Kate Moses

Surely every obsessive-compulsive baker shares my megalomaniacal fantasy that one of her best recipes will end up famous, clamored for the world over. Today must be my day for fantasy fulfillment, because my recipe for chewy fudge brownies is in The New York Times! I have never been so proud! There’s even one of those food-porn close-up shots of three of my brownies stacked on top of each other unabashed, like the teenage models in American Apparel ads, or a painting by Balthus. One little crumb has fallen seductively to the table, daring you to pluck it up between your fingers and eat it . . . well, in the photo that ran in the paper, there was a crumb . . .

Thank you, photographer Andrew Scrivani of the New York Times

At the lofty Times, it’s not enough for the reporter to test the recipe and vouch for it – a recipe tester has to try it out, too. Novelist and Mothers Who Think contributor Alex Witchel, who made the brownies for her biweekly column in the Dining section, “Feed Me,” told me during a fact-checking phone call that not only did she think my brownies were “like crack” (“I have to get these things out of my house! Now!”), but that the recipe tester thought so, too. Oh, the glory! I can hardly stand it.

Alex’s question about whether to use a glass baking pan or a metal one reminded me that I planned to offer some of my time-tested baking tips for Cakewalk’s readers, so here is part one of that post on Cakewalk 101: Equipment. These are the items I find indispensible for baking.

BOWLS: I used to like those big vintage earthenware mixing bowls because they were pretty and homey, but I always got nervous using a hand mixer – would the bowls crack or the glaze flake off into my cookie batter? Eventually, a few of them did crack, though mostly because they ended up dropped on the floor. I still keep them for backup, but in recent years I’ve moved on to sets of graduated metal bowls with rubberized bottoms. They don’t slip, they’re easy to clean and they’re lighter for pouring out batter.

MIXERS: I didn’t have a stand-up mixer until I was given one as a wedding present in my thirties, but there’s no denying that a standard KitchenAid is the only way to go. Get an extra bowl, too, great when your recipes call for beating egg whites separately, or for splitting large volumes of doubled recipes. And I also have a KitchenAid hand mixer that comes in handy for little jobs and taking with you when you’re baking remotely.

FOOD PROCESSOR or BLENDER: They’re not always interchangeable, but having one or the other is helpful, if not both.

MEASURING SPOONS and MEASURING CUPS: Forget those cutesy sets of spoons for measuring out a “smidgin” or a “pinch” and such, you’ll never use them. Get a set of metal measuring spoons (tablespoon, teaspoon, half teaspoon, quarter and eighth) and put them on a key ring if they don’t already come on a ring. Also get a set of metal cup measures as well as at least one glass liquid measuring cup: I have a 4-cup, 2-cup, and 1-cup.

WOODEN SPOONS: You’ll never find them in a commercial kitchen anymore, but I love the feel of them. They won’t damage the surface of your pots and pans and the handle is always cool while you stir.

WHISK: Metal balloon whisks are indispensable for stirring up flour before measuring as well as just about everything else.

SPATULAS: I love spatulas, but I’ve gone through dozens and dozens of cheap wooden and plastic-handled rubber spatulas over the years  — they break when you’re stirring dense batters, or the rubber end slips off the handle, or the wood gets gunky inside the rubber. Or villains in your household use them to stir their scrambled eggs, and the spatula end melts into postmodern sculpture. Get yourself a heatproof, silicone spatula with a metal handle, like one of these:

Make sure everyone in your household knows that this particular spatula is not for flipping pancakes or making scrambled eggs! “Heatproof” is a relative term, and they will eventually melt on the edges if they’re deployed on highly heated surfaces.

You also need at least one good thin metal spatula for lifting cookies from baking pans and that sort of thing. Here are my two favorites:

And for icing cakes and cookies, thin, flexible offset spatulas, like these:

METAL RULER: It comes in handy all the time, especially for scoring cookies and candies and making even-sized portions.

THERMOMETERS: You want an oven thermometer to, um, check your oven temperature and make sure it’s accurate, and a candy thermometer for getting sugar syrups, jams and candies to the correct temperature.

