Cocoa-Cinnamon Peanut & Cookie Butter Cookies
May 22, 2014
I'm relieved at the arrival of an eleventh hour spring. At last, lilac bushes are surrendering their ample lavender and linen bouquets to the verdant, slightly overgrown, grass. It's as if the bare trees awoke abruptly at 2am and realized the show had already started; by morning the chlorophyll had pulsed its way through their roots and sinuous branches, casting a beloved tropical ambiance around my color-starved yard.
As I write, there's a tenuous purring contentment humming through my ribs - my still-too-pale fingertips twitch with some long forgotten alchemy from another lifetime, under a different sun. The provocative nature of nature is exhilarating. My lawn mower and pruning sheers can rust in wait a while longer, for now I'll allow wild and untamed things to grow with adventurous abandon.
Pistachio Almond Cake (gluten-free)
May 12, 2014
"I wonder how it is I miss
these things
I've never known."
~ Lang Leav, from "A Stranger," in Love & Misadventure
'Let fly.' In my sometimes too self-controlled, hyaline world, I long for someone to give me permission to just...be. There's an intricate tear in the cosmos that ruptures during strange weather. When negative ions build in the stratosphere prior to a thunderstorm, earth & air are open and charged and filled with the static of endless possibilities. My taut rein loosens; worry, fear, and overthinking hesitation escape from their crowded symmetrical stable. Someone somewhere in the universe breaks my ice with an invisible velvet voice: 'Let fly!' I absolutely adore late spring and its surreal, ether filled elements.
Amid the swelling tree buds, late-blooming lilacs, and distant storms, I wanted to make a toothsome dessert that captured the lush, sylvan atmosphere outside my yawning windows. Last week, while absently nursing a second cup of strong coffee, I came across this exquisite cake from The Ginger & White Cookbook. I knew we had to meet!
Labels:
cake.
Gluten-free
Chocolate Dipped Coconut Caramel-Honey Shortbread
May 3, 2014
"May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness."
~ Mary Oliver, first line from "May"
Occasionally I go through periods of immense restlessness, I cannot sit still for a respectable amount of time and sleeps is frustratingly elusive. It's a smorgasbord of insoluble agitation and hazy longing; a moth with a light, albeit immovable, pebble pressed upon the very tip of one wing. This fluttery disquiet usually coincides with the onset of spring and autumn. Spring is late this year, I was hoping I'd slipped passed April discretely enough to avoid the biannual itch, yet here I sit, disheveled and tired and spinning in memorizing green & gold carousel circles.
Coconut, my toothsome Achilles heel. When the world is uneven, I find an almost manic joy in baking with an ingredient that few other people (I know) appreciate. Selfishness has its soft, subtle perks.