Easy Chocolate

I fear that too often this blog becomes just a long litany of the things I find wrong with the Netherlands.  It's true that I do tend to write when I'm upset about something.  Take yesterday, when I came home crying after three teenagers laughed at me.  I was walking behind them on my way home from the store when one of the girls tossed her empty energy drink can into the bushes.  (What is it with those energy drinks?)  I'd like to think that most people would say something when confronted with such a blatant act of littering, and I did.  Maybe my Dutch sounded terrible, or maybe they were just assholes.  Either way, they looked at me laughed in my face and just kept walking.  I did tell them in English that they were assholes as I walked past them, and I'm not sure they understood me.  I'm not sure why I let three teenagers get under my skin, but I cried about it off and on for a good hour.

It was nothing that a bout of baking couldn't fix, which is the reason I found myself going to the store in the first place.  My brother-in-law and his girlfriend were coming to dinner, and it was high time for me to get back into the kitchen and dust off those baking skills of mine.  I picked a nice and easy chocolate cake for our mid-week meal, one that didn't even involve melting chocolate.  The recipe didn't even need a mixer, just two bowls and a box of really good cocoa powder.  In the world of chocolate, I know the Belgians get top billing, but when you think of cocoa, you really have to go to the Dutch--all because of that famous "Dutch process" some inventive nineteenth century Dutchman came up with.  I took Niek at his word a few years ago when he told me the Dutch were the largest exporters of cocoa in the world.  Apparently, the Dutch really are that important when it comes to moving cocoa all over the world (with 25 percent of the world market), although I hope they thank their growers in West Africa.  (If you're bored, you can check out this study done on the demand for Nigerian cocoa in the Dutch market.  So many Dutch companies tied up in the economic developments of that country.)  This is all to say that it's easy to find good cocoa here, easier even than in the States.  Also, I love the packaging.  Check out the sweet looking nurse on the front of the Droste box:

Full disclosure: I ended up using the last of the fancy cocoa from Fassbender & Rausch, which is not Dutch process cocoa.  It felt so great to make a cake again.  It was an easy three layer cake, and I think prepping the cake tins took longer than mixing the batter.

My assistant was less than helpful.

The baking time should have been twenty-five minutes, but it ended up taking three times that long thanks to my tiny oven.  It really is a pain to bake only one layer at a time.  I should be grateful that we have an oven, since landlord's aren't required to provide one.  I think it turned out well in the end.

California birthdays and beer cake...

I'm back in L.A. now, but I don't want to forget to post something about the great birthday celebration for my friend up in Davis now almost two weeks ago.  I can't believe that my time up there has already come and gone.  I don't get to see my friends very often given the fact that an ocean and almost an entire continent lie between us.  When we get together, there really should be at least one celebration of some sort to mark the occasion.  Luckily it was my friend's birthday, and we could all celebrate the fact that she is older than I am and always will be.  I love that a universal component to celebrations is good food.  We made a collaborative effort to create a fitting dinner for the day.  That meant my friend was on drinks duty, her husband manned the grill, and I volunteered (perhaps, begged would be a better word) to make a cake.

Here is a picture of my friend making a raspberry-rose gin rickey.  I had no idea what would go into that drink, because I don't think I had ever heard of it before.  It sounds like something my grandparents would know how to make.  The cocktail coupled with the apron she's wearing had us making jokes about 1950s housewives.  In fact, while she was making it, she told me that's her style of cooking: putting herself in charge of the cocktail hour while her husband preps the grill.  I wondered if we could have placed ourselves any more strongly into strictly defined gender roles.  Maybe we're all taking this Mad Men craze a bit too seriously these days.  Honestly, it was all in good fun, and who can resist wearing a cute apron?  I know I couldn't.

I had to wear something to protect my skirt while I dealt with the intersection between beer and baked good.

Honestly, how many shots of butter can this blog take?  I promise, though, this one was completely necessary.  It's the first time I have melted butter for a recipe in beer!  My friend loves chocolate and beer equally, and when I found a cake recipe that incorporated both, there was no way I was not going to try it.  I would show you a picture of the finished product, but we were too busy having a good time, and I completely forgot.  I think that was an indicator of a great party.  You can see how much I and two of my best friends enjoyed the cocktails and also how much my friend's nephew relished the taste of stout and chocolate.

