Tag: bake

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Humphreys was a shingle building with a handwritten sign above its entrance—HUMPHREY’S BAKED GOODS & SANDWICHES. Even before I opened its screen door, the unmistakable smell of bread baking wafted outside. Is there any better smell on earth?

— Keith McNally, I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir (Gallery Books, May 6, 2025)

Notes:

  • NY Times Book Review: The Brash, Working-Class Londoner Who Redefined New York’s Restaurants
  • Wall Street Journal book excerpt: Keith McNally: “I Had No Chef, No Toilets and No Budget. But I Was Determined to Open Balthazar.”

T.G.I.F. I want our summers…

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…So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet
the angry voices next door, if only

for a brief whiff. I want our summers

to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love,
a table overflowing with baked goods
warming the already warm air. After all the pots

are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters
wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

Photo: Louis Hansel (via Unsplash)

What’s better than this? (NADT)

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It’s 3:12 pm. I’m in the middle of a meeting.  I sneak a peak at my emails…it’s Christie: “looks like this would be a hit…” (She’s thinking Pavlov’s Dog)

She attaches a link for Peach Cobbler Cheesecake.

I tuck my phone out of sight under the conference table and click the link. It springs open on the photo.

And for the next 3 hours:

Thought Spiral! Peaches, Cream Cheese, Golden Graham Crust, Butter, and more.

Rating: Can’t stop at 2 servings!

Notes: (1) Inspiration: Thank you Christie. (2) Photo: Susan; Baker: Susan. Thank you! (3) “NADT”: Not a Damn Thing!

Too good to eat (almost)

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desert-red-fruit

When does food cross the line and become art?

Probably when it looks as amazing as these glass-finish cakes created by Russian bakery artist, Olga Noskovaru.

Don’t miss her dessert wonders at Contemporist or at her Instagram site here: olganoskovaa.

Source: Contemporist

 

 

Yellow, pure, and flawless

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butter

There are few perfect things in this world, and one of them is your common everyday pound of butter, cool in its box, printed in blues and greens with pleasant images – a farm, a farmer, a cow at a fence – and divided into quarters wrapped in immaculate paper as neatly tucked and folded as a soldier’s bunk, each section as easy to slide in and out as if riding on soundless rollers, like drawers in a filing cabinet, two two-drawer cabinets placed side by side, the files packed in manila, clean and fresh, with evenly spaced dividers arranged by a tablespoon. To press it to your cheek and then, with a fingernail, to carefully lift the triangular folds at each end, one end at a time, and then, without tearing the paper, to open the final flap and find there butter, yellow, pure, and flawless, too good to be true.

Photo: Rose Water & Orange Blossoms