Monday, April 10, 2006

How many blackbirds to a pie?

I didn't understand the nursery rhyme until I moved here. In Maryland we had crows. Big, brash, ugly crows that pick apart your trash bags. Here we have these elegant jet black birds that flock to our trees and are feasting on the worms in my backyard right this very minutes as we irrigate.
The answer to the question is that you could put four and twenty of them into a pie. They are so slender you could fit that many in one pie plate. However, I have had enough of deserts for a while.
We honored Kathleen, Travis' grandmother, with a party for fifty on Saturday for her retirement from nursing and her seventieth birthday. I catered, did the flowers and made some desserts that were a culinary feat, especially since I do not consider myself a baker.
I made a German Chocolate Cake, two Sachertortes and a Vanilla Coconut Cake. You see, my mother didn't make cookies or cakes very often growing up. Now I know why. They are an enormous investment of time, resources. Not to mention the time and resources afterwards you do to recover from the damage they do to your waistline.
But I must say, I have never see nor eaten a German Chocolate Cake like this. Joy of Cooking did me well. I now consider that I had never truly made a cake worthy of calling it by that name until this weekend. It counts as a culinary feat-- it was 4 layers that stood a full twelve inches tall. Inside each layer was a traditional coconut pecan "goo" filling in between. Then there was a homemade mocha buttercream frosting. On its own, it swallowed a whole pound of butter into its luscious fluffy folds of hot meringue. But, O,was it worth it? To bite into a perfectly light and moist cake with sweet gooey layers and not-too-sweet frosting with a toasted coconut crunch on the very edge of your palate, was divine.
Something to be remembered and a little more appealing than twenty four blackbirds in a pie.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"toasted coconut crunch on the very edge of your palate..." yum! with that kind of description i can taste it from 3000 miles away! =)