bar by three or so. How it's so endearing, a girl who drinks beer in the afternoons. How it shocks you for a moment when she does not know who Anthony Bourdain is. Recall the journalist who was going to look up your blog and wonder if she ever did, and if you will see her some time in the Mission.

In the backyard garden, tell all the old stories. Laugh at the most painful and familiar moments. Open yourself up to the joy of the garden, the light, this new person who you already know you will call soon. What a touch means, accidental or not. What the contradictions of language reveal. Whether in the end you have said anything at all.

Take great joy in the day. A day off. A day you wanted to spend baking and writing and cleaning the house. It is okay to be out in the afternoon. It is okay to be shirking all of your responsibilities and passions for the sunlight and good conversation and finding space for new people so that you are a little more at home here.

(The word friend is such a funny word. At what point does it become okay to use it? And how is the offer given or revoked?)

Return home buzzed and happy, get out the battery of cookbooks. Piles of apples. Graventeins, Sierra Beauty, Pink Lady maybe? There is enough butter for pie dough.

Realize that you forget to tell your friend the thing you realized about work last night as you were baking home and so you will need to talk again, and by the time you talk there will be apple pie and apple butter.

Start to clean. Start to cook. Read over the comments from your writers group on your last piece and think about moments in angles, shards, what your characters want, how their dreams or goals may resemble yours or not, how you feel inspired these days much of the time, how it makes you by turn giddy or quiet, how you realize the same thing these days over and over

and you know it

but you don't know how to do it.

cranking up the pie factory

Today was all about batch sizes. Breaking down the recipe that calls for a 20 qt. mixer into a fourth of its size to try it in the 5 qt. kitchen aid. Realizing a quart of base is not going to yield many pies and that you will be able to fit 2 quarts in the kitchen aid, though three would probably be a lil tight. Kind of like the cream cheese frosting at the cupcake shop...

I am making caramel pumpkin pie and whiskey pecan pie, both in sucree shells. Why? because sucree is the dough that will be provided to me off the farm, in 8" disposable shells. The recipes are historic (and no doubt, storied). When no one could find the farm's recipe for pumpkin pie we got the green light to use my predecessor's recipe for caramel pumpkin pie. I made it, gave some away for tasting, decided it was well meaning but boring and I certainly wouldn't take it out on a date, and tried some things to ramp it up. Better, but also going up on the size of batter in the mini tartlet shells caused them all to crack. Who would have thought an ounce could be so powerful? Today I baked them in the entremet (to use my new vocabulary word) and got nice shells. That said, it was a bitch squeezing the entremet back on prebaked shells, and definitely not for the faint of heart! And, the dough is *still* fragile beyond anyone's belief except for maybe those I gave tarts to who found lil packages of exploded good intention.

I realized it took an hour to prepare a batch that yields 24 mini tartlets, and 3 to 4 big ones (depending on which size I use). It takes so long because I've got to wait for my sugar to caramelize and then I've got to pour on all this cream (which should be infused, but the guys threw out the herbs I was drying and I just didn't feel like dealing with it today)

The whiskey pecan pie is much quicker and takes half an hour to throw together a batch of base but the process just might get you drunk. No joke. I tasted one of the dried cherries we'd been soaking in Jack Daniels and it was like a shot. Then I had to measure out my intoxicated peaches and cherries and those fumes were overpowering. And then I had to get 3 oz. of Jack for the batter, and then when I realized the entire process only yielded me 18 mini tartlets *and* didn't utilize all the space of the mixer, I made a 2 quart batch. And had to taste test the first. One square inch of pie=another shot.

I'd told my manager we needed 8 inch shells. How Am I Supposed To Know How Much Pie I Get From One Recipe If We're Not Baking Them in The Right Molds? I said during Thanksgiving meeting 2. And while she was not able to get me 8 inch shells from the farm she stopped at Safeway before work to get 4 shells and another giant bottle of Jack because I spent last week soaking 1 pound of peaches on 2c Jack and 3 pounds cherries in 6 c Jack...hence the dizzying effect of eating just one on a baker going off three hours sleep and little food.

We tasted the first batch of the whiskey pie together and after one bite my manager had a reaction that didn't entirely surprise me: This Is Not What He Made Last Year, she said.
More Fruit? More Whiskey? I asked. The recipe called for a paltry ounce of each dried fruit, which was like 6 cherries and a peach half. I hoped it was just a matter of punching up the goodies in the batter and not the recipe being entirely unlike the written recipe, and therefore lost.
Add More Stuff she declared, and she helped me dice pecans so we could get everything tossed in there to get me a batter that weight about 6 pounds and will bake one each of 7, 8, 9 in tarts and 12 perhaps minis.

So we are getting there for numbers and for quality control. Next up is timing, and how long to prebake the 8 inch shells for. Since they're made in deeper pie pans the filling takes longer to cook and getting the prebake to the same golden color as everything else means the edges will burn, which means I should probably go for anemic coloring on the prebake...Timing and product duration. Can I freeze the pumpkin filling? How long can it keep in the refrigerator?