KNIVES: Your favorite sharp chef’s knife comes in handy for baking, as does a non-serrated table knife for leveling flour while measuring, etc..

ROLLING PIN and ROLLING RINGS: I use an ancient wooden rolling pin with fixed handles that I think was a pasta roller in a previous life, and another elaborately carved old pin that was used to make imprinted springerle cookies (and is great for decorating gingerbread!).

Many people like the weight and cool temperature of marble rolling pins over wooden ones. I highly recommend rubber rolling pin rings, which you put on your rolling pin to roll out dough to exactly the thickness you want. Genius!

DOUGH SCRAPER: It’s a square of metal with a wooden handle on one side, used to scrape the leftover dough from the surface where it was kneaded or rolled. It’s also great for scraping up flour after rolling cookies.

ZESTER: I use citrus zest in so many recipes I should really get a microplane, but I still use the tiny side of my trusty pyramid grater.

SIFTER: I use my sifter less often for flour these days than for sifting cocoa and powdered sugar. (For flour, a good whisking before measuring is usually all you need to do.) You can also use a sifter to shake powdered sugar over the surface of cookies or a baked cake to make it pretty.

PASTRY BRUSHES: These, like rubber spatulas, tend to be ruined by people using them for the wrong purposes, like school art projects. Get a couple in different sizes and hide them.

PASTRY BLENDER: A pastry blender is the best tool ever for mixing flour and fat into light, flaky pastry. I’ve had my grandmother’s wooden-handled pastry blender for a thousand years. That is, I had it until I took it to a rented beach house over Gary’s fifty-fifth birthday weekend to make blackberry crostatas from the berries we picked in the lane ourselves – and then left my favorite baking tool behind when we returned home. I never got it back, sob. What you want is a wooden handle with rungs of flat (not rounded) metal coming out of it in a sort of arched horseshoe shape. Push the metal part against your hand to find out if they stay in place when pressure is applied. If the metal rungs bunch together (as the rounded wires on these ones, pictured below, tend to do), it won’t work — keep looking for another pastry blender.

This is not the pastry blender you want.

And neither is this. Feh.

WAX PAPER and PARCHMENT PAPER: I use wax paper almost every time I bake – perfect for measuring dry ingredients and then pouring the excess back into their respective containers. Parchment paper is equally useful.

BAKING PANS: These are the ones I use all the time. Light-colored metal helps to keep baked goods from browning too much on the bottom, which is also why I prefer glass baking and pie pans: the bottoms will be crisp but not burned.

–light-colored, heavy metal rimmed baking sheets (two or three at least)

–9 x 13 glass baking pans

–8- or 9-inch round, light-colored metal cake pans (I have three)

–8- or 9-inch round springform cake pan (that’s a cake pan with a removable bottom)

–an angel food cake pan with a removable bottom

–a bundt cake pan in whatever shape or design you like

–cupcake or muffin pans with 12 cup indentations (two or three)

–9-inch glass pie pans (two)

–a round or oval ceramic baking dish for bread puddings, fruit crisps, etc.

–tart pans: I have 8- and 10-inch round fluted metal pans and another that’s 8 x 10-inch rectangular

–two or three standard-sized metal loaf pans

WIRE COOLING RACKS: Get some that fit inside your rectangular baking sheets for use when you’re glazing cookies and cakes – that way the drips go onto the pans rather than spreading all over your counter.

…Next time at Cakewalk 101, useful ingredients to have on hand and what to do with them, based on the frustration and triumph of long experience…

With thanks to Maurine Shores — and the Cake Lady, wherever she is!

For the Hot Milk Cake:

1 cup milk
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sifted, all purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs at room temperature, well beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans (or line cupcake pans with paper liners). In a small saucepan over low heat, bring milk and butter to a boil. Meanwhile, combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well by hand. Pour the eggs over and mix thoroughly. Quickly pour the hot milk-butter over the egg mixture and mix well by hand, moving quickly so the eggs don’t curdle. Add the vanilla and mix well.

