« Kaisla has the right idea.... »

I'm having a Calgon[tm] week. I need a massage. I need two extra arms. I need one of those fancy console setups like you see in the movies. I need an email client that reads my mind and doesn't gloat over the bazillion email in my inbox. I need a good night's sleep. I need a mind control ray that explodes people through the power of teh intarweb. I need clowns. More clowns. I need a housekeeper like Alice from the Brady Bunch. I need a week alone. Or even a couple of hours. I need donuts. Real donuts. Maple glazed old fashioned donuts. I need more dark chocolate. And I need a better bag to wear over my head. Preferably one that behaves like a mini-faraday cage.

« Young lovers. :) »

I gave the teachers at Kaisla's daycare one of the Lomo actionsamplers for a few days for fun just to see what they might come up with. The film was a bit too slow as it needs 800ASA and I think I only had a roll of 400ASA in the fridge, but the pictures were fun and goofy, just like this one where Kaisla and another boy are leaning in for a kiss. Soon, she'll be dating.

Now that Kaisla has started talking, it has been a lot of fun figuring out what she is saying as it is a tiny glimpse into what she's thinking. I also get an opportunity to amuse myself as I did last night where she pointed at a tabloid in the grocery check-out line and exclaimed, "Daddy!" I giggled and told her that while Gil Grissom or Colin Firth would be far more my type than Brad Pitt, I think I would have remembered having spent enough time with Brad to have given her cause to call him Daddy. She then started doing the same routine to the young and reasonably attractive guy behind us in the line which made him shift his weight and look at his shoes. I smiled at her and said that it wasn't nice to accuse random men of being her father as it makes them uncomfortable while trying to quickly remember if they were too drunk at some point to have actually fathered a child. The guy looked up and smiled and Kaisla offered him some of her snack. I was entertained.

She has also become rather enamoured of the word "pizza" as they serve cheese pizza one day per week for lunch at her daycare. I need to dress her in a toga and offer her services to the ad agency that does the "pizza! pizza!" commercials. Of course, when she says it really loudly in the grocery, I start feeling sheepish like I'm an unfit mother who hasn't cooked a proper meal for her child and feed her only pizza. Then I stop in the middle of the aisle and wonder what in the fuck am I thinking, her next word will be "take-away" and I'll paste a few monkey stickers on the delivery menus, make them into a little book and start teaching her how to order Thai and Pho for dinner! LARB GAI! PAD THAI! A brilliant solution to the time and expense of grocery shopping, not to mention all the wasted food that gets lost between the need for variety and our limited capacity to consume it all in a short amount of time. No cooking. No dishes. No mess. Child fed. Problem solved.

One fascination I have about her furious pace of language acquisition is in wondering what algorithm she uses to select which words are preferred in English and which are preferred in Finnish. She still says "kiitos" instead of "thank you" and cookie is a funny mashup of "kakku (cake)" and "cookie". She knows her alphabet, but some letters she prefers to pronounce in the Finnish style which, when it comes to the vowels, can be very confusing since I never did get them straight because, for example, I sounds like E. She has special affection for the letter Y, the letter M and the number 9.

Is is unsurprising that many of the words relate directly to people and food because these are basic needs in every life, young or old. Language is so important to learn and to learn to use effectively as so many things depend on it. Having spent time in an environment where the language was completely unfamiliar I have, perhaps, an appreciation for what it feels like to be trying to acquire a language and the frustration and isolation that comes with failed attempts to communicate. She has the advantage of having a brain optimised for acquiring language. I don't speak down to her at all by altering my vocabulary and she appears to understand quite a lot even though she can only speak a small fraction of the language she already knows.

The more I observe her, the more I am convinced that we adults are merely toddlers with baggage in aging bodies. :)

« Kaisla selects a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch. »

Kaisla turned two years old on Wednesday much to my disbelief that so much time has passed since she was born and I became someone I had never imagined I would; a mother. The first year was a blur of sleep-deprived disorientation as nothing could have prepared me for the transition to such a drastically different identity. I kept wondering if or how I would survive the demands of such a small creature on the days where I would walk to the local Starbucks and the bookshop next door just to keep myself moving and awake. Two years.

Two years. So many things have happened in two solar years. I left Finland just before she was born. I don't know that I'll ever be able to plumb the depths of life in Finland, but I can offer that it was a life-changing experience both for better and for worse. I wrote things here whilst I was in Finland to keep my mind moving and to keep it from dwelling on things that would not help me escape my despair. Writing is both an outlet and a discipline which can help organise your thoughts and set them free in ways a pen and post-it notes pasted around your office cannot. I can scribble "Diapers" and remember to buy some the next time I'm shopping, but to attach "Reinvent yourself - Stat" to my console on a little yellow bit of paper doesn't really get the job done. I started a blog at work, but it's not really the place to wax philosophical about such personal things and this will be a bit abnormally personal and a bit more scattered than usual. On the upside, there will be a cookie recipe arriving soon.

One thing about parenthood that I've noticed is that it makes you think about your own childhood and your life in general. I remember dumb things, like the time I became very adamant at a tender age wanting to know just what "afternoon delight" meant in the goofy, faux-folksy song from the 70s by the same name and my father and sisters giggling made me even more determined to know. Years later, I would call my mother from a London Pub to inform her of my epiphany in finally figuring out what said delight was all about. I was supposedly a very gifted child but, clearly, not so gifted in deciphering such things as human relations. And I worry what tiny, insignificant detail my own child will remember and cherish as she grows older.

The holidays are always an especially difficult time for me as there was the wonderful cookie baking tradition in our family where we would bake about 40 different kinds of cookies for my mother's patients and just about anyone who would eat them. Food is love. Certain aromas and music posess the power to transport me back to those wonderful moments of making cookies with mom. But then there would be her dark moods. One year, that 5'8", 115 pound, mad German woman lifted the christmas tree - lights, ornaments, and base - all by herself and chucked it out the front door. I will always remember standing behind her, astonished and afraid. We would continue to have a rather tense relationship and I remain sad that we didn't have time to quite patch things up before she died as I was always in awe of her. As I've gotten older, and especially now that I've had a child, I understand some of her conflicts, her anger and her resentment towards my rather carefree joie de vivre, but she was a hard woman to love. I often worry that I am becoming too much like her.

My father, on the other hand, was impossible not to love. He was a soft-spoken, gregarious Englishman who was an electrical engineer with a love of radios. We would watch Mission Impossible together, build Heathkit radios together, play chess together and generally got along terribly well. I'll never forget his parental conflict at watching me detonate a homemade explosive with a radio-controlled detonator as he was proud of my accomplishment but freaked that mom might find out. We covered up the evidence and agreed never to talk about it. :) He died 11 years ago last week and I have never stopped missing him nor fully recovered from the loss. I often worry that I am not enough like him.

