Month: December 2017

random brownies

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Putting together a bunch of wee packages of gifts and homemade candy and stuff, I find that I still have a bunch of baking-related ingredients on hand and want to rid myself of them. First I had the urge to make cinnamon rolls for the first time in about eight years (underway); I was in the midst of making candy for the first time since probably 2001 (?). Then I thought I should use some other stuff and made a random batch of brownies – no clue how they have turned out or how they taste since I don’t eat this stuff… this is why I work. Not for professional pride or a paycheck… but to feed fellow workers with sugar. Haha. Not really, but yeah, when I have taste tasters, I am always more willing and inspired to make things to test.

Meanwhile my house is heavily fragrant with cinnamon and vanilla. My hands, even after washing them a million times, carry the faint aroma of vanilla caramel.

Try your hand at brownies:

1/2 cup melted, unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 175C/350F

Mix melted butter and the two sugars.

Add in eggs, one at a time.

Add vegetable oil and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients and then add them to the wet mix in a few intervals. Don’t overstir.

Bake in a greased 8″x 8″ square pan for 25-30 minutes. I also added in some holiday red and green chocolate chips I had on hand. You can add nuts or sprinkles or chocolate chips or whatever strikes your fancy. Obviously – they’re your brownies.

fruits

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“lean back again
let me love you”

Oh, dear Glaswegian, Edwin Morgan…

Strawberries
–Edwin Morgan
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Photo by Alison Stevens on Unsplash

“Now I wear the woods”

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Thinking of the woods, I think of so many things. From Sleater-Kinney‘s album, The Woods, which carried me aimlessly on foot through all of Reykjavik in the sad spring of 2008, to the present surroundings, wooden entanglements in wooded environs I’ve been rooted in and uprooted from, the things that I’ve shaken off like so many pine needles but which still stick like sap…

It took me a really long time to read Louise Erdrich. Apart from the handful of poems I’d read just after high school, I’d had an aversion to Erdrich, seemingly only because a girl with whom I’d almost silently feuded/had a misplaced dislike toward, was a huge fan. The girl cited Erdrich constantly as a source of inspiration (the girl referred to herself with replete and self-satisfied airy tones as a “writer”). As I read somewhere the other day, you either are or are not a writer. Talking about it doesn’t do anything. (I, too, am a writer, but it’s a bit like Catherine Keener‘s abrasive character in the now-20-year-old (!) Your Friends and Neighbors, when asked if she had written anything another character would have read, “Not unless you read the instructions on your tampon box.”)

I got over the Erdrich thing, and my misdirected dislike for the girl, but still never got around to reading Erdrich’s wealth of fiction. Now I’ve read most of her body of work (recommend some, like The Master Butchers Singing Club, and not so much others)…

The Woods
–Louise Erdrich

At one time your touches were clothing enough.
Within these trees now I am different.
Now I wear the woods.

I lower a headdress of bent sticks and secure it.
I strap to myself a breastplate of clawed, roped bark.
I fit the broad leaves of sugar maples
to my hands, like mittens of blood.

Now when I say ‘come,’
and you enter the woods,
hunting some creature like the woman I was,
I surround you.

Light bleeds from the clearing. Roots rise.
Fluted molds burn blue in the falling light,
and you also know
the loneliness that you taught me with your body.

When you lie down in the grave of a slashed tree,
I cover you, as I always did.
Only this time you do not leave.

 

attempt at vegan caramels

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I knew I would be making regular caramels, hit as I have been with this urge to make candy (rather than bake). But again, this experimental bent made me decide to make vegan caramels as well.

First of all, I needed to get a new candy thermometer. I lost mine somewhere in my many moves. I bought two. One is vastly superior to the other, I have now learned.

Vegan caramels use coconut milk instead of cream. They were also made in an entirely different way from regular caramels (which are generally made all in one pan).

Things came together rather the way I would expect.

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Here we go…

Vegan caramels
2 or so tablespoons of melted coconut oil, melted, plus more for cutting caramels
1 (16 ounce) can (about 2 cups) coconut milk
3⁄4 cup golden syrup or light corn syrup (I used golden syrup)
1 tsp. coarse sea salt
1 3⁄4 cups sugar
3⁄4 cup water

Line the bottom and sides of an 8″x8″ square baking dish with parchment and brush with coconut oil; set aside.

