I Get By With A Little Help From…People I Don’t Know

We are starting our fifth (and final) year of commuting between Texas and California. Besides the obvious perks of being on a first name basis with the entire staff of Southwest Airlines and the woman who works at the magazine kiosk in Terminal 1 of LAX, we’ve had a wonderful time getting the chance to live in a HUGE city with tons of great things. Like food. And grocery stores. And restaurants. And cooking classes. Did I mention food?

Wait. I know there are some other things, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head.

Anyway, back to the subject. I’ve loved almost every minute of this exciting way of life. But it can get really lonely. With the constant flying back and forth, it’s hard to keep a consistent social life going. My weekends are pretty much taken – I’m either traveling to Texas or Tim is traveling here. Without weekends, it’s tough to make friends.

Which is one of the reasons I love blogs. I like to get to “know” other people with similar interests – running, cooking, kids. I like hearing the writers’ stories, what they ate for dinner, how a race went for them, what it feels like to live in Alaska/Japan/Australia. I feel connected. I feel like I can always find a little help, even if the writer wasn’t talking specifically to me, when I need it. And with cooking, like so many things in my life, I seem to need a lot of help.

There is a mystical recipe in the food world. Plum Cake. It is a recipe that has been discussed by the likes of Amanda Hesser of New York Times/Food 52 fame, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, and almost every one of my favorite food bloggers (Bon Appetempt, The Wednesday Chef, Orangette, just to name a few). What is up with this plum cake? I wondered after I saw the recipe for the sixth time in six months. I needed to know.

I went back to where I had first seen the recipe, the Smitten Kitchen blog, Deb Pearlman’s glorious site. I went there first because Deb’s cookbook is one that often has to be gently pried from my clutches after I’ve fallen asleep at night reading it like a bedtime story. The recipes are perfect. And I mean perfect, because Deb is one of those cooks who seems to be genuinely enthusiastic about every aspect of cooking. She will often rework a recipe multiple times to get it just right. And since I can’t even seem to follow a recipe the first time, as evidenced once again with what you are about to see below, I find her fascinating. I want some of her mojo. Or tenacity. Or patience. Or whatever it is that allows her to have good culinary instincts AND perfectionist tendencies. Seriously, go check out her blog and you will see what I mean.

Anyway, back to this magical plum cake. After seeing it again the other night on Bon Appetempt, I decided I would not be the last person in the known universe to have made this cake. Plum cake suddenly pushed the orange olive oil cake I had planned to make off the menu. Rude, but necessary.

So Friday morning, after I’d worked up my requisite sweat with a quick run around the neighborhood (meaning around and around the block for 6 miles because I’m scary that way), I set out in search of plums. I know plums were in season a couple of months back, but because it has been hot as a pancake griddle here in Los Angeles, it didn’t occur to me that plums would be off the table, so to speak. Three grocery stores later, and all I had to show for myself were three Bosc pears. Hmmm.

On my walk home, I contemplated what to do with my little friends. The plum cake recipe seemed to be reliant on a “tougher”, tarter fruit. Pears are pretty sweet (and these were, I knew, because the produce guy at Whole Foods cut one up for me and let me taste it after he saw my derangedness distress when I couldn’t find the plums), and they can add too much moisture to a batter, so I thought I might be in trouble. The last thing that sounded appealing was an overly sweet, baby-foodesque cake that I’d made after I’d sacrificed my favorite orange olive oil cake.

But I knew Deb would not throw in the kitchen towel and quit. No, she would figure out a way to make it work. Not just work, but be delicious. It was time to channel my inner Deb.

The first change I made was to use half almond flour instead of only using all purpose flour. I reasoned that, because pears are so much mushier (a culinary term) than plums, I needed to make up for that with a denser batter. The second significant change (besides using a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FRUIT THAN THE ONE CALLED FOR), was to add two Tablespoons of lemon juice to the batter in an attempt to offset some of the sweetness of the pears. Finally, I mixed the pears (cut into chunks) directly into the batter rather than just laying them on top like the recipe calls for because I didn’t think it would be nearly as pretty with beige pear chunks baked onto beige dough. Maybe, but I was skeptical. Plus, it would have taken a bunch of precise cuts to the pear to get pretty pear slices. No way, José.

So, when it all came down to it, the result was NOTHING LIKE my beloved Deb’s! Agh! I didn’t have a beautiful, purpley plumpalooza! I had this:

And…it was gross. Like baby food meets hot breakfast cereal gross.

I was discouraged. I raised my fist towards the sun and said “No more baking!” (Okay, I didn’t really do that, but I thought about it.) Instead, I went for a run. And I thought about Deb. As I said earlier, one of the things I most admire about her is that she thinks about food. She ponders how to make something delicious. She revises recipes, even from the greats (Ina, Martha) and makes them better! Deb doesn’t just walk away.

So why did I think my cooking would be any different? With running, I didn’t just lace up my shoes and run a marathon. When I decided to transition to ultras, I had to put in a ton of work. I didn’t just show up at a race and say, “Hey, I think it would be fun to run 100 miles.”

We (Okay, I’m including you in this, but feel free to opt out if you are more mature than I. My feelings won’t be hurt, I promise) have become a society who believes in “One and Done”. We want to be instantly great at something, not have to work and work and work. But Deb worked at it, and she told us about it – the failures, the missteps, and the eventual successes. So, I would not give in now. I raised my fist towards the sky once more (again, this is a lie) and said, “I will make this cake delicious even if it is the last thing I do!”

I went to the store, bought more pears, flour and butter and then called my mom. We discussed my plum-turned-pear cake dilemma. She sent me her delicious apple cake recipe for reference. I slept on it. I went for another run. I decided to add more flour. To puree the pears instead of leaving them in chunks. To add a lot more lemon juice. And then I baked. And I ended up with this:

And it was delicious.

Sometimes we need someone across the country, who we’ve never met, to give us the push we need. I was afraid of going “off recipe” because I have no confidence in my baking skills. But Deb showed me it’s just cake. Pretty much like most of the things I stress about in life. Work, re-work and get a little help from…everybody.

 

Pear Cake

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup almond flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

3 firm, but ripe, pears

juice from one lemon (about 4 Tablespoons)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

2 large eggs

1 Tbsp. cinnamon

 

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl, sift together all purpose flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Peel, core and dice pears.  Put in a blender and add 3 Tbsp. lemon juice. Puree until smooth.

In a large bowl, mix together butter and sugar. When creamy, slowly add dry mixture until just combined. Add pear puree and gently mix together.

Pour into a cake pan – I used an iron skillet. Sprinkle with cinnamon and lemon juice. Bake for one hour or until knife comes out clean.

 

 Enjoy!

 

Tagged as: Amanda Hesser, Bon Appetempt, Deb Perelman, Food 52, Orangette, Pear Cake, Plum Cake, Smitten Kitchen, The Wednesday Child