It's an interesting journey through the mind reflecting upon your life, both where you've been and where you think you'd like to go. I returned to the ranks of the working in August, something I considered rather carefully before deciding to jump back into the game, and I feel like I'm slowly coming back to life after so many years of being dormant and after making a few bad choices after leaving BBN. Few places could compare to the demands, expectations and the talent pool at BBN, but this comes reasonably close. It has been a struggle mustering the mental discipline to deal with a challenging job in the wake of so many years of letting myself go and the sleep-deprivation that only a young child could provide. Nothing makes a person dumber faster than an extreme lack of sleep. But I feel like I'm on the upside of the curve.

I'm struggling with figuring out how to be a mom and be a valuable contributor to an interesting project at the same time. It breaks my heart when the daycare calls me, as they did Friday, to tell me that my baby had been both bitten by another child (on the arse! WTF?!) and peed on the potty for the first time. I'm conflicted, but at the same time I think she's in the right place and so am I. She has been as independent as her mother since she was an infant and being a SAHM just wouldn't be enough for me. I stayed with her for almost two years and I often hope that I'm making the right choices. The vulnerability in motherhood can, at times, be overwhelming.

« The original HFB in younger days thinking very naughty thoughts at the behest of the photographer, hence the goofy smirk. »

I ran across this photo in my filing cabinet lurking between two folders. The shock of seeing myself staring back at me from 16 or so years was a jolt to my senses. I had to sit down as the memory was immediate and vivid along with the realisation of who I used to be and whom I have become. The girl in the picture is the original HappyFunBall (HFB), named so after friends found the SNL short to have amusing similarities to she of the spontaneous whim and unpredictible reaction. She would play melancholy jazz on the baby grand piano in her flat and drink whisky with the windows open on hot summer nights and draw a small crowd from the neighbourhood escaping the heat of their own flats on the lawn outside. She had a boyfriend who made her toes curl on the first kiss and whom she should have dumped long before she did but the mindblowingly delicious chemistry in bed forgave so much...until he got the 19-year old lab tech pregnant. She used to wear a bowler hat, ride horses, tend bar and harvest eyes for corneas for an organ bank. She got nailed doing 135mph in a Saab SPG, but managed to get off with a warning instead of going to prison. She....she did a lot of crazy, stupid and fun things. She is HFB. Her head would have exploded if you had told her she would be a mother someday.

But, she is a stranger to the present me. I am no longer deserving of the HFB title from so long ago. I'm trying to get back a few pieces of her like her passion, her vivacity which are, at present, mere embers compared to the roaring flames they once were. I keep thinking about what I'd like Kaisla to remember of me after she has grown and I hope that she thinks of my sense of humour, my affability and my child-like curiosity fondly as these are the things that have not changed and will likely remain even after I figure out who I want to be now that I'm over the hill.

Kaisla is two and I'm two plus forty so I have a bit of a head start on her in figuring out who and what I want to be when I grow up...I hope.

« Kaisla sleeps through her first meeting and photo with Santa, a cherished holiday tradition in the US. »

After what seemed like an eternity in limbo we finally moved into a house on Friday. It has been a long, stressful journey from packing and selling the house in Helsinki beginning in early September, my mother dying rather unexpectedly about the same time, living in a Residence Inn for two months, buying a car and driving in MA again, searching for a suitable home and buying one, not to mention being pregnant, giving birth and dealing with a newborn throughout the process. I think Jarkko and I have managed to squeeze in every major life event other than marriage and our own deaths into the past three months. Finding ourselves in a house filled with boxes of stuff that had been savaged by the US Customs/Homeland Security Department and the movers and a box springs too large to fit up the stairs was the crowning touch. I think I would be having a nervous breakdown presently if two of my sisters weren't coming to help us get settled in next week as it's nearly impossible to do anything with a baby who is frequently hungry and insists on being held by me most of the time.

And it is the holidays. People generally go bonkers around this time of year even without all the added extra stress. We had to go by the Home Depot hardware store yesterday for a few things and that was a shopping nightmare bar none given the crazed last minute holiday shoppers driving around in their SUVs.

All things considered though it has all gone remarkably well. The staff at the Residence Inn were so incredible to us that I find myself actually missing being there and my early morning coffee, newspaper and chat with the guy at the desk. Our real estate agent who, after we backed out of the first house we made an offer on, made sure we got the second one and has just been terrific all around. Friends here who saved our unprepared asses by lending us a few essentials for the baby since I went into the hospital the day we got the car and were planning on shopping for a few things for the yet-to-be-born Kaisla. And the neighbours who dropped by to welcome us to our new house and neighbourhood with chocolates, flowers and an adorable "Welcome to your new home" artwork from one of their toddlers. It's a bit overwhelming coming from Finland where many neighbours never said hello and avoided eye contact even after four years of living there. I don't know how to thank all these people enough. Even in the best situation, moving at this point was an insane proposition and I can't imagine how much more unpleasant it would have been without them.

Someday Kaisla may ask what it was like when she was born and we'll both probably glance at each other with a "where do we begin" look and show her the picture of her sleeping through her first visit with Santa. We took her to the mall to wait in line for an hour and I just kept looking at her in the pram sleeping so peacefully wishing for a less chaotic moment in our lives so we could really enjoy the fleeting time when she is so small. Hopefully things will quiet down now and life will return to some semblance of normal in a month or three.

Happy Holidays/Festivus/Christmas/Whatever and Happy New Year to each and all.

« Maybe this will explain what I've been doing for the last 10 months :) »

After 10 months of baking, we have a new dish: Kaisla. :) One of the first things to go when tired is the ability to string words together into sentences and complete thoughts so I haven't been doing much in the way of writing here or replying to email. To those who have sent email, please accept my apologies as I think about replying to the backlog every day and somehow manage to fail most of the time. Sleep deprivation is my constant companion. :)

In addition to the fun that comes with being host to a parasitic growth who takes over the space your vital organs once enjoyed, we also moved back to the US since Jarkko got a great job offer and though I had mixed feelings about returning I was happy to leave Finland. At some point I may elaborate on why I was, and still am, happy with our new location. Everything happened so fast that we barely had time to pull up stakes and say good-bye to everyone. We flew out of Helsinki only days before I wouldn't have been allowed to fly anymore so there wasn't a lot of time for much outside of moving and getting moved.

It is rather strange being back in the US, all the little things like the sucktastic mobile network and stone age banking system that you forget about when you leave, but living in Finland has made me appreciate being back home in ways I never would have expected. In spite of the terrible state of US politics, the people are so incredibly friendly ( in MA! ) which is both annoying and wonderful at the same time.

