White Cake Recipe

The Stress Kitchen: What we all cooked last week

31.12.69

When the going gets tough, as it certainly did last week, many cooks head to the kitchen for refuge, comfort, and often simply something to occupy themselves. If you have the ingredients — we all had the time on Friday — you can produce a feast. I call this The Stress Kitchen.

I asked on Twitter (#thestresskitchen) what people had made and the answers that came back were dishes so comforting I could practically smell the birds roasting, taste the sauces simmering, and whiff the freshly baked cakes and cookies.

In my own kitchen, I made oatmeal chip cookies from City Bakery in New York, forgetting that they need to be to be refrigerated for half a day before baking. While they chilled, I opened “Jerusalem: A Cookbook,” by Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi, which I was anxious to cook from, and started the mise en place for a semolina, coconut, and marmalade cake. Alas no semolina and no coconut in the house. I wasn’t going to be deterred. Used cornmeal (texted my baking experts, who told me cornmeal has no gluten, so I had to add more flour to batter), skipped the coconut, and turned out a divine cake. Then roasted chicken on a bed of potatoes, and when the all-clear came, opened lots of good wine.

Source: Boston Globe