Sometimes working at a bakery and also baking at home proves to be a challenge. It’s hard to separate the two environments from a creative perspective. I want to be innovative at work and produce goods that will excite customers and do joyful justice to our industry. But as an at-home creative, I don’t want to exhaust it fully there. I want to test things and try things from my own kitchen, hopefully to eventually share here or with friends. And I don’t want those to overlap, for the sake of my work’s integrity. So in some senses, it feels like my personal endeavors have been limited.
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Grapefruit curd has been gloriously haunting my thoughts for weeks. Something about the grapefruit seems native to my family. My mom (i.e., Suz) loves it, from childhood days spent at her grandma’s Florida house. And somehow the grapefruit was always mysteriously in our house… Whether in juice or raw form. My mom eats it like candy. And she’s a purist. Back in the days when I thought it was too tart, I’d add some sugar and show it to my mom as if I was the front runner of the Enlightenment, insisting that it was way more delicious and how could she not want it that way. “Nope,” she’d shake her head. And then walk away, leaving me in a state of pure shock.
Now I understand.
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It's gooey. It's warm from the oven. It's dusted in sugar. It's crispy and fudgy all at the same time. It's pretty much a circular, underbaked brownie that you get to call cake and can serve for the fanciest meals. In fact, I would like to test the theory that this cake, in all its messy and delicious chocolatey glory, would unravel even the tightest of dinner parties. Pursed lips splitting with laughter, uncomfortably straight backbones swaying with chatter, and previously clasped hands waving with expression. That's how great this brownie-cake is.
Read MoreI can’t stop dreaming of Mexico.
It comes in waves, this reminder of the first sweet escape with my husband. Especially on these short, cold days, all I want is to be back on the warm sand. In the moment I didn’t see how wonderful it was because of small obstructions in my line of vision. Our room was annoyingly hot. There was a strange incense smell wafting throughout the whole resort. We didn’t know how to vacation all-inclusively. I had set too many expectations. But as I think back on those days, the most prominent memories are of good things. And the not-so-good things? We laugh at them now. What a glorious thing that is.
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