I'll likely be baking again once we move into our new house next week and I splurge on a Wolf stove I've been dreaming about for a long while. I will try not to gush too often over the baby, but I also swore I wouldn't buy her anything pink or cute and look how well that worked out. I suppose I'll have to go to Germany to find little black baby clothes and Docs for toddlers.

So...we're alive, well and back in the Hub. And soon I may try to form complex thoughts and sentences and put them here and possibly some pictures, too. Until then, you might find me in the aisles of the internet gushing over cute baby stuff that Kaisla is too young for but I get all squishy over anyway. Hormones. Fear them. :)

« Fire Island »

The Da Vinci Code has managed to sell an incredible number of copies in the past few years though I must be one of the very few people on the planet who have not purchased or read the book. Over Easter weekend, we watched a 2-hour special on the fact and fiction of the premise of the book largely because there was nothing else worth watching and the teaser mentioned something about the Catholic church being a bit pissed off about the whole thing. If the Pope is upset, it must be worth watching at least once. It was interesting to see just how far people are willing to go to believe something that is either ridiculous or highly improbable. Since then, there have been two other special programs on the National Geographic Channel's "Secret Bible Week" about the Templars and the apocalypse. And, now that the movie has been released, there are a whole slew of programs with Dan Brown and talking heads trying to look scholarly and thoughtful while thinking about what's for dinner tonight.

Having been through Catholic schools and a Jesuit University, I remain a recovering Catholic but retain some sense of humour at the thought of the Church getting its hackles up over a third-rate novel written by an author whose earlier books were not very popular or critically acclaimed. Throughout the centuries, the church has remained rather touchy about being reminded of its bloody past. The premise that Jesus and Mary Mag were married and had a daughter is entirely plausible, if not probable, but where the suspension of disbelief enters the picture is where Mary and the child disappear without a trace after the crucifixion well before there was a Catholic church whose misogyny their existence might cause problems for. The whole quest for the Holy Grail, a.k.a. Graal in Medieval literature, becomes the search for the lost bloodline of Jesus? I think the UFO abductees have more proof of LGM probing their anal cavities than the idea that the Holy Graal was in fact Jesus' long lost daughter whose descendants became the Merovingian bloodline 300-400 AD. Well, ok, maybe Jesus having a sex life instead of spending a few decades as a human male without jerking off or never having an erection is a little more credible than alien anal probes. There is no parish named "Our Lord of the Blue Balls", is there? I rest my case.

Then there is the idea that the Templars were the guardians of the secret that Jesus and Mary had a daughter and the subsequent bloodline. The Templars have been accused of just about everything imaginable given that a lack of information about something leads to a whole range of crap that people fill the gaps with. Now it is speculated that the Masons are the modern successors of the Templars after they were eradicated in 1307. Trying to imbue Masons with so much mystery is, well, amusing. My grandparents were Masons and every damn Christmas I had to get dressed up and be a bearer of gifts in some cult-like ceremony where each point on a giant 5-point star had some old prune in a different shade of chiffon sitting in a chair waiting for me to arrive after the appropriate incantation. I just figured that it was a social club much like their bridge club where everyone was ancient and had lots of time to kill. Creepy? Yes. Cultish? Yes. Mysterious? No.

Now the movie is out and, wow, what a boring three hour movie it is. Given the choice of what few decent movies seem to be around these days, it was either MI:III or DVC. There are a few amusing parts like the latin speaking killer albino monk and the Soprano cast of Vatican white guys trying to snuff the good guys. I mean, in the 70s when The Exorcist came out the Church had reasonably good grounds to get huffy and ban the movie, thereby ensuring its timeless popularity, as it was based on a true story and involved the arcane practice of exorcism which only the Jesuits in St. Louis seemed willing to attempt in defiance of the Vatican. The Exorcist also had a fabulous score with lots of the scary apocalyptic choir music so often associated with evil or doom whereas I can't even remember if there was any score in DVC. It provided Halloween costume ideas for years and years afterwards, too. What are kids supposed to do now, get into genealogy and trace their family back to French nobility? Boring. With The Da Vinci Code the whole story is fictional, even if parts of it might be plausible. It's not like Dan Brown inserted bits about Jesus preferring his right had to jerk himself off claiming them as fact thus refuting the long cherished belief that every sperm is sacred and that masturbation causes blindness. Think of the chaos that would cause amongst the faithful. What's so blasphemous in suggesting that this son of god guy might have been a regular Joe?

One would think that, after all these years, the Church would have figured out that there is no such thing as bad publicity and that by banning something it nearly guarantees that it will be an international success. Even in Finland, where they wisely ran off the Catholics early on, the movie has been sold out for much of the last week or two and I don't think it's because Tom Hanks is considered a hottie here. I'm sure Dan Brown is thanking the Pope and all the other religious freaks in a huff about the movie every time he looks at his rapidly swelling bank account.

Maybe it's time I wrote the novel about Jesus' wild teenage years and sexual coming of age, Jesus is Coming!.

And those with 10 minutes to kill will enjoy giggling at, The Albino Code, which is both shorter and cheaper than DVC. :)

« A flourless chocolate cake that goes by the name Chocolate Decadence ore Chocolate Nemesis. It could also be called The Dark Slab. :) »

I've been baking lately, but I've been too distracted and lazy to write about it as once I get home from work and walk the dog, I begin the slow drift of falling asleep on the sofa. I've been working my way through the same book for over a week now, too. Largesse is my middle name. Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. :)

In my spate of baking ennui, I noticed a friend had tried to make a chocolate cake with disappointing results. With a name like 'Chocolate Nemesis', I was curious and started poking around on the net and was amazed to find that this single recipe was responsible for countless angst-filled laments about wasted expensive chocolates and ruined dinner party desserts. This cake has four ingredients, how could people go so consistently wrong and not lynch the authors of the recipe/cookbook? Good question.

It is a flourless chocolate cake in its most basic form and, while you need to follow the directions carefully, this is likely one of the easiest cakes you can possibly make. I consulted my hefty tome of pastry and found a recipe almost precisely like the one causing all the flopped cakes except that it didn't call for overbeating the eggs, fleshed out little details like buttering the pan and lining it with baking paper and, most importantly, it included the all-important refrigeration. It has to be cold to set firmly for removing from the cake form and cutting.