Divide between the two prepared pans (or 24-36 cupcake tins) and bake for 25-30 minutes for cake layers, 18-22 minutes for cupcakes, until the cake springs back when pressed gently in the center and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack for a few minutes before removing from pans and cooling thoroughly before frosting.

For the Caramel Icing:

1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup milk
3-4 cups sifted powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Maldon salt flakes or fleur de sel

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the brown sugar and boil over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in the milk and return to a boil, stirring constantly. Take off the heat and stir in the salt and vanilla. Cool to lukewarm, about 20 minutes.

Gradually whisk in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, beating until smooth and thick enough to spread. You may not need all 4 cups of sugar. Add a little hot water if it becomes too thick. Ice the cake while the frosting is warm, and sprinkle the top with Maldon salt flakes or fleur de sel.

I’m about to run off to The Booksmith on Haight Street for my first reading from Cakewalk, which was published yesterday. But first I thought I’d give a glimpse of what I’m bringing with me, because the reading is also a party, and I’ve spent the day baking…what else is new.

On the menu tonight are Verboten German Chocolate Cupcakes, Pink and White Animal Cookies, Salted Caramel Cupcakes, and Absolutely Best Chocolate Chip Cookie dough, which I’m going to bake up in my Easy Bake Oven. I thought bringing an Easy Bake Oven to my readings was a stroke of genius: who doesn’t want to smell cookies baking while listening to someone read about baking cookies? Unfortunately the trial run with the EBO revealed that it smells more like burning plastic than carmelizing sugar and butter, but I’ll give it a go anyway.

Pink and White Animal Cookies

Everything ready to go to The Booksmith

The Salted Caramel Cupcakes are a Cakewalk Outtake, sort of: the frosting is in the book, utilized for the Brown Sugar Pound Cake recipe, but the yellow cake it goes with was cut from the manuscript when its chapter got the ax.

I love this yellow cake, an old southern recipe called “Hot Milk Cake.” It’s an unusual procedure: you heat the butter and milk together to boiling and pour it over the dry ingredients and eggs, stirring fast so the eggs don’t curdle. It smells like paradise when it’s in the oven, and the cake is spongy and light and delicious. It showed up for the first time in my life in Mothers Who Think, in an essay by contributor Maurine Shores on her childhood summers on the North Carolina coast, during which an eccentric “Cake Lady” supplied local vacationers with freshly baked cakes. Maurine’s family’s favorite was the Cake Lady’s Caramel Cake: the fragrant yellow Hot Milk Cake iced with a caramel frosting that is really a thoroughly addictive candy in disguise. Of course we ran the recipe along with the essay, and then my partner-in-crime, Camille Peri, and I became undeniably obsessed with the Caramel Cake.

In fact, everyone we knew became obsessed with the Caramel Cake. We made it to bring into the Salon office to share with our coworkers, and we made it for parties, and we made it into cupcakes for the kids’ school birthdays. It was the ubiquitous cake of the San Francisco internet heyday. Everyone who ate it wanted the recipe, and in those early days of the World Wide Web it was so smugly satisfying to be able to say, “just download it off our site.”

Just to be fancy for tonight’s reading I made the Caramel Cake cupcakes into Salted Caramel Cupcakes [LINK]: a pinch of Maldon salt flakes sprinkled over the swirl of frosting before it sets. Fleur de sel would work, too.

Caramel Cupcakes in formal dress, with Maldon salt

I’ve had a thing for blood oranges ever since I first saw them at the incomparable Berkeley Bowl market more than twenty-five years ago. I asked the nearest produce guy about a bin of small oranges blushed red like peaches, and I thought I heard him wrong when he said they were “blood oranges.” It sounded a little too gruesome for a fruit. But he cut one open with the knife he kept in his green apron, and I got it –  the flesh was mottled orange and red, the juice a clear vivid pink. And was it my imagination or did they actually taste a little different from an ordinary orange?

