Hello and goodbye

Sometimes you have to say goodbye to things before you’re ready. Often it’s beyond our control, but every now and then we do get to decide. Selecting the right time then becomes the problem.

I have a non-stick frypan. Goodness knows why anyone ever makes non-stick wares because I have never known at item to remain non-stick, no matter how greatly you care for it. Of course we attempt to preserve them, soaking and easing away substances that seem to have totally bonded with the pan and trying to ignore those telltale dark patches that begin to appear as the non-stick surface starts to lift. Trying to ignore the idea of them lifting further with the next recipe and merging with it, ultimately causing you to ingest the stuff.

So one day, you say to yourself, ‘A week of soaking is enough! I’m sick of this thing sitting on my sink. The darned stuff won’t lift. Time to say goodbye Teflon, hello scourer.’

I like my frypan. I refuse to replace a pan that is essentially good, except for the propensity for foodstuffs to stick. I am not ready to say goodbye to the pan, but taking the scourer to it was indeed as sad day.

I am in a new abode and am thus trying to acquaint myself with a new oven. The previous tenants here were not gourmets, it would seem (amongst other things for which I continue to get mail from law-enforcement agencies) and totally destroyed the stove, meaning Pickwick gets a brand new one!

I hate electric hotplates but am coming to terms with juggling heating and cooling times in order to feed myself but am having something of a battle with the oven. It burns baked goods from the back, no matter how much I reduce the heat and right now I have a cake in there with a foil shield at the back to try to deflect some of the heat at that point. I hope it works! Apart from anything else, I can’t eat a whole cake by myself and I have no desire to give away cake with a burnt lid!

What kind of cake is it, Pickwick? I hear you ask.

It’s a Cardamon Coffee Cake. I’m not sure if the recipe’s from the Moosewood Cookbook or the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, but it will be one or the other (I just have it scrawled on paper in a way no-one else can follow) and it’s fantastic!

It goes like this:

1lb of butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp powdered cardamom
2 cups sour cream, yoghurt or buttermilk

Topping
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
½ cup chopped walnuts

Heat your oven (not mine) to 350 F. Grease a large cake tin as this is a large cake.
Combine the ingredients for the topping.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and powder and cardamom.
Cream the butter and sugar, before adding the eggs, one at a time to discourage curdling. Add the vanilla essence.
Add the sifted ingredients and dairy component, a third at a time and alternating, ending with the dry ingredient. I do this as, again, it leaves you less likely to end with a split mixture.
Pour a third of the batter into a qreased cake tin. Sprinkle with half of the topping mixture. Repeat this then end with the final third of the batter.
Bake for 75 minutes and cool in the pan for 20 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Brew yourself a coffee once it’s cool and take a bite of heaven.