You may have a delicious cookie recipe that calls for two cans of sweetened condensed milk. You may start making those cookies, take the cans out of the cabinet and then realize that, despite coming in virtually identical packaging, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

*headdesk*

Don't let this happen to you, my friends! Read the labels!
Excuse me, now, I'm off to get very creative in the kitchen.

More, 11/5/2008

More is the latest project by Chicago pastry chef legend Gale Gand (who I’m pretty sure was training a guy behind the counter while another woman rang me up – how cool!). The shop is in Gold Coast, at the corner of State and Delaware, and it is tiny. And empty. It’s strictly a carry-out operation, with no space for tables or chairs. The cupcakes look like a modern art installation, displayed behind a hanging glass plate almost up to the ceiling. The options range from traditional to highly creative, with chocolate, red velvet, pumpkin, and…bacon?

Yes, a bacon maple cupcake. How could I not try it?

It was very, very good. The cake had a nice balance of the two flavors, including plenty of bacon bits mixed in with the batter. Its texture was more like a biscuit than a cake, which I actually enjoyed. There is no greater sin, in my world, than a dry cupcake, and I’m not sure if it’s that might be because there was actually maple syrup in the mix or just because Gale Gand is a genius. However, the cake was very, very crumbly, and I probably grossed out the old Italian man on the other end of the park bench by making a mess.

This was a rare occasion for me where the cake component outshone the frosting. It had a light maple flavor, and was little more than very smooth whipped cream. Personally, I’m partial to a butter frosting, and I would have thought butter and bacon would be the obvious choice. But then again, we are talking bacon in a cupcake, so maybe obvious isn’t the point. It was fine, but not as interesting in taste or texture as the cake.

I’d like to make a note on cupcake architecture. I’ve noticed a lot of bakeries are taking a new approach to frosting. Instead of spreading a thin, uniform, some bakers are dropping a cylindrical dollop of frosting on top of the cake. It almost looks like the cupcake is wearing a Cossack hat. In theory, I think this is a fantastic idea. For me the cake is almost always a vehicle for the sweet, sweet frosting. But in practice, I have two problems with this approach. The first is aesthetics. It just doesn’t look as appetizing to me. I think I may be a cupcake traditionalist: I want it to look like a cupcake. The second, and more serious problem, is mechanics. It’s damn near impossible to eat that style of cupcake without getting frosting all over your face.

For a final verdict, I’d say the place lives up to its name. I want more. I’ve read in reviews that they sometimes have goat cheese cupcakes and other bacon combinations, but I’d also be curious to try a more typical offering to see how the cake and frosting might change for a sweet dessert rather than a savory one. On a practical note, my cupcake was just under $4.50, which I’d say is a wee bit steep for any single baked good, but in this case I think it’s mostly justified. Also, according to Centerstage Chicago, the sweet cupcakes are a bit cheaper. It’s a good indulgence, especially if the whole selection lives up to this first taste.

Epilogue, 11/18/08 – I went back for more, a chocolate and vanilla mix. Tthe cake was just the right degree of crumbly and flavorful and sweet. The frosting was superbly fudgy and was topped with a mop of white chocolate curls. Like the bacon maple variety, it was a little messy to eat, especially if you’re like me and want to save the frosting for last. But absolutely worth the effort. It’s a good thing I’m covering all sorts of baked goods on this adventure, because I may have found my cupcake supplier for life.  

Last summer I had my friend Amanda, who is vegan, and her boyfriend over for dinner and made ratatouille. I chose it because it's one of the few dishes in my repertoire that doesn't rely on cheese, but it happened to be shortly after the Pixar movie came out. Steve peered into my simmering pot of vegetables and said, "I didn't know it was a real food." It is a real food and is, as Colette says in the movie, "a peasant dish." It's hearty, simple, and delicious. Eggplant is the main vegetable along with peppers, zucchini, and onion. Chop them all up and saute with some garlic, spices and tomatoes. All you really need is patience, no special skill involved. It's a comfort food. We ate it often enough in my family during the summer when the vegetables were at their tastiest.