According to the experts, blood oranges do have a more complex, deep flavor than, say, Valencias or navels, both tart and sweet, like raspberries. To me they taste of their exotic history, an import to the southern Mediterranean and thereabouts – particularly Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and Italy, but also Morocco, Greece, and the Middle Eastern countries — from Southeast Asia, brought by Arab traders along the Silk Road, or maybe the Portuguese after Columbus. The Italian arancia and Spanish naranja probably derived from the Arab nãranj, which in turn probably came from the Sanskrit for orange tree, nãranga.  In Sicily any arancia you get is likely to be a blood orange, and they’ll tell you the juice is the blood of Mt. Etna, as Gary and I discovered on our honeymoon. Every morning with our tiny cups of searing espresso and flaking cornetti we were served spremuta d’arancia, freshly squeezed over ice to cool it of its mythic vulcanism. The idea didn’t seem entirely farfetched as we sipped our brilliantly red juice while sitting at a table overlooking the rocky Ionian coast off Taormina, bougainvillea blooming all down the steep cliffside and Mt. Etna belching smoke in the far distance behind us: the three cyclopes at work, forging thunderbolts for Zeus.

Blood oranges still have that faraway appeal even though you can find them readily through the winter and into spring, and they’re usually no more expensive than their more ordinary cousins.  I hoard blood oranges like a squirrel hoards acorns, and I can’t resist any opportunity to substitute blood orange for the plainer varieties: I segment them into winter salads with kale and sliced fennel, add blood orange bitters to margaritas, stew them with chicken and dates, cook them into marmalade.

If I see them mentioned on a menu, I want whatever it is. Who wouldn’t want sorbet the crimson of roses with the flavor of a morning in Cadiz, like this one at Camino Restaurant in Oakland?

Camino's Blood Orange Sorbet with candied pomelo peel

Blood oranges figure prominently in several of my favorite cakes: sliced in their skins and sautéed with brown sugar and butter for the eventual candied topping of an upside-down cake, or their zest and juice added to another cake I made up when I was missing the flavors I remembered from past trips to the sunny Mediterranean – an almond and polenta torte with blood orange and lemon, and depending on whether you’re feeling Sicilian or Spanish or Venetian, the options of saffron, cinnamon, and cloves.

This year I used what I figured might be my last blood oranges of the season to make birthday cupcakes for my friend Emma. Emma is Greek, so I thought she’d enjoy the blood oranges’ generalized nod to her cultural heritage. Plus Emma often has a streak of pink in her platinum blonde hair, so I knew she’d like the color.

The cupcakes are a variation on the Vanilla Birthday Cake recipe from Cakewalk, with the blood orange zest rubbed into the sugar before creaming with the butter, and the juice as a partial substitute for the milk. Orange flower water and either lemon or orange extract add to the fragrance and flavor, and though the cakes don’t look particularly orange (or pink or vermilion for that matter), the frosting – also using zest, juice and the citrus flavorings – is gorgeously, festively pink. There’s nothing like pink cake to make you feel like it’s your birthday.

You can find the recipe for Blood Orange Birthday Cake and Cupcakes in Cakewalk, but here is my Castle in Spain (or Villa in Siracusa, or Palazzo in Canaregio) Cake.

Stuck in San Francisco or St. Louis, wishing for Seville or Spoleto? Never fear: your Mediterranean fantasy is a mere two blood oranges away.

Zest and juice of 2 blood oranges, in separate containers
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal (not polenta)
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 ¼ cup granulated sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ¾ cups ground almonds (or almond meal)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
½ tsp vanilla
½ tsp lemon extract
½ tsp orange flower water
½ tsp almond extract
Confectioner’s sugar

Preheat the oven to 375˚ and butter and flour an 8” springform cake pan. Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Rub the zest into the granulated sugar until well mixed.