So, no nemesis, just a rich chocolate cake that is easy, easy, easy to make. Take no shit from bad cookbooks and bad recipes, especially ones that seem to circulate around the net like wildfire. When you read through a recipe, it should have enough detail so that you aren't asking questions like what pan to use or how much water, etc. If you have more than one item left in doubt, keep looking for a better recipe. Bad cookbooks with bad, untested recipes really should get sent straight back to the publisher with a pointed critique as they keep on churning out these lame cookbooks as though they are completely unaware that some folks might actually try cook something from them. It's a pet peeve of mine.

Chocolate Decadence, a.k.a. Chocolate Nemesis

Makes: 1 10-in/25cm cake with 8-16 servings
Time: 20 minutes prep + 30-40 mins bake + 2-8 hours refrigeration
Source: The Professional Pastry Chef

• 7 oz or 200g sweet dark chocolate (70% cacao)*
• 7 oz or 200g unsweetened chocolate (85%+ cacao)*
• 3/4 cup or 150ml water
• 6 oz or 170g granulated sugar
• 2.25 sticks or 255g butter, room temperature
• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 3 oz or or 85g granulated sugar

1. Generously butter the inside of a round 10-inch/25cm cake pan or springform pan. Cut baking paper to fit in the bottom of the cake pan, place on the bottom and butter the top of the paper as well. Set pan aside.
2. Chop chocolate into small pieces and place on a sheet of baking paper. Slice butter into small pieces, too, and place on baking paper.
3. In a saucepan big enough to hold the chocolate and butter, bring the water and 170g of sugar to a boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat and quickly stir in the chocolate until it is completely melted and smooth. Add the butter and stir in until melted and the mixture is again smooth. Set aside and allow to cool until it is only warm to the touch.
4. In a large bowl, whip the eggs with the 85g of sugar at high speed until it is light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Do not whip the eggs as you would for a sponge cake as too much air will make the cake dry, crumbly and difficult to slice. Slowly pour the cool or warm melted chocolate into the egg mixture. Try to pour it down the side of the bowl and not directly onto the egg mixture. Mix together gently and well.
5. Pour mixture into prepared pan and carefully place it into a pan filled with a small amount of water and add water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. If you use a springform pan, wrap the pan in a layer of aluminum foil to prevent leaking.
6. Bake immediately at 175C/350F for about 30-40 minutes or until the top feels firm. Be careful not to overbake the cake. Allow the cake to cool for an hour and then refrigerate for a minimum of two hours or, even better, overnight.
7. To remove the cake from the pan place in a shallow pan of warm water and run a knife carefully around the edge. Invert onto a plate and gently tap around the top if it is slow to unmold. Remove the pan and carefully peel off the baking paper. If you used a springform, run a warm knife around the edge, remove the band, place a plate on top of the cake and flip over onto the plate. Remove the bottom and then remove the baking paper on top.
8. Using a thin, sharp knife dipped in hot water, slice the cake while it is cold and allow to warm up before serving. Serve with a raspberry or strawberry sauce/puree and sour cream.

* You can also just use 400g/14oz of 70% semi-sweet/bittersweet dark chocolate instead.

« A creepy anthropomorphic representative of the two most popular foods in Finland; sausage and catsup. »

I noticed a lot of the foodie folks have recently been reading and commenting on Julia Child's new book, My Life in France. I had to wait a month for the book to arrive by slow boat before I could read my copy. The food aspect of Julia's life never really interested me as I've always regarded French food as too heavy, too rich, too gamey, too full of itself and drowning in sauces. Instead, I wanted to read her story as an expat since I was always intrigued by her obvious presence and character from the first time I saw her cooking show on PBS so many decades ago. It seems doubtful that people tuned in to make French food in the 1970s, a time when velveeta cheese balls and bundt cakes were all the rage, but who could resist a woman who cooked with such flair and drank from the sherry bottle as she cooked? And the light, high voice from a 6'2" amazonian woman bidding her audience "Bon Appétit" at the end of every show was also strangely endearing.

Julia was 36 when she left the US to live in France, just as I was 36 when I came to live in Finland. Although Julia had the advantage of being part of the US consular machine which provides quite a network of advantages for the expat when compared to the spouse who expatriates without an organization to support them, I found her experiences familiar. I was particularly jealous of her claim to becoming fluent in French within a year of arrival, something I attribute to French being a romance language, and I wondered how she might have fared with Finnish. But, like her, learning all the food words first for reading menus and grocery shopping was a priority for me.

She, too, was a liberal living outside the US in a time of political discontent back home; McCarthyism. It is interesting that she mentions that McCarthy was largely supported by "Texas oil millionaires." So much, yet so little, has changed over the decades. And, too, she became somewhat alienated from her family because she held such radically different political views. Her father was a staunch Republican who supported McCarthy and thought that the leftist college professors and socialists in Europe had brainwashed his daughter. She wrote a letter in defense of several accused professors at Smith (her alma mater) who had fallen into the path of the McCarthy witch hunt that is remarkably current and patriotic:

In Russia today, as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in the United States... I respectfully suggest that you are doing both your college and your country a disservice... In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due process of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.

Aside from her going from mere consumer to gourmet in four years, her decision to take on the cookbook project and the attention to every detail she lavished upon it from verifying authenticity to American kitchen equivalents to fool-proofing the recipes was a surprise. So few cookbooks these days bother to test their recipes much less give a damn whether the ingredients are readily available to their target audience. I completely understood her desire to make French cooking as authentic and as easy as possible using what would be reasonably available in the local American grocery. Few cooks who have never left the borders of their own country can appreciate how frustrating it is to cook elsewhere when many of the ingredients simply aren't available. Try making Kraft mac&cheese with franks (often mocked by those who have never eaten it :) or green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup or anything with velveeta or marshmallows or Helmann's mayo, etc. in Finland and you'll be left with an empty plate. Even basic things like sour cream and buttermilk have to be substituted for which is only done by trial and error. Her diligence saved a lot of cooks the frustration that only the expat can truly understand.

One particular story in the book went into great detail about her determination to perfect the recipe for crusty French bread. At first I read the recommendation about using an asbestos tile as a baking stone and gasped given that asbestos was public health enemy number one in the 1970s, but later she mentions the panic she and Knopf had when the news about asbestos first came out and how they switched to ceramic tiles just before she was to do the baguette show on TV complete with footage of her baking with an artisanal baker in France.

The only part of the book that left me wanting was how little of her she really allowed the reader to see. We get a few glimpses here and there of how her collaboration with Simone "Simca" Beck was turbulent at times, but these are rather breezy and don't really tell us what was really going on. Clearly she was a very bright, colourful, vivacious, driven perfectionist, but that's all we really get to know of her in this book. There was one particular quote that made me smile amidst all of her effusive comments about French food and how much she loved France that confirmed that she was still real, still American.

