Cakes – Orangette

Out here, up here

Molly — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 22:17:30 +0000

Today I come to you from Sitka, Alaska, where I’ve been since last Saturday, leading a writing workshop on memoir and place. I’m among the faculty for the first-ever Sitka Arts and Science Festival, a week of multi-disciplinary cross-pollination and collaboration dreamed up by the Sitka Fine Arts Camp and several local partners, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s been cool and misty almost every day, summer-in-Sitka-y. I didn’t bring enough clothing for this weather, even though, after fourteen years in the Pacific Northwest, I ought to know better. I’m re-wearing what I did bring. Today is day four for these leggings, day two for this sweatshirt. I’ve been wearing my cheap Uniqlo down vest, and it spits out tiny white…

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November 6

Molly — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 23:22:00 +0000

This one goes out to my friend Natalie. One night early last month, she and hers were over for dinner, and I made an applesauce cake with caramel glaze for dessert. As they left, she asked about the recipe, and she’s been patiently waiting for me to post it ever since. In the intervening weeks, our kitchen faucet sprung a leak – a leak that must have actually sprung a month or two before that, because by the time we noticed it, it had thoroughly saturated all the wooden surfaces below and around it, making them buckle and curl like waves on an ocean, a special ocean that smells like rot. We called Natalie and Michael, because they are handy…

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As ever

Molly — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 01:47:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I got up earlier than usual, while the light was still blue, and baked a cake. We are having a very adult fall – not adult in the sense of, I don’t know, the adult film industry, but in the sense that we now have a child who is enrolled in a real school. I remember only bits and pieces of my own first year of school, but I do remember operating under the happy illusion that my parents were bonafide adults who had things figured out. Having now crossed over to the other side of that illusion, I can report that, whoa, hey, it’s an illusion! June is no fool, but she’s content to play along as…

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Doing it right

Molly — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 09:12:00 +0000

I believe in everyday cake. I may have remembered to floss four times last week, up from my usual count of zero. I may have had avocado toast one sunny morning at Vif, with za’atar, aleppo pepper, preserved Meyer lemon, and celery(!). I may have even rediscovered R.E.M.’s superlative Green after forgetting about it for twenty years and then sung along loudly and with feeling to “World Leader Pretend” and got goosebumps during the bridge like I used to when I was seventeen. But nothing makes me feel like I’m really living, really doing it up right, like having a cake on my kitchen counter on a weekday. About a week ago, my friend Shari posted a photograph of a cake on Instagram and…

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The days are twice as long

Molly — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:17:00 +0000

This time last week, I was in a wood stove-heated cottage with no Internet, no telephone, and no television, reading my sixth New Yorker of the day. I am fully caught up with The New Yorker. (!) (!!) Those words may never again be assembled in that order by me, or by anyone, ever. Actually, I should already switch tenses: I was caught up with The New Yorker. Briefly. Past tense. Last week, I had the pleasure of spending two nights at Hedgebrook, a nonprofit retreat for women writers, located on Whidbey Island. It’s an incredible place: just six one-room cabins, a cottage, a farmhouse, a garden, and a couple of woodsheds on 48 acres, dedicated solely giving women the time, space,…

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I’m feeling daring

Molly — Sat, 04 May 2013 05:20:00 +0000

I have finally learned how to use the espresso machine that Brandon chased down on eBay and gave me for Christmas in 2011! The best part of this development, however, is not the double espresso that I can now enjoy each morning while sitting on the living room floor with June, reading Madeline or singing along (poorly, loudly) to our favorite song, “On the Road Again.” No, no, the best part is that while I make said double espresso, I get to recite aloud for June and Alice, in my best/worst Italian accent, the molto gag-worthy slogan written in loopy script on the side of the machine: For Music ~ Puccini For Art ~ Bernini For Espresso ~ Pasquini In other news, do…

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No such thing

Molly — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:40:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I think it was, one of you kindly wrote to me, asking if I might do a post about what I’ve been eating for lunch lately. The reader who wrote to me is pregnant, and there are a number of foods that us pregnant ladies are told to avoid, making quick, easy lunches hard to come by: no deli meats, no (uncooked) cured meats, no high-mercury fish (tuna, for example), no cheeses of certain types, and so on. I am going to spare you, however, a post on what I’ve been eating at my desk lately, because my lunches are about as riveting as C-SPAN. The post would go something like this: nut butter sandwich, carrots, tangerine,…

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No frosting, no ceremony

Molly — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:04:00 +0000

We left our window open last night, and when I woke up today, there was rain on the sill! I am wearing a scarf that I made! Let the hoarding of plums commence! What I thought about saying next was, “The citrus is coming! The citrus is coming!” (In the privacy of my own head, I spout this kind of garbage the way Old Faithful does boiling water.) I decided against it, but during the thirty seconds when I was considering and then reconsidering, I remembered a walk I took with the dog a few weeks ago. A little boy down the street was having a birthday party, and from the skull-and-crossbones flags tied to the laurel hedge along the…

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How it is

Molly — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:40:00 +0000

I think I might have told you about my father’s friend Michael. Sometime in the early ‘90s, Burg was on his way out of the grocery store, and being something of a car buff, he stopped to check out a Citroën in the parking lot. While he stood there with his grocery bags, the owner of the car came along – or maybe the owner was in the car; these details are long gone – and he turned out to be a man named Michael. They struck up a conversation, and something must have clicked, because for years after that, they were best friends. Michael was a native New Yorker, a former cab driver-slash-writer turned small business owner, intense and…

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We ate this cake

Molly — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:53:00 +0000

About a million years ago, by which I mean last Thanksgiving, I mentioned on Twitter that my cousins had made an olive oil cake for our mothers’ birthday dinner. Our mothers are identical twins, born in the third week of November, which means that our family’s Thanksgiving comes with an extra bonus meal: The Twins’ Birthday. Anyway, I mentioned this cake, and someone – maybe one of you reading today? – asked if I might share the recipe. I said that I would do my best to get it from my cousin Katie, its keeper, which I did, and after bringing it home and accidentally burying it in a stack of papers on my desk for three months, which I’m…

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