I'll be stopping in midweek some time once I get the restaurant schedule (how lucky for me both jobs are in the same neighborhood) to test bake the product over the course of the week.

Today we were all getting in one another's way. I had mise all over the bakeshop for these pie projects and had other products cooling and my prep cook pal kept shoving it back over on my table where I'd just cleared space to fill shell. My manager kept summoning me over to try to make excel work on the computer. Secrets come out and surprises leave everyone curious and hesitant.

But there were some moments throughout the day of gratitude. Being grateful that my manager and I are on the same page concerning the Thanksgiving pie factory, that she does not want to burden me unfairly and wants foremost a good quality product delivered in a reliable timeline, and that these are exactly the things I want. That she remembered we were out of whiskey. That she found a way to get me 8 inch shells, because she understood I couldn't really be giving her accurate information without it. To my chef and my sous chef at the other job, because even though I think I would be preparing my mental mise in the same way were it not for the restaurant job, who can really say? When someone's forced patterns start to become yours in an automatic way it's hard to tell, and each time I found myself reaching for the pen holder on the left arm of my jacket hoping to find an offset there I felt somehow less alone.

A coworker and I at the restaurant were helping savory people prep party apps the other day. I was supposed to be minding the pastry station but was really just making cornets to have on hand and watching the garde manger person slowly begin to get in the weeds between the party stuff and the normal tickets. When she skittered off to the back for something I asked my coworker who was helping out with the party if we shouldn't prepare another platter of apps since there were about five lingering on a plate. I started punching flatbread circles and she got to work quenelling toppings. The cutter consigned to the job was a dented, dull pathetic lil thing and as I slammed into it with my hand I said somewhat plaintively to my coworker:

Chef Would Never Make Us Use Something Like This. And I held it out to her, so she could see.
Chef Would Never *Have* Something Like That, she countered.

And were we to even be doing something like that, we would find a way to do it more efficiently in the first place.

Sometimes it's nice to know what you have. In things or in people. What you can rely on them for. And then in turn what you owe them. I've been at FH long enough to know what I can expect to have (but the new job is still too new) but it's still great to feel backed by my manager, and like we're in accord. Fairly soon I hope to have an idea of the number of pies one person with another full time job can prepare in the off hours (what off hours, anyway? My boss just called and before asking me to run the errand she asked me to run, she was like You're Not Asleep? No {sigh}. I did not tell her that I'd just eaten dinner and spun my ice cream).

I'm looking forward to the rest of product testing. Though I am somewhat afraid of passing out due to some sort of secondhand drunkenness from that whiskey aroma. Hot damn.

Where, and how, did that recipe make its way to FH?

Lastly, per gratitude, today I saw the xmas order form and asked my manager what she was expecting xmas to entail, because (tho I didn't tell her this)I'm pretty sure it's going to be crazy with parties at the restaurant around that time. The menu items they'd listed were all farm products, same as the Thanksgiving stuff, or strange cakes my predecessor had been tasked with. Flipping through the large and disorganized binder I found strewn like lil gifts those recipes, should I need them. Generous and unexpected.

Sleepy. Working a double tomorrow. Road trip last night left me home at one am, dios mio.

plating, deeper

Last night, we had just over fifty on the books so I made sure to have twenty at least of everything on hand...and, this is dumb, did not think to replenish the stock of defrosted chocolate goodness (that needs hours, if not overnight, to come to temperature) when I took the sheet tray of 21 to the station. Never making *that* mistake again because last night was one crazy Wednesday night.

For some reason everyone was VIP that night. From some magazine or friend of the chef or whatnot, do you need a reason? No, you don't. If they weren't VIP then it was their birthday and they needed happy birthday written on their plates and I'm still working on that skill set, so I had to go off and find a coworker who could do it with more finesse.

The window would be full of tickets, the oven a sea of bake to order desserts we were trying to get out efficiently and the chef would come over needing VIP items, so I'd drop the warm desserts for my coworker to plate, bust out the VIP items, and try to rejoin the fray. Where are we? What's been fired? What do we need? We get those in the oven yet? Meanwhile more tickets coming in, tables ordering the whole menu, the chef back sending out another special item to somebody, another birthday. The supply of chocolate desserts is trickling down. I pull some more from the freezer at some point, but it's sort of a lost cause. It should have been done the night before, or when I got to work, and we're running low on our other bake to order item, too, but the dining room is fairly empty it's jut that everyone's ordering massive amounts of dessert, and what's wrong with that? That's a victory for my kind.

All in all last night we had just over fifty percent dessert sales. All of that within about two hours. I didn't actually get on the station till 8 or so. I was in the back tinkering with things. I planned to work on my chocolate handwriting and plate things as they came in...but I got out one letter H and worked straight through the next two hours until around 10:15 the last table ordered desserts and then it was time to clean everything up. I guess it's moving in that direction of intensity...time to step things up, at least the stock of what we have on hand. Great to be so busy, definitely, but was I prepared for that kind of rush on a Wednesday? No.