In the meantime, we'd be going back the the US for a couple of months of home leave... I couldn't wait to see them and get my feet on US soil. But what I really looked forward to was eating an honest-to-goodness American steak!

So, I may reconsider my years of avoiding her cookbooks now that I know she put so much effort into perfecting each recipe for the average American cook. I had always admired her as an entertaining TV chef, but I have a new respect for her cookbooks.

« Delicious and chewy chocolate caramel turtle brownies. »

While trying to come up with something to make for Easter to supplement my annual pitiful attempt at making pasha/pashka, I found a recipe for some dark chocolate turtle brownies that immediately trumped all the other possibilities if only because I used to eat turtles by the box and haven't had any since I left the US. I don't remember if turtle candies were very popular in New England, but in the Midwest, they are a classic staple. Chocolate coated caramel with nuts is tough to argue with in terms of taste and texture.

When I went hunting for the origin of turtles it was somewhat surprising that the only useful clue was from the linguist list archives where Barry Popik, the resident food word hunter for the OED in NYC, had found the first citation for turtles. Finally, I found that DeMet's, the original maker of turtles in Chicago, had been sold to Nestlé in 1988.

DeMet's Turtles was introduced in the early 1920s by Rowntree DeMet's Inc. An employee at the chocolate factory remarked that the new candy, with pecans protruding from its side, looked like a turtle. The name stuck. Nestlé acquired Rowntree DeMet's Inc. in 1988. In January 1996 the name changed to NESTLÉ® TURTLES.

The current turtles don't look like the ones I remember devouring limb by limb as a kid since you can't see the four pecan halves poking out from beneath the mound of chocolate coated caramel which looked like legs and lent the confection the appearance of a turtle. I suppose you'll just have to use your imagination.

Turtle brownies sounded too good to pass up and, after eating half of a batch of them I can vouch for their crack-like addictiveness for the chewy, nutty and dark chocolate brownie lover. The caramel is just heavenly on top, too. The brownie batter is quick and easy, but the caramel should be approached with care and preparation since it isn't difficult to make, but it can be a bit scary for the first-time cook. Use a deep sauce pan if you have one and when the caramelized sugar is ready for the addition of the cream, pour in a small amount at a time while vigorously whisking as it bubbles and spatters from the extreme heat. It will be smooth and spatter-free by the last addition of cream. Those not adventurous enough to make their own can likely use a bag of Brach's caramels (in the US), melted and poured on top although it won't taste quite the same as a batch of fresh caramel.

Ultimate Turtle Brownies 

Makes: 25 (1 1/2-inch-square or 3.8 cm-square) Brownies
Time: Prep time - about 30 minutes + 30 min bake time and 3 hours cooling time
Source: CI, May 2006

Caramel

• 1/4 cup or 0,60 dl heavy cream plus 2 additional tablespoons
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt 
• 1/4 cup or 0,60 dl water 
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup 
• 1 1/4 cups or 250g sugar
• 2 tablespoons or 28g unsalted butter 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Brownies

• 1 stick or 113g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 4 ounces or 113g bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 2 ounces ore 56g unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 3/4 cup or 106g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup or 198g sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt 
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
• 2/3 cup or ~78g chopped pecans
• 1/3 cup or 0,75dl semisweet chocolate chips (optional)

Garnish

• 25 pecan halves, toasted

 

1. For the caramel: Combine cream and salt in small bowl; stir well to dissolve salt. Combine water and corn syrup in heavy-bottomed 2- to 3-quart saucepan; pour sugar into center of saucepan, taking care not to let sugar granules touch sides of pan. Gently stir with clean spatula to moisten sugar thoroughly. Cover and bring to boil over medium-high heat; cook, covered and without stirring, until sugar is completely dissolved and liquid is clear, 3 to 5 minutes. Uncover and continue to cook, without stirring, until bubbles show faint golden color, 3 to 5 minutes more. Reduce heat to medium-low. Continue to cook (swirling occasionally) until caramel is light amber and registers about 360F/182C degrees on candy or instant-read thermometer, 1 to 3 minutes longer. Remove saucepan from heat and carefully add cream in small doses to center of pan; stir with whisk or spatula (mixture will bubble and steam vigorously) until cream is fully incorporated and bubbling subsides. Stir in butter and vanilla until combined; transfer caramel to glass bowl or measuring cup and allow to cool.
2. For the brownies: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; heat oven to 325F/162C degrees. Butter a 9-in/23cm square pan and line bottom and sides with baking paper or greased foil, leaving excess to overhang pan sides to allow for easy removal for slicing brownies later.
3. Melt butter and bittersweet and unsweetened chocolates in medium heatproof bowl set over saucepan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally, until smooth and combined; set aside to cool slightly. Meanwhile, whisk together flour and baking powder in small bowl; set aside. When chocolate has cooled slightly, whisk eggs in large bowl to combine; add sugar, salt, and vanilla and whisk until incorporated. Add melted chocolate mixture to egg mixture; whisk until homogenous. Add flour mixture; stir with rubber spatula until almost combined. Add chopped pecans and chocolate chips (if using); mix until incorporated and no flour streaks remain.
4. Distribute half of brownie batter in prepared baking pan, spreading in even layer. Drizzle scant 1/4 cup or 0,60dl caramel over batter. Drop remaining batter in large mounds over caramel layer; spread evenly and into corners of pan with rubber spatula. Drizzle additional scant 1/4 cup or 0,60dl caramel over top. Using tip of butter knife, swirl caramel and batter. Bake brownies until toothpick inserted into center comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool brownies in pan on wire rack to room temperature, about 1 1/2 hours.
5. Heat remaining caramel (about 3/4 cup or 1,75dl) in microwave until warm and pourable but still thick (do not boil), 45 to 60 seconds, stirring once or twice; pour caramel over brownies. Using spatula, spread caramel to cover surface. Refrigerate brownies, uncovered, at least 2 hours.
6. Using baking paper or foil extensions, lift brownies from baking pan, loosening sides with paring knife, if needed. Using chef's knife, cut brownies into 25 evenly sized squares. Press a pecan half onto surface of each brownie. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

« A birch tree afflicted by a parasitic fungus that causes massive branching which looks like bird's nests. »

I would always think that the dense bunches of branches in the birch trees were simply bird's nests whenever I would see a tree dotted with dark balls of branches and it was only recently that I found out that it is actually a fungus, Taphrina Betulina, that stimulates growth of the branches to form these "witches' brooms" or tuulenpesä (wind's nest).

