Cake boss crumb cake recipe8/2/2023 ![]() I turn my staple streusel topping into something thicker, denser, and much more substantial by doubling the ingredients, adding cardamom and nutmeg and extra melted butter. I take a cue from a King Arthur recipe I love, and make the ribbon of sugared cinnamon filling even darker and more pronounced by adding a little black cocoa powder (this is optional). I add cardamom and lemon zest to the batter. I start with a fairly straightforward crumb cake recipe, and use sour cream instead of my usual Greek yogurt. Use toasted sugar instead of plain granulated sugar. Or you can swap a different ingredient-try subbing 25% of the all-purpose flour in a cake recipe for almond flour. Layer taco flavors into a homemade lasagna (YEAH you heard that right-throw some crushed taco shells in there and some taco seasoning). Sprinkle a little cayenne into the cheese in a cheese roll recipe. Add nutmeg and black pepper and ginger to your cinnamon roll filling. Pick a recipe you love, and vary the spices. Plus, with baking, if you start with a solid template you can be assured of success. It keeps me in comfortable, familiar territory, but also introduces the fun of experimentation. But it can be! One thing I love to do if I’m feeling adrift (or even if I’m not), is to take a classic recipe and rework it somehow. Nothing grounds you quite like cooking, both by the soothing rhythm of kitchen work, and also from the particular pleasure of making your own food. Somehow I did not seem to inherit those particular genes, so I stick with the skills I did certainly get from my mother: baking. You know, just a casual crafting session. Making something with your hands-this can be anything! If you’re my mother, this would be something like an exquisitely intricate handmade wooden jigsaw puzzle or a pop-up birthday card out of heavy cardstock in the shape of a real, functional Ferris wheel. (I just started “ The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane” by Lisa See, after tearing through both “ Educated” and “ Save Me the Plums” and so far, I am as riveted by it as the other two.) The deliciously anticipatory pleasure of looking forward to a good book. Reading anything from McSweeney’s, but especially this (if you don’t laugh out loud at the sentence with the Jeeves reference…I don’t know what to say to you). Getting a 20 minute back massage for the first time in months (one of the many perks of living in New York City-fantastically affordable, wildly good back massages at nearly every nail salon). Reading another poem, this one ( “The Hush of the Very Good” by Todd Boss) so sexy that I blush a little sitting by myself at my kitchen table. So what works for you? Here are more things that work for me: riding my bike down through Greenwich Village, skirting the edges of Washington Square Park, feeling the breeze lift my hair as I turn onto Sullivan Street. ![]() How lovely are those last lines? We could do worse than to spend our efforts figuring out our own personal ways that work to turn any given moment into a topiary-something pleasurable to walk through. I read these lines from Rita Dove-an exceptional and new-to-me poet-on this very thing. I think about things I reliably like (cold cream poured over warm homemade chocolate pudding, the smell of shallots cooking in olive oil, showering with Molton Brown’s bergamot and orange body wash, listening to Sam Cooke when I prep dinner, putting on just-from-the-dryer socks) and I practice shifting my mindset from “what’s coming next” to “where am I right now”. I think about how nice it is to have the luxury of time at home without too many meetings or travel or appointments. The long ones require a little more patience, a little more effort-I have to stop and notice my impatience or mood, and recalibrate. Some weeks feel like they stretch into months others fly by in an instant.
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