Bread, Wine, Salt

Brown-Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream I have come here today to confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned.  In full knowledge of the importance of birthday cakes , I did willfully try to get away with making a pound cake for a friend's birthday because I didn't want to be bothered with frosting a layer cake. My feet were only set back on the path to righteousness by a stern rebuke from my friend's husband. (Okay, not a stern rebuke, but "statement of my friend's mild preference" seems sort of anti-climactic, doesn't it?) And, as it turned out, a different friend of mine had spurred a thread about brown butter over on Facebook and I had filed away the phrase "brown-butter buttercream" for future use. So I decided that if I was going to frost a cake I was going to do it with style. The first step is to brown the butter, which is a simple matter so long as you're willing to hang around the kitc...

Is it a tea cake? Is it a bread? A young visitor insisted that my freshly baked offering wasn't cake at all as there was no frosting. So we offered it as vanilla bread instead, like banana bread, without the banana. He agreed that he might like banana bread without banana, and tried a bite. Where is the line between cake and bread. Is a muffin something in-between or is it something altogether different? What should we call muffins that are really sweet, fluffy cakes sold in paper wrappers in coffee shops? Are there lines at all, or is it just a continuum of floury goodness? Should we worry less about what we call things and more about making them wonderful, and then offering them up to guests, even skeptical guests? Should we go bake up this moist, flavorful cake and then brew a pot of tea? Absolutely. Banana Cranberry Bread, Vanilla Tea Cake, Gingerbread I used vanilla bean seeds because it adds great vanilla flavor and the specks of bean add an inter...