It was a wonderful summer bar-b-que, and there couldn't have been anything more enjoyable (and perhaps also nothing more American) than a summer evening out on the patio with the grill going, side dishes packed with produce from the garden, and a picnic table full of friends and family.  I've kind of missed the easy camaraderie that only seems to happen with close friends.  It felt nice to back in California with my friends for a while, but strangely enough, I'm now starting to miss the Netherlands just a bit.  If only I could find a way to transplant my friends along with a big backyard and a massive grill to Amsterdam.  Then I would be all set.

Cake!

Yea, it is spring!  We've had some really nice days here this week, and it seems that everyone is happier now that the flowers are blooming and a winter coat is not required for biking around town.  My husband's birthday happened to coincide with this week's lovely weather giving us the chance to get outside to do some celebrating.  He did ask me for one thing this year: to bake him a birthday cake.  In the years that we have known each other I have never made him a cake, a fact he has brought up on many an occasion.  I think it was just rubbing salt into the wound that I have made birthday cakes for other people, just not for him.  That's what happens when you do the long-distance thing for a while.  What was I supposed to do, mail him a cake from 6000 miles away?

So have I griped about not being able to find cake flour here?  Pretty sure I have. It's probably in a post about not being able to find other such niceties of the civilized world like vanilla extract and tape measures with centimeters and inches printed on them.  Fear not, this will not be one of those posts.  Imagine for a second what I looked like when I walked into the supermarket on Friday convinced that I would not find what I was looking for, convinced that control over Dutch baking supplies remained firmly in the hands of the powerful cake mix companies, only to discover in the moment I stood in the small baking corner, the world had been turned upside down.  Unfortunately, I did not have a camera with me to record this historic event, but I re-enacted it the next morning for you.

I look a little more comatose than surprised in the picture, but it was kind of early so I should get points for effort.  Can you read the package?  It says "cake flour!" So what if it's not real cake flour like I could get at home.  In an effort to make it light and airy, they mixed regular flour with a bit of rice flour, but still it's a step up, and I'll take it.

With my cake flour firmly in hand, I could being the task of making a lemon cake.  Lemon flavor is what Niek wanted, and I'm only too happy to oblige considering how obsessed I am with making lemon desserts.  I had a lemon tree in my backyard in L.A., which is where this love affair began.  Anytime I needed a quick dessert, I would just walk out back and pick a few.  It was so easy and of course so delicious.  It's not quite as easy here, but it's not as if buying a few at the Moroccan market is a really trying affair.  And now that spring has made an appearance, I suddenly feel like fresh and light flavors again.

The Dutch don't really do cakes well.  Various cookies?  Yes, delicious.  Apple pie-type things?  Also quite awesome.  Cake? Meh.  Cakes just aren't the same here (as if I should expect them to be the towering layers of an American cake).  It usually involves a few really thin spongey layers  really thick layers of some sort of mousse.  Don't get me wrong, they can be delicious.  They're just not cakes to me.
Here's an example from our wedding last year.  The pink layers are a raspberry mousse.  There probably something very American about me that craves something much grander than this for a celebration, something that indicates just by looking at it that it is decadent and loaded with tons of eggs and butter.  

Maybe cakes are a little more restrained here, because they are almost never considered a dessert.  It's what you are supposed to serve in the afternoon with coffee.  Even at our wedding, we had to explain that we would be following the American tradition of serving the cake last instead of directly after the ceremony the way the Dutch do it.  It still throws me for a loop that celebrations start with something sweet before moving on to a savory meal.

The many layers of cake, frosting and lemon curd created an effect that was anything but subdued, and it proudly took its place of honor at the end of the meal while we wished my husband a happy birthday.  I have no idea what we'll do with a cake that was meant to serve twelve, but I'm sure we'll enjoy our coffee time a little more for the next few days.
The recipe was wonderful and fairly easy.  If you feel like a lemon cake, you can find it here.