Cream the butter for a minute or two, then add the sugar and beat until creamy and light. Mix in the ground almonds, then add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Add the juice and extracts and mix well, then fold in the flour-polenta mixture by hand with just a few strokes, just until the dry ingredients disappear.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top, then bake for 30-40 minutes, until the top is deeply golden brown but the center is still not quite set. There will be a circle about 3 inches across that will still be a little unsteady when you lightly touch or jiggle the cake.

Cool the cake in the pan for 15-20 minutes, then loosen the sides of the pan and allow to cool thoroughly. Dust the top with confectioner’s sugar. Makes 8 to 10 servings.

VARIATIONS:
In general:
–Substitute other lemony or orangey citrus if blood orange is not available: oranges, tangerines, meyer lemons, lemons
–Use 2 cups ground almonds for firmer texture
–Use polenta instead of cornmeal, but it will be too crunchy for most people

Geographically particular:
–Spanish or Sicilian Style: Add 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads to the juice and allow to dissolve while putting the rest of the batter together. Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to the flour-cornmeal mixture.
–Venetian Style: In addition to the saffron and cinnamon in the Spanish or Sicilian Style (above), add 1/4 teaspoon cloves to the flour-cornmeal mixture.

And here’s another way to redeem your bananas for the good.

½ cup unsalted butter
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
¼ cup dark rum
pinch of salt
4 small, ripe (not overripe) bananas, sliced in half lengthwise
Vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 400˚. Place the butter in a shallow glass baking dish large enough to hold the 8 banana halves in a single layer and place the pan in the oven. When the butter is melted, about 5 minutes, add the brown sugar, stir, and cook until the sugar is bubbling, about 5-8 minutes. Add the rum and pinch of salt, and stir the mixture together. Arrange the bananas in a single layer and bake for 10 minutes. Turn the bananas over, coating with the sauce, and bake for another 10 minutes, until the bananas are tender. To serve, place 2 banana halves and a scoop of vanilla ice cream in each of four shallow dessert dishes or plates, and distribute the rest of the sauce over the bananas. Makes 4 servings.

Here’s one way to redeem your bad bananas…

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/3 cups mashed, very ripe banana (about 5-7 largish bananas)
2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons espresso powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
8 ounces high quality chocolate (milk, semisweet or bittersweet), coarsely chopped
1 cup toasted, coarsely chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350º.  Butter and flour a 9×5” loaf pan, knocking out excess flour. In a medium bowl cream the butter on medium speed until smooth and fluffy, about 1 minute, then add the sugar and beat until creamy and light, another 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until the mixture is again creamy and light. Mix in the vanilla, then add the bananas, mixing on low just until incorporated.

Whisk the flour, espresso powder, baking soda and salt together and fold into the banana mixture by hand just until the flour disappears. Fold in the chocolate chunks and turn the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 50-65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (if you insert it and it comes back covered with melted chocolate, try again). If the banana bread is getting too brown on top, cover with foil until it tests done. When it’s ready, let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn out onto the wire rack, top side up, and cool completely. Makes one loaf.

I haven’t eaten a banana in fourteen years. Bananas were one of the few fresh fruits I ate daily as a kid – in our house, pears and pineapple and mandarin oranges came out of cans, and otherwise we had apples, watermelon, the occasional berry, and the ubiquitous banana – but my juvenile banana glut isn’t why I don’t eat them now. I went off bananas when I was newly pregnant with Celeste: a banana was the last thing I ate before I was pitched headfirst into morning (and afternoon and evening) sickness. For about four months, twenty-four hours a day, I felt like I was on the deck of a rolling ship in high seas. I groaned on the couch with one foot firmly planted on the floor, like a drunk fighting off the whirling down tornadoes. Whatever I’d eaten the day before was unthinkable to ever eat again, until I was subsisting on a diet of half a plain bagel – if I even saw the other half it was too much for me – and See’s milk chocolate Bordeaux candies. Just the thought of the smell of a banana has made me run the other direction ever since. Weirdly, Celeste, too, can’t stand bananas.

