02.17.09: beep beep

i didn't even try to get through valentine's day without telling joe i was making him a german chocolate cake. this turned out to be a good call for a couple of reasons: first, i remain almost completely unable to keep my own secrets, and second, making german chocolate cake (when you follow david lebovitz's recipe, at least) takes forty thousand years. i started after a final run to the grocery store at ten thirty on saturday morning and finished at something like five in the afternoon.

holiday junk food (1 of 2)

i still managed to botch a step, too (in measuring out the butter for the toasted coconut and pecan filling, i tossed the amount i needed back in the fridge and add the remainder of the stick to my bowl instead). my invariably crappy baking is like gozer's arrival at the end of ghostbusters: the destructor's form varies, but the destruction itself is certain. luckily, this mess was tasty, and we're still slicing away at it three days later (DL wasn't kidding when he said it served sixteen).

at the other end of the spectrum, i ended the weekend at my very first runway show in the tents at bryant park, where no one has eaten cake in a very long time.

the front row

i will not admit that i hummed "fashion" the whole time, but i can't say i didn't.

8 comments:

Ma said...

laurenlaurenlauren....g.c.c. is Doug's favorite, and I have an unbelievably wonderful, amazingly light version from my LATimes cookbook---last time I made it was a month ago.
You have my sympathy (D.L.'s recipe is crazy long and complicated!), but I'd seriously recommend trying mine!

wabes said...

good god, you even piped on the icing, you minx!

people have asked me this year if i haven eaten a lot of german chocolate cake. i just smile.

it's my dad's favorite cake, too...

lauren said...

@ma: send it hence! we have a piper down, i repeat, a piper down.

@wabes: i considered buying icing apparatus, but ended up going for the ol' hole-in-a-baggie approach - hence the bootleggy piping job.

the real question, of course: have you been eating your weight in schwarzwälderkirschtorte?

Mary-Laure said...

The cake looks delicious. David Lebovitz is really a chocolate master, who gives really good recipes, no?

lauren said...

i totally agree about DL, mary-laure. i decided to work with his recipe both because he really sounded like he knew what he was doing and, just a little bit, because the many steps intrigued me: i decided that if a cake was going to be my valentine's day offering, i should put the labor back in 'labor of love.'

meg said...

More! On! Fashion! Show!

lauren said...

hmm. it was over just as fast as everyone warns you it will be? it took me 45 minutes to make it through the line, and the show itself was like half that. that's alright, though, as most of the fun of the show was absorbing the AMAZING FASHION BITCHINESS of the people waiting out there with me among the giant walls of barbies and campari cocktails. as i told paul, there's something beautiful about being surrounded by sneering men in makeup (who are not in bands). they're just so silly and wonderful - exactly the stereotypes you'd expect them to be. and the women! even worse (read: better)!

i sort of charted a middle course between not trying to be fashionable at all and cramming secretly. i wore a kenneth cole version of the amelie shoes i wear all the time, a pair of violent violet tights, a sixties-ish black dress from fall/winter '07 (gasp, faux pas! but i wanted to wear a sample, so whatever), and my black trench. i probably dove the gal next to me crazy with all of my picture-snapping.

wabes said...

i did the baggie-corner piping on some devilled eggs i made a while bag, and i was SO excited. bootleggy is the way for me to go, at least for now.