{"id":1443,"date":"2007-07-17T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-17T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2007\/07\/17\/all-so-pretty"},"modified":"2007-07-17T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-17T19:30:00","slug":"all-so-pretty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2007\/07\/all-so-pretty\/","title":{"rendered":"All so pretty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, hello.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t stay for long, but I just had to pop in. I had to thank you for all your words of wedding wisdom last week. You\u2019ll be happy, I think, to know that things are much better – much calmer<\/span> – around here. It\u2019s not that there\u2019s any less going on, really. Our wedding is 12 days away, so there are plenty of things to do. It\u2019s just that this week\u2019s things are much better than last week\u2019s. Then, it was phone calls and seating charts and numbers and floor plans. Now it\u2019s cake and pickles and party favors. I\u2019m up to my ears in brine and batter, but I\u2019ve got to say, it\u2019s pretty awesome. Really. You should try it sometime. It may be a little tiring, but I can think of few better spots for a mid-summer swim than a sea of vinegar and chocolate.<\/p>\n

So if I\u2019m absent around here these days, you know why. I\u2019m in the kitchen. I\u2019ve got my hair pinned up, the windows pushed open, and the oven on. I didn\u2019t expect to say this, smack-dab in the center of all this hubbub, but I feel like a million bucks. I\u2019m as happy as a pig in slop. When Brandon and I decided to make pickles and cakes for our wedding, I had no idea that it would make me so happy. People thought we were crazy to want to do this, to take on yet another<\/span> project in the midst of The Project to End All Projects. I\u2019m so glad that we didn\u2019t listen. For all the heart and emotion wrapped up in a wedding, planning it is essentially a cerebral exercise – a bunch of enormous, unwieldy ideas jostling one another, racing to be made real. Baking and brining, on the other hand, are wholly, heavenly<\/span> tangible. They\u2019re slow. They\u2019re messy. They\u2019re slippery and sticky. They make a girl feel like an honest-to-goodness human being – which feels a lot better, in my opinion, than being a bride.<\/p>\n

For the past few days, Brandon and I have been at home with the music cranked up loud, making a mess of the kitchen, cleaning it up, and making a mess again. Today, instead of trotting out a recipe as I usually do, I wanted to show you a few snaps of what we\u2019ve been up to. I hope you won\u2019t mind. I\u2019ve just been finding it all so pretty<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Our wedding cake is one that\u2019s familiar to a lot of you. It\u2019s a riff on this cake<\/a>, the fudgiest, tastiest, most worthy one I know. Its formal name is g\u00e2teau au chocolat fondant<\/span>, meaning a soft, rich, melty-centered cake, but my friend Kate prefers to call it the \u201cwinning hearts and minds\u201d cake. She\u2019s got the right idea. It\u2019s powerful, persuasive stuff. It\u2019s not something you\u2019d want to serve to someone you feel so-so about. It\u2019s what you serve when you want someone to stick around. Like, you know, your husband.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I\u2019m making twenty of them. It\u2019s not nearly as bad as it seems, I promise. It\u2019s actually a breeze. I just stir, bake, wrap, and freeze; stir, bake, wrap, and freeze. Their texture and flavor actually improves with a week or two in the freezer, which makes them the easiest, most unfussy wedding cake I can imagine. The work-to-pleasure ratio is about 1:10, I\u2019d say. They\u2019re not beauty queens, of course, but I don\u2019t care a wink. I never liked white frosting much, anyway. <\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re also giving the recipe to our guests as part of their party favors<\/a>. I think that\u2019s kind of fun.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
And the pickles! Oh, the pickles! We had<\/a> <\/span>to have pickles. It would have been wrong not to. We\u2019re making a few different types, and we\u2019ll eat them at the rehearsal dinner, a picnic in a park near an old red barn. We\u2019re having pulled chicken sandwiches on salted rosemary rolls, piles of roasted vegetables, and a potato salad tossed with haricots verts<\/span> and a grainy mustard vinaigrette. We\u2019re hoping our guests will play frisbee and bocce, drink lots of beer, and eat jar upon jar of pickles. It all sounds awfully good to me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
We bought the carrots from our favorite local farm, Willie Green\u2019s<\/a>. If you were at the Phinney farmers\u2019 market last week and wanted some of their carrots, I\u2019m so sorry. We nearly bought up the whole basket. They were spindly and sweet, as small and delicate as a lady\u2019s thumb.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
And they\u2019re just the right height to stand up, shoulder to shoulder, in a quart-size Mason jar.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
We could have had our caterers make them, of course, but it would have been silly, since we\u2019re regular picklers around here. Brandon made a brine with apple cider vinegar, garlic, mustard seed, and thyme. Because carrots are dense, they\u2019ll take about ten days to come to their full glory. Which means that they\u2019ll be ready right on time. Whew.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I\u2019ll be back next week – one more time before I sneak away to become a Mrs. – and between now and then, I\u2019ve got 13 cakes to bake. I can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n

See you soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, hello. I can\u2019t stay for long, but I just had to pop in. I had to thank you for all your words of wedding wisdom last week. You\u2019ll be happy, I think, to know that things are much better – much calmer – around here. It\u2019s not that there\u2019s any less going on, really. Our wedding is 12 days away, so there are plenty of things to do. It\u2019s just that this week\u2019s things are much better than last week\u2019s. Then, it was phone calls and seating charts and numbers and floor plans. Now it\u2019s cake and pickles and party favors. I\u2019m up to my ears in brine and batter, but I\u2019ve got to say, it\u2019s pretty awesome. Really.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAll so pretty | Orangette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2007\/07\/all-so-pretty\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All so pretty | Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hello, hello. I can\u2019t stay for long, but I just had to pop in. I had to thank you for all your words of wedding wisdom last week. You\u2019ll be happy, I think, to know that things are much better – much calmer – around here. It\u2019s not that there\u2019s any less going on, really. 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