Overall, Easter was a lazy four-day weekend where watching lots of disaster porn on the National Geographic channel made me wonder if they have been franchised by FOX. Where did all the interesting cultural documentaries go to? Canal+ must have had some sadist setting up the weekend schedule with the most boring movies of all time that they've already shown fifty times in the past month. There isn't a whole lot to do around these parts when you don't leave town and everything is closed for four days. I think the US would cease to function in two days without anything open for business except the 7-11 and QT.

At least Amazon was open for shopping with a few interesting new titles.

• The Twinkies Cookbook: An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection from Hostess - Cooking with....twinkies. It's such an unlikely book that I have to get a copy just for the fun of looking at the recipes and pictures. Why not a book on science projects you can do with twinkies, such as freezing them in liquid nitrogen and launching them at other kids using a slingshot? (they smart pretty badly) We never did figure out what the filling was made out of even after putting it through a mass spec. Some speculate that the formula was brought to earth by aliens. :)
• The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science - The 16th century was a tumultuous time for free thinkers and scholars. A history of Paracelsus has the potential to be a really interesting read.
• Sweet and Low: A Family Story - A dark memoir about the family empire behind the pink packet of saccharine that may teach other such families to never disinherit the ones who know how to write well. :)

« The noble beast, Otava, watches a ferry push through the sea ice. »

These days, I think the dead lead more thrilling lives than I do as, other than sleeping, eating and going to work, I've just not had the energy to do much of anything in the past few weeks. The highlight of my day is walking Otava and going to the puppy park where it can get pretty 'exciting' now that it's spring. I think much of the hormonal fervor is due to a very large percentage of both male and female pet dogs are not neutered/spayed in Finland as they are in the US. I'm not sure if it is an issue of cost or an issue of people wishing to breed their pets, but I don't remember HB going this berzerk with the twice-yearly rush of hormones. I mean, what do you do when your enormous dog jumps the fence to rumble with a male dog of similar size whom he used to play with rather well and then cowers at a dachshund who is snarling and biting at him? It's spring, even though it's snowing to beat the band.

What's the deal with Helsinki real estate prices lately? One 80-ish sq. meter attic apartment is asking 650,000 euro. It's not in a jugend building or anything fancy like that and the tiny circa 1930s lift doesn't even go up to the floor the apartment is on. I just cannot fathom who is buying these fantastically overvalued apartments on salaries that are, on average, well below 50,000 euro per year (before taxes). It makes me wonder if and when a real estate 'correction' will come as either the prices will fall thereby decreasing equity overnight or the interest rates will rise (you can't get a 15-30 year fixed rate in Finland) and there will be a lot of sales and foreclosures for those who purchased at the limit of their available cash. Even for those who could afford to buy these overpriced places with cash, why do it?

One bit of deeply depressing reading over the weekend was a Seymour Hersh column, The Iran Plan, in The New Yorker. I suppose I had given myself some comfort thinking that the US was either smart enough not to or fiscally unable to consider invading Iran but this piece makes me want to buy a bunker somewhere far, far away from the Middle East and Israel. Too many wackos pushing for the apocalypse with fingers on the button. What ever happened to the checks and balances that would prevent this sort of insanity?

On the bright side, Douglas Coupland will be releasing a new book, JPod (Microserfs 2.0) in Mid-May. Supposedly Microserfs meets the Google generation. I loved Microserfs so this should be an equally entertaining read. The book's website also mentions a 'special edition' of the book that is boxed, signed and packaged with a special editon of cube figures, presumeably of the characters from the book. I wonder why the book hasn't gotten more publicity as I only found it while browsing the humour section of Amazon.co.uk and it was on the 6th or 7th page of the upcoming titles.

« Mämmi frozen yogurt. (Those unfamiliar with mämmi might read "Warm Cowpies".) »

Mämmi is that pre-digested-looking substance that rarely finds friends outside of the native Finnish population. It's a pity, really, as once you get past the way it looks it's delicious. It's like the browner, less chocolatey, more viscous cousin of Whoppers. I've often thought that mämmi is a perfect substance to use as an ingredient in other things given its unappetizing looks and distinctive flavour. It usually is only available around Easter, but with some creativity, it could be enjoyed all year long.

Last year, Jarkko, Arabella and I left work early to visit the Häme fair in order to try mämmi ice cream. I couldn't wait to try it and I was totally crushed when it was all gone by the time we arrived. I vowed that I'd make my own if I had to since I thought it was a brilliant idea to take the mämmi and the cream it is traditionally served with and make it into a frozen dessert.

Two months ago I went in search of an ice cream machine and, after sizing up the very few models available in the shops downtown, went with the smallest and cheapest model; the Braun. I can't say that I'm impressed with the performance, but it works and produces a manageable amount of ice cream in a short amount of time. It's a pain in the ass to stick the tub in the freezer for 24-hours before I want to make ice cream and the stirring paddle is suspiciously flimsy but, given the choice between a 350eur Italian model vs. a 40eur Braun, I can't really complain that I didn't get what I paid for. I have fond memories of the old hand crank variety that used ice and rock salt, but I don't honestly remember if it made better ice cream or not. Now that I have spoken critically of the Braun, it will promptly break the next time I try to use it. :)

I first tried a recipe for mämmijäätelö I found on MTV3 (that is now lamentably gone) that was a cooked custard base of milk, cream, sugar and 8 egg yolks. There are a lot of recipes that simply use vanilla ice cream with mämmi mixed in, but really good store-bought vanilla ice cream is hard to find and it's much more fun to make your own. It tasted terrific but it was a bit too heavy. What about frozen yogurt? Yogurt is very popular but I've been somewhat surprised at the limited popularity of frozen yogurt, especially given that it is often much lower in fat than ice cream. I went looking for a frozen yogurt recipe, but nothing really fit with what I wanted so I sort of made one from various ideas I liked in several recipes. What results is something that tastes a bit like a light version of a malted milk shake for those who are old enough to remember what a malt is. After making this stuff I wonder why Valio yogurt hasn't introduced a mämmi-flavoured yogurt before or maybe the Valio Bar in Kämppi could consider offering a mämmi milk shake during Easter and beyond.

The Kymppi Company who is a major producer of this brown malty goodness offer a bunch of mämmi recipes on their website (or a free booklet if you write to kymppi@kymppi.laihianmallas.fi and request a copy). Some of them, like the mämmi shot, are...not so inviting, but the letut and muffins look good. Kymppi also hosts the mämmi eating contest in Toijala, but they only hold it every other year so perhaps in the off years of the eating contest they could host a mämmi bake-off to inspire people to cook/bake with mämmi throughout the year.

Behold the power of mämmi! :) Hmm...I wonder if it tastes good with cheese.

