Nearly four months and counting and I am still without a kitchen. [Insert loud and forlorn sigh here.] Our two-and-a-half month home renovation has turned into almost twice the amount of scheduled time, and while I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised (I’ve heard more than a fair share of horror stories), I am having some serious symptoms of cooking withdrawal that are eerily similar to those of other on-the-wagon issues. I even looked them up! Jumpy and nervous (yikes!); shaky and anxiety ridden (ohhhh, yes); irritability and rapid emotional changes (ask my poor, flinching husband—he’ll vouch); depression (I mean really, who cares?); fatigue (yawn); difficulty with thinking clearly (what was I saying?); and bad dreams (last night’s: I opened my new oven and the door fell off and the entire appliance disintegrated into ash-—and then all my teeth fell out). So, yeah. No kitchen + no cooking = a very jumpy, shaky, anxious, cranky, exhausted, distracted, nightmare-plagued Amy. Ugh.
This funk seemed to be here to stay. So when I got an invitation to celebrate the launch of The Craft of Baking: Cakes, Cookies, & Other Sweets With Ideas for Inventing Your Own, a new cookbook on one of my very favorite kitchen activities, I nearly didn’t accept. Honestly? I feared even glancing at a recipe might hurl me into a state of weepy, wistful mush. And who wants to see that at a party? But this book was co-written by a good friend of mine, and I know how hard she and her co-author had labored on it, so off I went last night with a brave face. The worst that could happen? Maybe I shed a discreet tear into a torte. But for my awesome friend Mindy Fox, I figured I could buck up. Turned out the combination of great company and delicious treats was enough to make me forget my kitchen calamities and remember why baking is so much fun.
The party was in the fire-lit back room of the restaurant Locanda Verde, where Mindy’s co-author Karen DeMasco is the pastry chef. DeMasco is exactly the person you want baking your sweets—her sincerity and true love for her craft are as impossible to ignore as the mind-blowing deliciousness of her fresh-from-the-oven treats. Trays swirled around the room with miniature versions of Karen’s recipes from the book: crunchy-salty-sweet cashew brittle; coconut-spiked marshmallow squares; cinnamon-sugar donuts with the gentlest tweak of kosher salt; juicy, jammy concord grape pie; rich and gooey pine-nut tartlets; rounds of chocolate custard folded into deep, dark chocolate sablé dough. I am happy to report that I ate and enjoyed them all without so much as a self-indulgent sniffle.
In between the buzz of conversations, I kept hearing the same, low, pervasive hum of a sound from every section of the room: “mmmmmm.” Even an editor I was chatting with who apologetically and quietly proclaimed not to be so fond of sweets was wooed by a warm, crisp apple fritter. At one point a server stood before me with a tray of tiny, round ice-cream sandwiches in pumpkin and brown butter varieties. I plucked a pumpkin version from the tray and popped it in my mouth—it was like eating frozen, creamy, gently spicy Thanksgiving pie (and I mean that in a really, really good way). I was sighing happily when two little girls who looked like they came straight out of the Madeline series trotted up with a chaperoning man in tow. The server tipped the tray for them to see, each girl narrowing her eyes and peering dubiously at what was offered. The man standing with them bent at the waist and whispered loud enough for each to hear: “Mommy made them.” They grinned broadly and snatched a sandwich each, skittering off with their happy mouths full toward their chef coat-clad mom on the other side of the room. And this is the magic of DeMasco's recipes—they are approachable but elegant; full of homespun flavor but with the un-ignorable twist of someone whose incredible palate and knowledge of balance gives her the ability to know that the point between sweet and too sweet can make all the difference.
Before leaving, I gave Mindy a congratulatory hug, waved good-bye to Karen, and grabbed a book on my way out the door. Flipping through it on my trip home, suddenly I wasn’t feeling so mournful about my kitchen anymore. I was excited and inspired. And even though some of that may well have been complements of the sugar rush pulsing through my veins, who cares? It was the kind of high I knew I’d get to recreate soon enough.