Then early last year, while I was in the last phase of editing the manuscript for Cakewalk, I read a New York Times article that said the most popular recipe on the site allrecipes.com was one for banana bread.  Just about then I was ruthlessly cutting whole chapters and many beloved recipes from my way-too-bloated manuscript, and one of the recipes I most regretted losing was for Nell Cliff’s bananas roasted in rum and brown sugar.

Nell was the mother of my college boyfriend, to this day one of the great influences of my life and the person who taught me more about baking and cooking and than anyone else ever has. She still gets her due – I guess I should really say her just desserts — in Cakewalk, but with only one of the many exemplary recipes she passed on to me. Seeing her roasted bananas on the cutting room floor made me wonder if maybe it was time to try bananas again . . .

Not, however, raw: that is still beyond my capabilities. But I looked up the popular banana bread recipe at allrecipes.com, and it looked like something I might actually be able to stomach, if I doctored it a bit with some flavors I knew I could manage. One of those flavors is chocolate, about which I tend to think in terms of Mark Twain’s statement about whiskey: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is just enough.”

Too much chocolate is almost enough, if you ask me.  So I added chunks of chopped milk chocolate to my banana bread, as well as powdered espresso and toasted walnuts. I brought the fragrant maiden loaf on a canoe trip with stalwart family friends, and when I unveiled it on a gravelly beach during our picnic lunch, after one bite Farhad, who in our circle is the High Priest of the Church of Wretched Excess, started shaking his head and laughing. It was that good.

It’s banana bread as an extreme sport. Unlike most recipes, this one calls for a lot of banana, so it’s got that unmistakable fragrance and flavor, but elevated to another level, which, given my banana problems, is perfectly fine with me. It’s kind of like banana bread candy. You can’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re eating something vaguely healthy. So here’s that recipe, my rendition of Chocolate Chunk-Espresso Banana Bread.

But back to Nell’s roasted bananas, which deserve their own moment of glory. They’re incredibly easy to make and perfect for a last-minute dinner party dessert that you can put together while everyone is lingering over their glasses of wine. Nell made them that way, and because of my naïvete – not just in the kitchen but in polite society — I once put my foot in my mouth when the roasted bananas were presented at the conclusion of an annual party with old family friends. “Oh good, you’ve made the roasted bananas again,” I brayed as we all oohed and ahhed over our plates of sizzling bananas in their pools of rummy sauce. “When you made these at last year’s party, Nell, everyone loved them!”

Nell, the consummate gracious hostess and ever indulgent of my flaws, flinched almost imperceptibly, and her daughter Molly shrewdly steered the conversation toward the deliciousness of our dessert. I didn’t know that a good hostess does her best not to serve the same dish to the same company a second time, nor did I realize that a good guest would have avoided embarrassing her hostess by mentioning such a repeat performance. Now I know better.

Nell’s recipe evolved from one of the cookbooks by Victor Bergeron, the Trader Vic of Trader Vic’s famous San Francisco restaurant, where the theme was Polynesian Tiki Room, the food was great, and the cocktails were strong – that’s where the Mai Tai was invented. Somehow I managed to never write down Nell’s recipe, and in my ramblings through used bookstores over the years I’ve never found the right Trader Vic’s cookbook with the original recipe, but here’s a version of Roasted Rum Bananas that’s pretty close, and I hope it makes up for my roasted banana bad of years gone by.

Despite my peeping about Easter being my favorite holiday, how I love all the frills and frippery and fakey grass, blah blah, this year the Easter Bunny kind of laid an egg. Maybe not as far as the kids were concerned – Celeste and our three visiting juvenile friends from Brooklyn still got baskets turgid with fuzzy chicks and amusing toys and chocolate and jelly beans, and prodigal son Zachary, spending his junior year abroad, got an Easter treat befitting a 21-year-old reading classics at Oxford: a copy of an audacious first novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey.  But all parents know that the primary reason to overload kids with candy at Easter and Halloween is to benefit said parents, who will be tiptoeing across darkened children’s rooms late at night for weeks to come, palming through the beribboned baskets or plastic jack-o-lanterns for a handful of Reese’s miniatures or malted milk balls, girding themselves for daylight’s less-than-sweet aspects of adult responsibility.

