Adventures in Procrastinatory Baking

[rikibeth]

I have just about convinced myself that I really DO need to acquire some Madeira and bake a seed-cake, for the rather flimsy reason that my characters (Horatio Hornblower, Archie Kennedy, and Lady Clarke, who is Archie's Aunt Sophia -- I invented HER, at least) are partaking of that right now. Baking seed-cake is probably easier than writing.

So: do

Comments

[eglantine_br]

Isn't it funny how foods go with or come from books? Not recipe books-- i mean books where you read about a food and then want it, or foods that seem to go with certain books...

I remember once hearing an interview with Maya Angelou, who said that as a child she had paired dry toast with Macbeth. She said they went together.

Some seed cake recipes say you can use anise. That sounds nice to me. And it can go with poppy seeds too-- as they are sort of mild alone.

[rikibeth]

I actually loathe anise and like caraway, so I'm going with the caraway. I like poppyseed too, but if I were making this cake with poppyseeds, I wouldn't want to use them plain, I'd want to use the sweet poppyseed filling that I know as mun, and that'd turn the cake Hungarian or Polish or similar areas instead of English, and it wouldn't be their seed-cake at all.

I have always been a one for seeking out foods because I read about them in stories. Clearly, I'm not the only one, or Lobscouse and Spotted Dog and The Little House Cookbook -- both of which I own, of course -- wouldn't exist.

[eglantine_br]

Is mun the stuff in hammentashen? Delicious. and no, not their kind of thing at all.

I like carroway too.

[rikibeth]

Yup, that's the stuff. If you've never had it in the middle of a sour cream coffee cake, you are missing a treat!

[starcat_jewel]

I can't even think about "Sredni Vashtar" without wanting buttered toast. :-)