Mämmi Frozen Yogurt

Makes: about 1 litre/4 cups
Time: about an hour, including the ice cream maker

• 170g or 6oz granulated sugar
• 80ml or 1/3 cup light syrup
• juice from one large orange
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 litre or 4 1/4 cups unflavoured yogurt (whole or low-fat), drained
• zest from one large orange
• 300g naturally sweetened mämmi (you can use the sweetened kind, too, but you may want to adjust the amount of granulated sugar.)

1. Pour yogurt into a sieve lined with cheesecloth and place over a bowl to drain. Allow to drain for a few hours or until it loses about 1/3 to 1/2 its volume. (note: low-fat yogurt will yield much more water than whole-fat yogurt)
2. In a saucepan, bring the syrup, orange juice and half of the sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Boil for 1 minute and remove from heat.
3. Beat the egg yolks lightly and stir in a small amount of the hot syrup to temper the yolks. Add the remaining syrup and let cool to room temperature. Stir in orange zest.
4. Whip egg whites until they are foamy. Gradually add the remaining half of the sugar and whip to stiff peaks.
5. Pour the drained yogurt into a bowl and whisk in the syrup and egg yolk mixture until smooth. Whisk in mämmi until smooth and evenly distributed. Fold in egg foam with a spatula. (At this point you can cover the yogurt and refrigerate it for up to 24 hours to allow the flavour to 'mature' before processing it into frozen yogurt.)
6. Process in an ice cream freezer according to directions.

« In the absence of actual spring we have to pretend. »

In spite of the animals behaving as though it is spring and the return of the retarded turning the clocks forward at a latitude where it does little good in either direction, it's snowing and still cold in Helsinki while it's nearly 80F back home. I don't mind winter, but after more than six months of darkness and cold, I'd like the warm weather to hurry its ass up before the dark and the cold return. It's hard not to wonder if it's going to be a year without a summer while watching it snow on the second day of April.

I've been sick as a dog all last week and this weekend. I'm constantly nauseated, tired, unable to sleep well and have been mostly just sitting on the sofa staring into space wishing I could sleep and that my stomach would find something better to do. Even looking at pictures of food makes my stomach flip flop. Being sick along with the crappy weather as well as finding out that there won't be a mämmi eating contest this year has put me in a rather glum mood. In a desperate attempt to cheer myself up, I ran the logs from the web server through an analyzer and was quite entertained by some of the search phrases. Aside from altogether too many 'porn', 'naked' and 'sex' queries attached to various combinations of words, there were a lot of odd weather folklore and scary cooking questions. Some were just plain odd.

• jello wrestling and customer service in philadelphia - Uh...how do these go together and how did google think that this web site was what they might be looking for?
• the boss beer drunk pictures powerpoint - Nothing like having a powerpoint slide of your drunk boss ready for Monday's meeting.
• see n say penis - a new toy for kids?
• do i look like a people person magnet - on the internet nobody knows you're a dog
• zit cake recipe - eew. I suppose something with pink marzipan and whipped cream could work.
• cookie dough and anal leakage - if ever there were two things that didn't belong together, this might be them.
• forbidden secrets egyptian method of penis enlargement - they remove it, wrap it until it's larger than an elephant dick and stick it in a canopic jar.
• description of mr potato head as the ideal man - only if he comes with a dildo attachment
• flour salt oil sugar water baking powder make rear big fat ass? - yes
• a recent survey discovered people who text with right hand masterbate[sic] - So what do the lefties do?
• banana peel used as floorwax - What?
• how the fuck do you use a caulking gun - Very, very carefully.
• is it true that blackstrap molasses help to regain color in grey hair - no
• satan was seen building a snowman - Hell is a cold, dark place people.
• what material make up chicken feet and how to make it crispy for food - Who cares? Just deep fry it in oil and it'll be finger lickin' good!
• prunes for constipation how to use - Insert 5 of them rectally and wait.
• something funny or unusual about the culture of tallinn estonia - They have great candied nuts.
• can i used vegetable oil with my fleshlight? - Uh....sure, guy.
• can heroin be emulsified in gasoline - You gotta wonder where that question is going.
• pugs life span with a smoker in the house - longer than the smoker unless the pug shreds the smoker's cigs.
• how to make raspberry buns with children - children aren't nearly as sweet as raspberries so puree as you would with berries and add extra sugar.
• what recreational activites does north dakota enjoy during the months december through february? - drinking, fucking and sleeping. In that order.

And here's one just for Ignatz: John Waters' no smoking in this theatre leader from 1983. Ah, the memories. :)

Note to self - Pinhole Day 2006 is 30 April this year. Just in time for Vappu.

« Pīrāgi, tasty pork, onion and caraway filled Latvian dumplings. »

I've suddenly found myself on a dumpling kick and am going around the Baltic for a variety of tasty examples. When we were in Latvia last year, we had a plate of these pīrāgi which were peppery and, surprisingly, contained caraway seed. I grew up with caraway since it is a regular feature in German foods like pumpernickel bread. Caraway, in spite of it being common in Latvian and Estonian dishes, is largely absent from Finnish and Swedish cooking. Also there is a bit of linguistic confusion in Swedish, which spread to Finnish, as the word 'kummin' in Swedish and 'kumina' in Finnish can be used for both caraway and cumin which are two different spices. Again, much linguistic comedy ensues as Jarkko says, "Cumin?", and I say, "No, caraway.", which leads to about 20 minutes of my finding pictures and descriptions on the net of caraway and trying to explain how it is different from cumin. As it happens, caraway is sold as 'kumina' and cumin is known as 'juustokumina' (cheese cumin/caraway) in Finland. Why there isn't a completely separate word for cumin is rather curious.

Although the filling is similar to the Swedish kroppkakor, but uses yeast dough instead of a potato dough. The dough is a really tight dough, meaning that the gluten makes it difficult to roll, cut and form the dough since it is constantly springing back. There are products that are called 'dough relaxers' or 'dough enhancers' that were made for just this kind of dough as they break down some of the gluten so that it's not so springy. Without dough relaxer you simply have to roll out the dough and leave it for a few minutes to relax before you cut the dough. Also use the egg wash to help seal the dumplings as they do tend to pop open if not firmly sealed.