Thus in the two decades since I became a mother my Easter palate has become more selective, since junk candy from Walgreen’s is not what I want when I ransack the baskets as my offspring snore gently in their beds: I want the See’s Candy decorated chocolate buttercream egg, heavy as a hand grenade, to hack my way through in the privacy of my midnight kitchen, or a few post-modernist truffles from Joseph Schmidt, San Francisco’s answer to Willie Wonka. When Easter approacheth I have been known to drive all over the Bay Area and pore through catalogs and troll the Internet for the most adorable, delectable treats, tucking them into papier-mâché eggs and crinkly cellophane bags sealed with baby animal stickers in my quest not just for the eventuality of pleasurable parental consumption, but to be the cleverest, most imaginative Easter Bunny ever.

But not this year. This year, the Easter Bunny spent the month of March on post-operative nursing duty, for her husband is parked on the couch with the television remote and two new, virtually unused titanium knees. When she is not plumping pillows and doling out oxycontin the Easter Bunny has been driving the girls chorus carpool every afternoon, boiling rice and chicken breasts for a dog with acute digestive problems, and writing thank-you notes to high school admissions directors at 2 a.m.. Not to mention the depressing stress of starting the South Beach Diet (who cares about no starch and no booze? The trauma is no sugar!) to prepare for the publication of my book about my lifelong, frantic consumption of sugar. To make things even more challenging from the candy-foraging perspective, trusty and tasty See’s closed their flagship store – a mere five-minute stroll from the tired Easter Bunny’s house (See’s, how could you? Why do you think I moved to this neighborhood?!). Joseph Schmidt, too, went into retirement and locked the doors of his Wonkaesque shop.

So this year’s baskets, architected via Walgreen’s and a single rushed trip to Target, were kind of lame. Lots of chocolate that tasted like wax. Jelly beans with no flavor whatsoever. Funny — mediocre candy is not like mediocre wine: it does not start to taste better the more you have. Okay, so I was cheating on my diet, and it wasn’t even worth the guilt. If you’re going to cheat, you might as well cheat with some real candy with quality control. Using the excuse that I had essential errands to run for invalids and teenagers, I escaped my house and headed for The Candy Store.

The Candy Store opened in my neighborhood a couple of years ago. It looks like an apothecary designed by the Jetsons, with a stylized black-and-blue logo and glass jars lining the walls, all of them filled with something fabulous, like chunks of toffee rolled in peanut butter and then dipped in milk chocolate, or gummy butterflies, or green-apple gum balls. It’s fun just knowing that there’s a dedicated candy store three blocks from my house, and the owners, Diane and Brian Campbell, are so friendly and good-natured they tend to offer you a sample if you stare too long at one of the jars on display.

I usually leave with a handful of mixed Swiss Fruits because they look like doll house food: tiny dimpled oranges and blushed green pears and miniature bananas speckled microscopically with brown. But today I wanted something really great, not just the usual, something that would override the taste of carnauba wax from the Brach’s jelly beans I choked down by the handful last night. The first thing I noticed at The Candy Store was a display of coconut & Hawaiian pink salt brittle. Brian makes the brittle in small batches, toasting the organic coconut he uses, and I could smell it even through the cellophane bags.

The Candy Store's handmade brittle

As I chatted with Diane at the counter while paying for my brittle, she noticed me eyeing a polka-dotted box of something wrapped in waxed paper. “Those are amazing,” she told me. “They’re marshmallows covered in a salted caramel with a little cocoa and three kinds of roasted nuts. A woman in the East Bay makes them.” She continued under her breath. “I think they’re my favorite candy in the store right now. No – I think these may be the best candy I’ve ever had.”

Diane knows her candy, and even though they were pricey at $3 a piece, with that endorsement I had to try one.  I took my bag of high quality candy, picked up a cup of tea to go around the corner, and drove off to do my real errands.

