All Quiet on the Western Bundt

Another early summer weekend is just about past. It was mighty quiet here in Mendo... unusually so. We worked yesterday at the visitor's center from noon til 4 and it was deader than a doornail. I wonder if this is an accurate forecast for the coming season in general? Is it going to be really slow and quiet? Suits me... but I am sure the screw is really turning for all the local business owners. I feel for all of them. I know the B & B's are struggling to fill their rooms. I am sure that part of that is that we have a crapload of them here and so somebody has to be the low man on the totem pole and suffer through these rough times.

Today marked our first of 5 days off in a row from the Ford House. I cooked a big breakfast of eggs with fresh market veggies cooked in a sauce of white wine, mustard and fresh herbs and we gobbled that up with a sourdough baguette. Then I embarked upon a cake I have been wanting to try my hand it. Somehow the baking of this cake devoured my entire afternoon. I fell into some kind of bundt pan black hole. There is a hole in the center of a bundt pan... so in theory... it is possible that it houses another dimension. And I went there. Today. But now I am back and we have this cake that I baked. It's all a little like Martha Stewart meets Star Trek. Cool.

The cake is a Double Ginger Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Ginger Infused Strawberries out of the April issue of Bon Appetit (click through for the recipe.) It turned out great except I am pretty sure the food stylists at the magazine photo shoot sprinkled the top of their cake with more raw sugar for their picture. When mine came out of the bundt pan the raw sugar was gone...presumably melted into the cake batter. I so wanted my cake to be all crunchy and sparkly looking like theirs! Dammit! I could have made an effort to pack some sugar on the thing for looks but I figure it already has about a zillion calories so more sugar would really have been overkill in that department. This thing is made with chopped up candied ginger in the batter so you really need to love ginger to love the cake.





I have to gloat that I grabbed my fabulous new bundt pan from a thrift store up in Fort Bragg for 5 bucks. I would never have one in my possession otherwise (they usually run around $35 for this particular one.) We have room for a big heavy metal bundt pan in here like we have room for a donkey in our shower but HEY. Whatever. The more the merrier.

Now it's time to let my brain go on auto pilot for a few hours. Maybe walk the canine over to the beach... see what kind of a sunset Mendo can conjure this evening. Have a good night y'all.