Week Three

Yesterday was incredible. Hot on the heels of our newspaper article , we had a boffo day. Every single baked item got sold -- what a thrill! We also went through a full gallon of lemonade and half a gallon of herbal iced tea. (The beverages have been much slower-moving compared to the baked goodies.)

My garden is producing tons of zucchini this month, so I decided to make zucchini cupcakes, using the zucchini bread recipe from the new King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. My kids don't care for raisins or nuts in baked goods, so I left them out. The result was a rather bland little cupcake, particularly when compared with the zucchini cupcakes from Rose Levey Berenbaum. I sent one to day camp in Garrick's snack bag, and he was underwhelmed (Quin wouldn't even give them a tumble). This did not bode well, and I still had 23 cupcakes on the counter.

Those who are at all familiar with my baking habits know that I'm a firm believer in the power of buttercream. Not the gritty confectioner's sugar + shortening goop that passes for buttercream in most chain bakeries, but the real stuff -- silky smooth buttercream, starting with a base of either meringue or whipped egg yolks, stabilized by the addition of a hot sugar syrup and carefully emulsified with unctuous sweet butter, real vanilla extract or liqueurs, or folded with fresh lemon curd or cooled melted bittersweet chocolate. I like cake, don't get me wrong, but I confess that I value cake less for its own sake than as a conveyance for buttercream.

So, when life gives you bland little cupcakes, turn to buttercream! Here is what I found in my freezer:

Each of those containers holds buttercream -- maybe a few tablespoons, maybe a cup or more, in every possible color and flavor -- left over from various Cake Projects of Yore. I was pretty embarrassed at how much room their removal created in the extra freezer, but Michael kindly refrained from taunting me about it.

I whipped up a new batch of Italian meringue buttercream, folded in about 3/4 cup of lemon curd (also discovered lurking in the bowels of the freezer), and iced the cupcakes. Lookin' better already.

The plan was to use the various snips and bits of colored buttercream to decorate the cupcakes, making them so appealing and scrumptious-looking that our customers wouldn't be off-put by the zucchini and whole-grain-ness of it all.

When in doubt, I make flowers.

I iced the green leaves on Friday night, but didn't place the flowers until Saturday morning. The buttercream flowers are a bit fragile and prone to melting, so I stored them in the freezer on baking sheets overnight. In the morning, they were firm enough to easily peel off their parchment squares. They needed a few moments to warm on my fingertips before placing onto the cupcakes, but from there it was child's play.

I had made and refrigerated cookie dough earlier in the week: Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice cookies and Midnight Crackles, both from Dorie. I began Friday evening with baking off the molasses cookie dough. No matter what I did, I could not prevent the utter and complete flattening of the cookies. I chilled the dough hard on the baking sheets after shaping; I turned the oven down 25*, I didn't flatten the dough balls after rolling. No good. Here's what I got.

The above pix are about 30 seconds out of the oven, while still slightly puffed. After they cooled and set, they were absolute pancakes:

Very frustrating! While the flavor was excellent, the cookies were very soft (I was trying to bake at the minimum amount of time possible to avoid flattenage) and did not look very appealing. Once again, buttercream to the rescue.


We sold them as Ginger-Lemon Whoopie Pies and they were flying off the table! (On a side note, I was describing these concoctions to a much-younger co-worker this morning, and she didn't know from Whoopie Pies. Boy, I'm getting old.)

Once again -- the power of buttercream cannot be denied.

In all the panic over the above, I somehow missed photographing this week's third offering, Dorie's Midnight Crackle cookies. Apologies! These are a butter cookie, but on the drier side -- almost a sable in texture. They came out very well, and the little corner I managed to taste was very rich and chocolatey. Quinlan gave them a 4 out of 5 -- I think if they had been at all gooey, they would have gotten a perfect score from him.

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Saturday was another perfect day, weather-wise -- low-mid 80s, sunny and breezy. We have been so lucky! We took the suggestion of the Co-op's manager and bought some balloons to draw attention to ourselves this week.

As you can see from the facial expressions, the kids were especially pumped up this week! Here are the cupcakes in natural light.

They sold out first, then the Whoopie Pies, then the leftover Applesauce Spice Bars (which held amazingly well), then the Midnight Crackles. We sold so much so fast that I phoned my mom at 11:30 to warn her that there might not be anything left if she didn't put down the Times crossword and scoot on over!

Sitting at the table was really an amazing experience this week. In the wake of the article, many people who stopped were eager to talk -- about ways in which PKD has touched their lives and lives of their neighbors, about having lost family members to kidney failure, about their astonishment that this disease is not more widely known. Many had questions about what causes PKD and what the current research is focusing on. One older Swarthmore resident who has been by the booth every week had good news to report -- her friend who has been battling kidney failure got a new kidney next week, and is doing very well post-transplant. I don't even know these women past a hello, how are you, and I wept.

Other visitors this week included -- again! -- our young Mennonite baker friend, whose name we finally learned is Linda. A very sweet girl, she continues to be amazed that I make all of the baked goods at home. (Perhaps she's surprised that any "English" bake at home?) She walked over from the farmer's market in her bare feet, and I think she enjoyed my motherly teasing. The head of the bakery, a young Mennonite man in his early 30s, came by as well and offered to help out, which was so touching.

We also met an out-of-towner who was here looking at houses. When we asked where he was looking, it turns out it was right around the corner from us! We kvelled about the town and the school system, and told him to look us up after settlement.

Theo came by, as well. Isn't he handsome?

Total haul for the day was $128 -- twice what we made last week. Pretty amazing! That brings the bake sale total to $275. The money counted, I fell down for a nice nap, woke up, and asked Quin -- "So, what should we bake for next week?"

He was very amused.