Ten minutes later I pulled my car over to the curb so that I could call Diane back at The Candy Store. I’d already broken into the coconut brittle, which was brilliant, the crunch and toastiness of the coconut and blonde brittle balanced with savory sweetness. But the caramel-covered marshmallow – something about its combination of textures and flavors, the slight bitterness of the dark, nut-flecked caramel with its hint of chocolate against the airy, melting marshmallow, was staggering. I’d eaten it in one bite and unlike most sweets, it was so completely satisfying that was all I needed. That one perfect mouthful.

“You were right,” I told Diane on the phone. “That marshmallow-caramel thing ties for the most amazing piece of candy I’ve ever had”—I thought quickly to the unforgettable rose-flavored Turkish delight my family bought a couple of years ago at a gas station not far from the ruins of the ancient city of Termessos, a candy so tender and perfumed and beautifully pure I would have wept except that I was too busy elbowing the rest of my family away from the box as they wolfed it down.  Later we learned that we’d stumbled into the village renowned for making the best Turkish delight in the country. Now my other best candy is right around the corner from my house. Even at $3 a pop, it’s a lot cheaper than going back to Turkey.

BonBonBar's SCN Caramallows and my grandmother's toy tea set

You too can buy that marshmallow-caramel thing, called a Salted Chocolate Nut Caramallow and made by Nina Wanat of BonBonBar, through The Candy Store. You can buy Brian Campbell’s brittles, too, if you’re lucky – they tend to sell out the day they’re made.

Coconut & Hawaiian Pink Salt Brittle reposing before it disappears

And Nina Wanat, who left the film industry and then law school to start making really good candy, has a blog about dessert called Sweet Napa, where you can find out more about BonBonBar. After the salty-sweet SCN Caramallow and the coconut brittle, and my fond memories of that rosy Turkish delight, I’m ready to try Nina’s recipe for a rosewater-flavored pavlova.

Faux Pa’s Fudge (as opposed to my grandfather’s vintage recipe) saved the day for my daughter in the traumatic wake of putting her foot in her mouth after seeing “Spring Awakening” for the first time. Maybe fudge can’t cure everything but it will certainly make you friends.

This is the recipe I’ve been asked for more than any other. When my kids were small I started making it in big batches for teacher gifts once a year, and it was so sought after teachers who’d never had my children in their classrooms started asking me how they could get on the fudge list. Family and friends must have their fudge needs taken care of, too, so in recent years I’ve made up to 90 pounds of fudge in December and shipped it off as far away as England, Australia, and Italy.

From my perspective, Faux Pa’s Fudge is also the antidote to the despair and frustration borne of struggling to make the real “Pa’s Fudge,” described in Cakewalk – and yes, it has a couple of dirty little secrets. But I bet you do, too.

1 1/4 pounds high-quality milk chocolate
10 ounces high-quality dark or bittersweet chocolate
Optional: 1 heaping cup of walnut halves
4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups evaporated milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups marshmallow cream

Butter the bottom and sides of a 10 1/2-by-15 1/2-inch pan. Chop or break the chocolates into small pieces. Set aside. If using walnuts, toast them at 375 degrees for 5-8 minutes, checking every few minutes until the nuts are fragrant and starting to lightly brown. Set aside.

In a large, heavy saucepan or Dutch oven over low-medium heat, cook the sugar, butter, and evaporated milk, stirring occasionally, until it comes to a full rolling boil. Boil, stirring constantly, for exactly 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow the boiling to subside, then quickly add the chocolates and salt, stirring until the chocolate is thoroughly melted and the mixture is smooth. Add the marshmallow cream and vanilla, stirring until the fudge is thoroughly uniform and no traces of marshmallow can be seen. Add walnuts if using and stir in. Turn into the prepared pan and let cool for several hours or overnight, until completely firm. Score the top of the fudge into 1-inch squares and cut with a sharp knife, dipping the knife in hot water between cuts if necessary. Store the fudge between layers of wax paper in a sealed container in a cool place. Can be refrigerated or frozen.

Makes about 5 pounds of fudge.