Genoise cake and the pursuit of perfection

I started making Genoise cakes when I was in high school. I had one recipe in one book. I didn’t have a baker’s scale or an instant read thermometer. Such tools are now commonly found in the kitchens of amateur bakers. At the time, we didn’t know what we were missing.

Instead of precision, I had practice. My intuition developed with each attempt at scooping and filling a measuring cup, with each double boiler of eggs and sugar. I stirred with my hand so that I didn’t overcook the mixture. My fingers learned when to turn off the burner. I can still feel the dissolving sugar and slightly thickening eggs, the heat of the bottom of the pan, even though now I use a thermometer and therefor use a whisk.

When you’re making a Genoise, one of the most efficient and spectacular ways to make a disaster is to let this mixture get too hot. I did this once, and only on the edge of the pan, and from then on, my fingers knew something, knew what just too far past 149 degrees felt like. I wasn’t making sweet scrambled eggs. I was making the dry, ethereal masterpiece that is a 2 plus inch Genoise.

Many aspects of the Genoise Cake experience remain the same: the fear of some element of the alchemy going awry is not eliminated by the new tools. My very worst Genoise came into its disappointing existence not long ago. I was possessed of a desire to try a different method of combining the whipped eggs and sugar, the flour (and cornstarch—I’m a proponent, 8 grams, maybe?), and the butter (How much can you get away with? How much do you even want to get away with?). The cookbook author was so enthusiastic about Genoise, and he directed that the butter be added directly to the whipped eggs and sugar, all at once, before the flour. I’m sure this method has worked for some people before, but it will never work for me because there is no way that I will volunteer to risk having to watch the massive deflation that took place as the butter went in.

Knowing that such a disaster is always possible is half of what makes this cake so appealing. Usually, though—fortunately—the disaster is simply a sinking middle during cooling that results in a still tasty cake than can be easily split in two layers.

The unique quality of a successful Genoise is the other half. What a cake! It is not moist but, equally, it is not dry. It absorbs soaking solutions and syrups while maintaining its integrity. It’s not too rich or too sweet to be eaten daily, plain with coffee or tea. It is delicious with jam, if you must. The fact that its detractors characterize it as dry, bland, and boring simply adds to the appeal.

I just took a lemon Genoise out of the oven, and it sank a bit in the middle, and it will be delicious anyway. I’m disappointed but resolved to enjoy it fully and try again another day. I’m honest enough to admit that if I could get it to work every time, I would make far fewer Genoise cakes.

Weekly posts: a Productivity Pause

As my almost non-existent audience may have noticed, I’ve paused my daily blog project. Here are some possible reasons: Most aspects of my life have become exponentially more difficult, even though my immediate family is well, for the most part still employed in not-front-line occupations. First, remote work is, for me as a teaching-focused faculty member at a suddenly fully remote institution, very difficult. I’m not just doing my regular job: I’m doing a much more frustrating, more exhausting, and less satisfying job. Next, our regular childcare situation is of course not functioning. It is literally impossible to do the full time childcare and child rearing while doing the full time other job.

But the more important reason that I’ve paused my daily blogging is that I am in a processing phase. Posts I’ve written or started feel irrelevant in this moment, and it’s hard to know what feels relevant.

I’m processing a new reality, and I’m deliberately removing the daily post project from my to-do-list. I don’t want this project to be just one more thing I need to do. So I’ll be posting, but probably weekly. Maybe when I’m not trying to do too many things at once I’ll be able to do that more effectively and efficiently.

Because an unexpectedly high percentage of my posts have been about tulips, I’ll wrap this up with this: after a hard frost last night, the tulips were frozen and drooping. They thawed. The perked back up. They look a bit wilder, a bit burnt around the edges, a few petal bent back prematurely, but not less spectacular.

The Joy of Tulips

Tulips…whereas my abandoned tulips planted too late have not shown signs of life (yet!), I have been getting a lot more joy than usual from my tulips.

I always love to watch the tight green buds become so incredibly bright. I love the colors and the wild combinations, the way the light shines through the petals. I love watching the colors of each tulip change, the yellow petals with an almost undetectable red edge becomes a red streaked.

At a time when many joys are inaccessible, this accessible joy has expanded more than I would have expected to be possible.

Planting Bulbs

Planting bulbs is always an act of faith and optimism. Last fall, I was out there, in the chill, with a long winter ahead of me, sticking something in the ground to be frozen and thawed repeatedly. It seems so unlikely to work even without the threat of squirrels digging up tasty tulips for a snack. In the middle of my fall bulb planting, it started raining. The kids and I kept at it. The rain wasn’t too hard. Then the rain turned to hail, tiny pellets of ice. I figured I should take the kids in. And I never made it back to bulb planting. 

Photo from Mari Potter@maripotter on Unsplash.

Fast forward four months.

Last weekend, we took inventory. The tulips I planted last fall are just coming up. The squirrels did not get them. I have a fenced in yard without deer, and apparently the local woodchuck isn’t as interested in destroying my tulips as it is in destroying everything else I try to grow (including zinnias and marigolds! It even munched off some hot peppers last summer. Unless that was a spice loving rabbit). Success, of a kind, has already taken place.

My optimism is being rewarded. Some of the edges of the green leaves poking up are tinged with red. Are those the red tulips? Some are curled, others smooth. Even the ones planted in somewhat questionable areas seem to be doing well.

So I did something even more outrageously optimistic: I planted the rest of my bulbs. Not the shriveled up ones, but the ones with weight and in some cases a bit of a shoot coming up. 

It felt like the right thing to do, and even if none of them ever bloom, it was worth it.