There's a party tonight. Tonight is another night to try to factor the rhythm of last night into the learn as we go model. There are so many decisions to be made all the time and if you hesitate at all it's no good. Running around the restaurant in search of better handwriting than mine...I could have tried, yeah, but trying for five minutes when realistically it would not have been wonderfulness would have been a waste of time. The thing to do is practice, at home or on less busy nights. Time, the most crucial resource. If my nice warm dessert has ice cream melting away because I'm calling for a runner but no one's looking then what good is any of it? If I take the dessert out to defrost at nine, what good is it? How to manage it most effectively is what we're all looking for, how to make the right decision every time, how to have your quenelle perfectly ready to come off the spoon the first time, how to anticipate the needs you might have later. The needs of your coworker and your boss. How to remember to be nice to the servers, how to get them on your side. This is all part of the plating duty.


A couple hours sleep and go to FH and continue the discussion of the Thanksgiving pie factory...then roaming around Berkeley with much discussion of food and writing.

What I forgot to say is this: it was all really quite exhilarating. And moving toward a sense that all our hard work was bearing fruit. My team, my enormous team of coworkers...we're there all the time, giving everything we have and then some, ten hands in a pretty and well-stocked kitchen. I biked home last night and called a friend, sank onto the sofa in that muddled emotional state. happy+tired+adrenaline high+humbled by mistakes.

peach pie and cutie pie

Now that I'm truly officially moving to SF and quite soon, I've got to get around to all the little easy bay things I have yet to do, or the things I love. So today I went to the Albany shoreline trail and walked lil cutie pie around, then stopped by Berkeley bowl to get stuff for dinner and pastry testing (chicken with ras el hanout, smoky eggplant puree with homemade tortilla chips, salad greens, peach leaf custards). I can't quite decide...peach leaf Bavarian or peach leaf panna cotta. I don't like panna cotta, but people do and they're certainly more trendy than the Bavarian, plus I've worked with them and there's no muss and it'd be easy to bang out and pour on top of peach caramel or peach gelee (want to do gelee...don't quite know how and fear it'd be the same cloudy consistency and pukey-orange color as the peach juice they sell at Frog Hollow). At any rate I figure I should at least know what peach leaves taste like before I muck around with them at work.

After Berkeley bowl I stopped by Sweet Adeline for the most adult chocolate chip cookie experience I've had in a long time. It was a chocolate oatmeal cookie and it was nice and gritty from the oatmeal, chewy in the middle and crispy toward the outside and I kept getting chocolate smeared all over my fingers while I drove, but it was really good. Callebaut, maybe? Not Scharffen Berger 70%, which I do enjoy.

It's too hot for eating. Even if the food is going to be really good. I get this way in the summer, all whiny and wilted.

biscuits n bernal heights

I'm moving to Bernal Heights!!

I'm going to be a stone's throw away from Tartine n BiRite n Ritual n Dolores Park n spunky hipster kids n cute ladies n punk boys. In just two weeks. In a house with a yard with avocado trees, baseball fans, lots of little dogs and a sunlit front room with my name on it. FINALLY, finally I can do other things with my free time than look for apartments. Finally I can get all the pieces of my west coast life together.

So tomorrow I'm making pie. Peach ginger pie with Frog Hollow peaches and Maura's buttery, flaky unbelievably textural dough. The dough is chilling right now.



But, biscuits. I've been trying new recipes all the time. The Frog Hollow default recipe calls for hard-cooked egg yolks sieved then added to the dough. And I don't understand what the yolks are there for...texture? Certainly not flavor profile.

So I tried Shuna's recipe at home, and they're pictured above. Because I don't have a scale here I had to convert all the measurements to cups and measuring spoons, and something was not right. When I added the cream (or crema, since the stores here have no real cream and I was too lazy to get to Albertson's) the dough got VERY liquidy. oops. So I kept adding alternating spoonfuls of AP and cornmeal and prayed...and they came out buttery-rich and perfect! I intended to make shortcakes, but really I just kept eating them warm with butter. Yum. They set the standard for biscuit improvement.



Those strawberries I'd bought just went to top my lemon verbena ice cream after macerating a while in some crushed lemon verbena leaves and sugar. Yum.



Then for work purposes I tried Emily Luchetti's shortcakes from "A Passion for Dessert." I doubled the recipe which maybe was a bad idea considering the leavening but they came out monstrously. Seriously, it was bad. Like, I cooked them for 20 minutes or so until they were brown and they'd sprung like wild. Then I took them out, cut into them when they were cool...totally raw inside. I cut them all, put them back in the oven, cooked them until they were cooked enough to be okay for consumption, and felt like a failed baker. The taste? They were okay, lemony, a little sweet. Not what I wanted. What I want is a texture-rich, buttery, slightly gritty biscuit that isn't too sweet. Kind of like those really great biscuits from Grandma Max's on the road in Kansas, which were possibly microwaved and from a mix, but were damn fine especially after a dozen hours of driving. Oh, I miss driving. And Boston, and decent summer weather.

Here are the bad Luchetti biscuits.











This week I'm giving David Lebovitz's another try for cornmeal biscuits.

I've put out a call for biscuit recipes to my coworkers. Keeping up the hard work, earning my scars.