Yesterday, Mr. Urban flew to D.C. for a very short trip. An hour into his flight he decided to video skype us, half because he is a high-tech junkie and probably thought it would be cool to skype us from a plane, and half because he had missed his girls.
But since the call, the UrbanBaby has been in a funk. Partly because she was trying to reconcile the idea of her dad, calling her from inside a computer and inside a plane, and partly because she understood that her dad will not be home for a couple of days… She has spent a lot of time by the window or outside looking for planes in the sky….
So in order to make ourselves busy and make this time go by faster, and inspired by Molly (she gets her own paragraph in a minute), we decided to bake a cake to share with our friends whom we were planning to see later in the afternoon.
Although I love cooking, I have never attempted baking. For some unexplained and bizarre reason, I have always found baking unnerving. And since the age of 8, when our next door neighbor Mrs. Zand baked a huge chocolate cake for me, I have been in awe of baking and bakers. I must add that when I was 8 I lived in Iran. It was the very early years of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, during which time, luxuries like chocolate were just that – luxuries. My 8 year old self, understood how generous Mrs. Zand was to use all that chocolate in a HUGE chocolate cake just for me. The cake was delicious. Many chocolate cakes and pounds later, I have yet to try another one as good.
So, Molly. She is a brilliant writer and blogger who I have developed a very one-sided recent relationship with. And given the time I have spent with this woman’s writing, calling her by her first name doesn’t seem crazy at all to me.
A few things about Molly: First, she has introduced me to a new genre of books called Food Memoirs. I had no idea that such a genre existed! Suddenly my years of eating and loving food has been put into a new (and more elegant) perspective... I could write volumes, although nothing as extraordinary as what she writes. Secondly, the way she writes her recipes has made me believe that perhaps I too can attempt baking.
This morning, my girl and I picked up all the ingredients for Molly’s French Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon (the link will take you to her recipe). We played some French songs, and spent a lovely time baking our very first cake, together.
In the end, we had a beautiful cake (with a minor slash on it’s top which we covered promptly with icing sugar and a Strawberry), an UrbanBaby that smelt like a baby lamb - she figured she might as well butter herself too when she was helping me butter the pan, and an UrbanMom who just like that became a baker…
Dear Mrs. Zand, wherever you may be, this cake is for you!
But since the call, the UrbanBaby has been in a funk. Partly because she was trying to reconcile the idea of her dad, calling her from inside a computer and inside a plane, and partly because she understood that her dad will not be home for a couple of days… She has spent a lot of time by the window or outside looking for planes in the sky….
So in order to make ourselves busy and make this time go by faster, and inspired by Molly (she gets her own paragraph in a minute), we decided to bake a cake to share with our friends whom we were planning to see later in the afternoon.
Although I love cooking, I have never attempted baking. For some unexplained and bizarre reason, I have always found baking unnerving. And since the age of 8, when our next door neighbor Mrs. Zand baked a huge chocolate cake for me, I have been in awe of baking and bakers. I must add that when I was 8 I lived in Iran. It was the very early years of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, during which time, luxuries like chocolate were just that – luxuries. My 8 year old self, understood how generous Mrs. Zand was to use all that chocolate in a HUGE chocolate cake just for me. The cake was delicious. Many chocolate cakes and pounds later, I have yet to try another one as good.
So, Molly. She is a brilliant writer and blogger who I have developed a very one-sided recent relationship with. And given the time I have spent with this woman’s writing, calling her by her first name doesn’t seem crazy at all to me.
A few things about Molly: First, she has introduced me to a new genre of books called Food Memoirs. I had no idea that such a genre existed! Suddenly my years of eating and loving food has been put into a new (and more elegant) perspective... I could write volumes, although nothing as extraordinary as what she writes. Secondly, the way she writes her recipes has made me believe that perhaps I too can attempt baking.
This morning, my girl and I picked up all the ingredients for Molly’s French Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon (the link will take you to her recipe). We played some French songs, and spent a lovely time baking our very first cake, together.
Dear Mrs. Zand, wherever you may be, this cake is for you!
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