Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Brownies

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

So, while I am on the topic of cooking anyway, one of my favourite cakes to bake is brownies. They come in countless variations and pretty much each and every one of them tastes absolutely marvellous. I think my first infatuation with brownies is thanks to a childhood friend of mine’s mother who baked these small chocolate wonders for us to eat late in the night while we were playing role playing games. I’m still a bit sad over losing that recipe, but fortunately I have found other and likewise good recipes. I think the one that comes closest to the brownies I remember from when I was younger are the ‘simple brownies’ from Anne Wilson’s Brownies, fudges and toppings, except they don’t have any nuts in them.

The ‘simple brownies’ have a delicate, spongy chocolate taste. Just be sure not to use too bitter chocolate—anything above 75% is probably too much. Like the marzipan cake, this cake also evaporates rapidly. In fact only half the cake is left in the shot below, less than a day after it has been baked. The thing in the back is my brand new Pillivuyt square roasting dish, perfectly sized for brownies. No more oval brownies for me!

Tags: baking, brownies, cake, dessert

Marzipan ring cake

Friday, January 11th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

Sugar is good, marzipan is made of sugar, so marzipan is good, marzipan ring cake is made with marzipan and powdered sugar, so that must be very good!

Well, my tastes in sugar are very refined as you might be able to tell, so with Ida out partying, what better endeavour for the evening than to bake marzipan ring cake… just not, well, in a ring. This is the fourth time I bake these within the past two weeks, and I have been meaning to take photographs of them each time, but due to their very fine quality they mysteriously evaporate almost immediately after being baked. They have now been pristinely captured in their full glory in the picture below.

Traditionally there’s a thin stripe of icing on top of the marzipan cake in the zig-zag pattern you can sort of see above. This is normally made by taking powdered sugar, mixing it with egg or hot water and then putting this mass in a plastic bag where you’ve cut off a tiny hole in the bottom that you can squeeze the icing out of. However, my icing-foo was too weak so I wound up applying the icing manually, slowly pouring it from a spoon, hence the uneven look of the icing—yes, it’s on purpose that I put the best made one in the front.

As a side-note, we had a confectioner create a marzipan cake in the shape of a basket with fruit inside it for our wedding, which was awesome! Also, many people traditionally eat marzipan ring cake (yes, in stacked rings) for weddings and on new year’s eve here in Denmark. Also, some variants come with nougat inside the marzipan cake, this does not detract from its delicacy.

Quite a lovely mass of sugary cake. Yummy.

Tags: baking, dessert

The children of Húrin

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 | Personal | No Comments

As a christmas gift, I got Tolkien’s The children of Húrin, since my parents have by now realised that I am partial to fantasy novels. Mostly what I enjoy is to read about unlikely heroes who seek the good in themselves and try to persevere in the face of overwhelming foes. This is what true heroes would do, the ones of epic proportions. However, The children of Húrin is not like this at all.

The most positive surprise about the book is its physical quality. The paper is not thin and cheap like in most works of fiction, but dense with good texture. The story, however, is a whole other matter. It is a story of the two children of Húrin, Niënor and Túrin, whom the evil Valar, Morgoth, have set his evil will upon, and perhaps their fates can be explained by this, but there is no striving for a greater goodness in them. They are haughty, vain, and egotistical, and hardly once do they do what one would think to be right.

Perhaps these negative tales need to be spun from time to time so that the tales of goodness may shine the brighter, but I must admit that I am somewhat dismayed by the bleakness of the story, at least it is not what I like to seek in a novel.

Tags: book, book review