Pīrāgi

Makes: about 24 dumplings
Time: about 2 hours
Source: Latvian Institute

Dough:

• 2.5dl or 1 cup whole milk
• 25g cake yeast
• 25g or .90oz sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 500g or 17.5oz all-purpose flour
• 75g or 5 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

Filling:

• 4 slices of bacon, diced
• 250g or 9oz ham, grated
• 1 large onion, diced
• black pepper
• 1 teaspoon caraway seed

1. For the filling: Chop onion and bacon and fry in a skillet with a tablespoon or two of olive oil or butter until the onions have softened. Grate ham into the skillet and continue to cook while adding black pepper and caraway seeds. Set aside and allow to cool.
2. For the dough: Warm milk in the microwave for about 1 minute until it reaches about 40C/105F. Crumble yeast into the milk and stir until dissolved. Add sugar, salt and egg, mixing well. Add flour gradually to milk until dough forms a soft ball. Knead in melted butter until it is absorbed into the dough. Place dough into a clean, lightly greased bowl and cover with a clean dishtowel or plastic wrap. Place in a warm spot until the dough has doubled in volume.
3. When the dough has doubled, remove it from the bowl and divide it into two pieces. Roll the dough thinly and use a 3.5-inch/9cm or 4-inch/10cm round biscuit cutter to cut the dough. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of filling into the center of each circle of dough, moisten one half of the dough edge with egg wash, fold the dough in half and seal it firmly with your fingers or by pressing it together with a fork. Place the dumplings on a greased or baking paper lined baking sheet, brush each with egg wash and bake in a 375F/190C oven for about 15 minutes. Cool and serve with mustard.

« Hummingbird cake with cream cheese frosting and dried pineapple flowers. (yes, that's really a flower made from pineapple.) »

Since work has been making for long days at the office, seemingly the only thing I can do that's remotely interesting, aside from rant about the various unpleasantries of my current project, is bake which I put a lot more thought and enthusiasm into than may be readily apparent or wise to admit to. It's still snowing like hell here so there are worse things than staying indoors while waiting for winter to finally bugger off.

One of the more appealing parts of finding recipes and making them is researching the history behind them as well as learning new methods or techniques. Also, I enjoy making the traditional local foods as a way to get to know the culture, but reversing that and inflicting non-fennicized versions of American foods on my colleagues is both entertaining and, at times, mystifying when they don't receive something as well as I was convinced they might. It's a neverending learning process. :)

Pineapple and banana have been frequent additions to Finnish desserts and main dishes for quite a few decades now, almost to the point of being a bit of a cliché. Pineapple is popular. Really popular. So, I was thinking I'd find a cake recipe with banana and pineapple from the US and see if it would be tasty or find out if their popularity might be limited just to Finnish cakes. I found something called Hummingbird Cake, a cake that I'd never heard of in spite of quite a few sources on the internet claiming that this cake is among the 10 most popular in the US. The cake originally appeared in Southern Living Magazine, a popular magazine throughout the US in spite of the name, in 1978. There doesn't seem to be an authoritative source as to where it might have come from before the magazine published the recipe though The Food Timeline does a good job of gathering what little is known.

I suspect that the name has everything to do with how very, very sweet this cake is as well as the tropical fruits it contains. One of my colleagues spent five years living in Chicago and returned to Finland late last year and we often compare notes on our perceptions of the US and of Finland. Perhaps one of the most interesting things that both of us noticed and agree on is the Finnish sweet tooth. Candies, sweets and cakes, both of us agree, have a much higher profile in daily life than they do in the US or, at least, the part of the US that both of us have spent the greatest amount of time in; the Midwest. There have been various articles in the Helsingin Sanomat in the past few years that also tend to support this observation in that the amount of sugar consumed per capita has skyrocketed in the past few decades, possibly due to the plenitude and availability of candy. My colleagues all really liked the cake and so I had that warm fuzzy feeling of choosing/guessing well.

The cake and the frosting are easy to make, but the pineapple flowers really are a beautiful addition if you have the time and patience for them. The flowers would really be perfect if you make individual hummingbird cupcakes with frosting and a pineapple flower on top of each. People don't think they're really pineapple until they start to eat them as the core looks just like the center of a daisy. I wasn't very impressed with the way the 'flowers' looked from the original directions from Martha Stewart and had the thought that, since the center looked so realistic, why not try to cut them into flowers and was really happy with the way they turned out. I made them the night before I baked the cake, which is likely a good idea since the time may vary for the pineapple to dry out.

I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it as it reminded me somewhat of banana bread that my mother used to make. It is a heavy cake both in that I built some muscle carrying it to work and that it doesn't take more than a small slice to get your fix. The nuts in the cake also make it necessary to have a very sharp knife to cut through the cake neatly.

Hummingbird Cake

Serves: 16
Time: about an hour for the cake + bake time
Source: Southern Living Magazine

• 3 cups or 7dl all-purpose flour
• 2 cups or 4,75dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup or 1,75dl vegetable or sunflower oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla/vanilla sugar
• 1 8oz or 225g can crushed pineapple, undrained
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25dl mashed/pureed ripe bananas
• cream cheese frosting (recipe below)
• dried pineapple flowers (directions below)

1. Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Grease and flour 2 or 3 9-inch/23cm cake pans. Mash ripe bananas in a bowl with a fork and chop pecans into small, but not fine, pieces. Set aside.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add eggs and oil until dry ingredients are just moistened. Add vanilla, pineapple, pecans and bananas, stirring until combined.
3. Pour batter evenly into 2 or 3 round cake pans.
4. Bake at 350F/175C for 23 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on wire rack lined with baking paper.
5. Spread cream cheese frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Decorate with dried pineapple flowers. Store in refrigerator.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes: 3 1/4 cups or 7.5dl

• 1/2 cup or 113g butter, room temperature
• 8oz or 225g cream cheese, room temperature
• 16oz or 455g powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup or 1,2dl chopped pecans (sprinkle between cake layers)

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended. Beat at high speed until smooth; stir in vanilla.

Dried Pineapple Flowers

Makes: about 2 dozen
Time: about 3 hours - prepare 1-3 days in advance

• 2 large pineapples (about 1kg) (the recipe works best if the pineapples are not quite ripe).

1. Heat oven to 225F/110C. Line a couple baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper.
2. Peel pineapples with a serrated knife (Remove "eyes" using a very tiny melonballer, or paring knife if you don't plan to use a flower cookie cutter for shaping them.) Cut crosswise into very thin slices and place in a single layer on prepared baking sheets. Bake until tops look dry, anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.  Using tongs, flip slices over and continue to cook until reasonably dry, about an hour or so. Arrange on a wire rack and leave to cool and dry a bit more for a few hours. (note: A convection oven is an advantage for faster drying so use it if you have it.)
3. When slices are cool and dry, take a small metal flower-shaped cookie cutter and press into dried pineapple. Use a rolling pin on top of the cookie cutter to press firmly. Set cut flowers aside on the wire rack. When the flowers are dry, but still a bit pliable, hold the center of the flower between your thumb and forefinger in one hand and pull the petals of the flower upwards with your other hand to give them a more realistic look.
4. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3 days.