Combine the coconut milk, syrup and sea salt in a 4-quart (2L) saucepan. Heat over medium low, stirring constantly for 3 to 5 minutes until mixture is warm and any coconut milk clumps are dissolved. Remove from heat and set aside.

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In a large saucepan, combine the sugar and the water and stir until sugar is wet. On medium-high heat, let cook without stirring until the sugar is light amber in color and a candy thermometer reads 310°F/155°C. Immediately remove from heat and pour melted sugar into the coconut milk mixture. Do this with care: the mixture will bubble and splash rather violently.

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Return saucepan to medium-low heat, stirring continuously until all the caramel is dissolved. Raise the heat to medium high, stir continuously, and cook until caramel becomes quite thick and a candy thermometer reads 240°F.

Immediately remove from heat and pour into the prepared pan.

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Let cool completely and cut into 1″ squares. Brush your knife with melted coconut oil between cutting to avoid sticking. Wrap individually in wax paper squares. Store at room temperature.

Verdict…

Well, I think this needed to be cooked a bit longer (beyond the 240F mark). I tasted it, and it tastes quite the way you’d expect – like caramel but not quite (i.e., it’s still made from coconut milk not butter and cream). But it was just too ‘runny’ in trying to cut it up, making it stringy and impossible to cut or wrap in pieces. It was just shy of being where it needed to be in terms of its solidity and texture, so this is kind of a sad and unsuccessful attempt, even if I can see that it would work if left to cook a little bit longer… better luck next time.

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attempts at vegan truffles

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The other day I found coconut condensed milk at the store (yes, THE store, which is actually one of many stores) and thought this might be a good time to try it out in a basic, simple holiday candy favorite: chocolate truffles.

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My normal chocolate truffle recipe is easy, and I went with the same recipe only substituting with vegan chocolate and condensed coconut milk. The vegan chocolate I bought really didn’t meet my satisfaction – it was too complicated as a non-milk, non-dairy chocolate, and I think using raw chocolate from Rawchoklad Fabriken, which I already have in abundance, would have been a better choice because it’s so completely basic and pure.

I am not entirely sure why I thought vegan anything was necessary. I don’t eat any of this stuff, and I don’t really know many vegans locally. But I have a vegan colleague who makes exceptions when it comes to sweets. But still it was just the experimental me who tries these things out.

I was skeptical when I had made the recipe and put it in the fridge to chill… but today when I rolled them out, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the texture/feel worked. They were a little difficult to deal with once they got a bit too warm in the hand, which yielded a rough kind of ‘ball’, but I am sure it’s fine.

 

 

mounds of human heads

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Untitled
–Osip Mandelstam
Mounds of human heads are wandering in the distance.
I dwindle among them. Nobody sees me. But in books
much loved, and in children’s games I shall rise
from the dead to say the sun is shining.

Original

Уходят вдаль людских голов бугры:
Я уменьшаюсь там — меня уж не заметят,
Но в книгах ласковых и в играх детворы
Воскресну я сказать, как солнце светит…

Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash

destructive labor

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Diatribe Against the Dead
–Angel Gonzalez
The dead are selfish:
they make us cry and don’t care,
they stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,
they refuse to walk, we have to carry them
on our backs to the tomb
as if they were children. What a burden!
Unusually rigid, their faces
accuse us of something, or warn us;
they are the bad conscience, the bad example,
they are the worst things in our lives always, always.
The bad thing about the dead
is that there is no way you can kill them.
Their constant destructive labor
is for the reason incalculable.
Insensitive, distant, obstinate, cold,
with their insolence and their silence
they don’t realize what they undo.

Original

Diatriba contra los muertos
Los muertos son egoístas:
hacen llorar y no les importa,
se quedan quietos en los lugares más inconvenientes,
se resisten a andar, hay que llevarlos
a cuestas a la tumba
como si fuesen niños, qué pesados.
Inusitadamente rígidos, sus rostros
nos acusan de algo, o nos advierten;
son la mala conciencia, el mal ejemplo,
lo peor de nuestra vida son ellos siempre, siempre.
Lo malo que tienen los muertos
es que no hay forma de matarlos.
Su constante tarea destructiva
es por esa razón incalculable.
Insensibles, distantes, tercos, fríos,
con su insolencia y su silencio
no se dan cuenta de lo que deshacen.

Photo (c) 2011 elPadawan used under Creative Commons license.