City Views, Country Dreams

Good evening from New York.


As much as I have been trying to cling to the beautiful visions of my holiday, my recent weeks' real life has been giving me many challenges.  Perhaps it is always like this after a holiday.


One post-holiday routine I have adopted with the hope that it will keep my mind calm is a return to baking.  Once upon a time I baked two loaves of bread every Sunday.  That time was way back in the last century (how I love referencing the last century!)  It's been a very long time since I have bought yeast or kneaded dough.


My current weekend baking involves cup cakes.  As this baking wish began, I could not find the two "muffin" tins that I felt might be somewhere in my kitchen cabinets.  I am not very tall, and exploring the upper reaches of these cabinets involves my bringing my old folding metal step stool from the depths of a closet to the narrow channel of my kitchen space.


I could not be bothered.  I ordered a new twelve cup muffin tin on line.  In anticipation of its delivery I bought some paper muffin tin cup liners.  The next day I discovered the whereabouts of my two,  now perhaps considered vintage, muffin tins.  I explored some recipes, checked a copy of the Magnolia Bakery cookbook out from my library, consulted some Nigella Lawson cake recipes on line, and bought additional butter, sugar, vanilla extract and a lemon.


On the next day off I had a little baking frenzy and made some basic cupcakes, and iced them with a plain frosting flavored with lemon zest.

I was quite impatient with the wish to apply the icing.  The cupcakes were not quite cool enough...the icing ran a bit.  No matter.  It tasted great.  I put half of this baking endeavour in the freezer.

One of the freshly baked lemon-iced vanilla cupcakes was shared with the evening doorman in my building's lobby.  He's a fan of my Christmas cookie distribution, but also seemed pleased with the April sampling.


How delightful it's been to know that I've home-baked little cakes for dessert when returning nightly from rather overly full work days.


Today was another day off.  I tried a different cake recipe, and began an exploration of the richness that only can be bestowed by chocolate frosting.

Today's baking results are really good, if I say so myself.  Again, six of the batch now rest in the freezer.

Just underneath my little celadon plate are some of the Hockney-exhibition-related books I ordered from good old Amazon after returning from London.  I like the book cover colors against the quiet of the china plate.  The chocolate icing just speaks for itself.


Keeping with the Yorkshire landscape theme of the Hockney show, I am currently reading a new crime novel by Peter Robinson, entitled Before the Poison.  It is set in Yorkshire, a place I have visited several times and whose beauty I appreciate.


It's been a sunny, chilly weekend here in New York, and aside from baking I've had the pleasure of many phone chats with various friends and relatives, and some e-mail catching up with folks here and abroad.  I confess that I somehow never got around to doing some very needed vacuuming.  Ahh, it will have to wait.


Tomorrow I return to work, and expect that this week will be full bodied.  How wonderful to know that every evening will offer the prospect of a home baked, chocolate iced cupcake.


I hope that each of you will have equally appealing prospects ahead of you this week.