Blue Palate

It’s snowing today in Portland, a once or twice a year phenomenon. When inclement weather strikes I go wildly domestic and get a strong urge to bake. Snow on the road meant I had to find a recipe that didn’t require a trip to the store. Cookies? No chocolate chips or raisins. Brownies, at least the ones I like to make, required more than the stick and a half of butter I had on hand. I had a box of expired scone mix I bought in California a year ago and left at my parents. My stepmother returned it to me when they visited for Thanksgiving. They obviously don’t bake scones. But old scones didn’t sound appetizing.

A half bag of chopped pecans, remnant from a great Thanksgiving pie, gave me the answer. Coffee cake. Warm coffee cake with a cup of hot joe on a snowy day sounded damn near close to absolute perfection.

Coffee cake with strudel topping was the first thing I learned to bake and I remember making it for my family when I was 10. That page in our old Joy of Cooking is forever encrusted with brown sugar and stained with butter.

About 20 minutes ago we started to smell the cinnamon. I don’t know the exact word for when you first start to smell a dish that’s baking in the oven. That first whiff of chocolate in brownies or apples in a pie. I like to call it “breaking.”

Tags: cinnamon, coffee-cake, memories, recipe

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.