Cooking Misc.: September 2004 Archives

I've had the most aggravating last couple of weeks. All I want to do is get home early enough to pull something together in the kitchen, a pot of chili or a pork tenderloin. But it's always something: delays with the subway, Lamaze class, last-minute projects at work that have to be done RIGHT NOW. Just when I think things are going to calm down, they don't. I guess it's something I should get used to as a woman who's 7 months pregnant. I'll have someone else dictating my entire schedule in a while.

So even though the process of making a cheesecake did not go smoothly for me this weekend, I still thoroughly enjoyed it, and was even glad for the little difficulties. And I am definitely a big cheesecake fan.

A couple weeks ago (the last time I did anything in the kitchen; it's a work-related hiatus from having a life) I set out to make the Tiger Cake from the Bittersweet cookbook. It's a marbled bundt cake made with olive oil that has a touch of white pepper, too.

When I got to the step where you mix the cocoa with sugar and water, I realized I had two unmarked containers of cocoa: one was dutched and the other was the regular kind. The recipe called for the regular kind but since I didn't know which was which I figured, what the heck, I'll use half of each. That way I'll at least get some of the right kind of cocoa in there. Then I read the note at the end, which said DO NOT use dutched cocoa because it interacts badly with the olive oil and makes a bitter taste. So no cocoa for the bundt. Thus the albino cake.

It was a good, basic snacking cake, nice and moist and not crumbly so you could eat it out of hand. I felt like the olive oil flavor was really pronounced at first and actually faded as the days went by (would that happen?). I didn't taste the pepper, but the recipe said the pepper just emphasizes the olive oil taste.

I'll have to post the recipe later, since doing it from memory 2 weeks later is probably not the best idea. I remember choosing the recipe because you don't have to do anything fancy to marble it, just layer the two batters and they do it themselves in the baking.

We have a car, so now we're free to shop anywhere! I have so many options that I'm kind of at a loss: Whole Foods in Manhasset, Costco, B.J.'s, Trader Joe's. Where do you like to shop? (Especially in the Queens area, but overall, too.)