I'd been meaning to see the movie Ratatouille ever since it came out, but since I'm cheap I wanted to wait until it came out on video. I finally snagged it from the library yesterday and settled down after dinner to watch. Pixar makes such gosh darn beautiful movies. I loved all the scenes of Remy scampering through buildings or dancing around the rim of a soup pot. And yes, it made me miss Paris. But what really got me was the look on that little rat's face when he's watching a cooking show with his culinary idol, Chef Gusteau, whose motto is 'Anyone Can Cook.' As Gusteau talks about loving and savoring the many tastes and textures of food, Remy stares at the tv screen with this expression of overwhelming, teary-eyed happiness, wordlessly saying "Yes! I understand!" I know that they chose ratatouille as his finale dish because it has the word 'rat' in the name, but I did like that it wasn't a traditional show-stopper. Even though Remy's way of cooking and serving it looked nothing like mine, it's the reaction the dish has on the harsh critic Anton Ego that's important. And I think that's what I love about cooking for people: if not that madeline-in-the-tea moment of nostalgia, then the creation of a new memory that someone will one day look back on fondly as 'that time we had dinner at Anna's.' Good food is beyond sustenance. It's creativity and invention and mistakes and therapy and fun. When the credits ended, I wanted to hit the kitchen and plan a dinner party.

There is a sort of gross but funny epilogue to my Ratatouille story. I dreamt last night that I had a rat infestation in my apartment. In the dream, I was trying to fall asleep but kept hearing the usual creaks of my building. Then there was a scabbering, squeaking sound. It moved up and down the length of my room, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw a stream of huge, spaniel-sized rats pouring out from under my bed and into the closet. I was afraid to move. And they actually didn't look much like rats, but I knew exactly what they were. Finally they seemed to be gone and I got up to try to find my cell phone and call my landlord. But two rats were still lurking and tackled me. They started biting my feet. I fought them off, called my landlord and cried into the phone "It's two in the morning and there's rats everywhere and I've probably got rabies! Help me!" He sighed in exasperation and hung up.

And then I woke up, heels tingling from the phantom bites. It was five a.m. in real time and I had to rub my feet to make sure there were no marks. So I guess the lesson here is that as much as I love food, I don't love rats. The end.

I've been doing a lot of baking in the past weeks. Now, I do not claim to be an especially gifted or knowledgeable baker, but I can read a recipe as well as anyone. And I've had some good projects. I make a wicked tasty chocolate mousse and baklava. My success rate on cookies definitely has more hits than misses. And last week I made a pretty fantastic carrot cake. Yet there is one dessert, one of my favorites, that has thus far eluded me.

I cannot conquer a chocolate cake.

Granted, I've only tried twice in my present kitchen. The first was early in the winter when I felt adventurous and threw some chai powder and cinnamon into the batter. It made for a decent cake, but totally cut the chocolate flavor. I also used store-bought frosting instead of making my own. It was fun as a test cake, and I would definitely play with chai and chocolate again. But it wasn't the chocolate cake I was looking for.

This afternoon, I made the recipe that my Silver Palate cookbook calls "the best chocolate cake in the universe." High praise, no? So after spending a scary amount of money on hazelnuts and a ridiculous amount of time shelling them, I put together the batter. Then I realized that I had no vanilla, and not enough confectioner's sugar to make both layers of frosting that the recipe called for. I had just been to the food store and was too lazy to make a shamed return trip. So I decided to innovate, even though I've never had a good touch with frosting. The first frosting was supposed to be hazelnut butter, brandy, and corn syrup; the second was an icing chocolate, cream, and sugar. My final product used the chocolate, hazelnut butter, sugar, and the brandy (of course). It didn't have enough body to be a frosting, so it's just a super-sweet glaze. Super-sweet and super delicious. But the cake... Well, the cake was dry. I think I let it cook too long. I blame my oven for that, it's a little ghetto. Dryness aside, there was still something missing. Not enough chocolate flavor. It only had three tablespoons of ground hazelnuts, and that should complement the chocolate, not stage a culinary coup. Definitely not the best cake in the universe.

Something is missing. Both my chocolate cakes have been very light. Not in texture, but in color. The ideal chocolate cake in my mind is very dark. It could be an airy layer with baking powder/soda or a couple dense ones that taste almost truffley. I think that might be due to using bittersweet instead of unsweetened chocolate, but I didn't think that would make such a huge difference. The weirdest thing about this whole search for the right recipe is that some of the better chocolate cakes I've had were in the dining halls at NU. They had a very moist cake and thick, sweet frosting. Considering the quality of most other Sodexho food, it still blows my mind that they had such good chocolate cakes.

I can't let myself be schooled by the dining hall! So help me, my friends. Do you have cake hints? Tips or tricks to reach that joyful state of cake nirvana? I'm planning to go for a trial and error approach, hunting for recipes and luring unsuspecting friends into my kitchen as test subjects. But any advice would be quite helpful before I go for outright theft of however Alton Brown makes cake.