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Traditionally, I deliver pre-Christmas baskets to about a dozen neighbors. In each basket are small items for the children, and a homemade coffeecake. My mother, Eileen, gave Christmas coffeecakes to friends and neighbors for decades. So did my sister Sari. One of Eileen's legacies was apparently the coffeecake gene.
I don't use Eileen's recipe (although I have it), but a similar one, rich with butter and eggs and cardamom. I shape mine into little fat braids (Eileen used to form them into large wreaths or Christmas tree shapes). In 2006, however, I considered cancelling the tradition because of the complications of extra visitors and my first-ever giant, Christmas-Day Birthday Party. But during the week before Christmas I decided I couldn't NOT make coffeecakes for the neighbours. So I added coffeecakes to my long to-do list.
I always start my coffeecakes with a sponge, which rises overnight. The sponge is made of yeast, flour, and water, and it bubbles up and becomes a fountain of yeast that is lively enough to raise the huge batch of dough.
Being a purist, I don't like to use dry yeast. I like the less-processed (or so I like to think) cake yeast, those little squares wrapped in silvery foil. Unfortunately, since few of us bake these days, cake yeast is almost impossible to find. I buy it in half-pound chunks from a baker, then I cut it into squares and freeze them all together in a heavy plastic bag. When I need yeast, I pry off a cube or two and proceed with the recipe. I've done it for years. It works a treat.
In the years leading up to Christmas 2006, however, we had been eating less bread than we had before, and we had found a source for a great but inexpensive ciabatta loaf, with a crusty crust and big fat holes. So not only were we eating less bread than we used to, but the bread we did eat was store-bought ciabatta. Therefore, I wasn't using much yeast, and I hadn't needed to buy more from the baker. So the frozen yeast I had on hand was three years old. Do you see where this is going?
The night before I was going to make the coffeecakes, I set my sponge. The yeast was fairly inert at the beginning, but I wasn't alarmed. Cake yeast (and especially frozen cake yeast) takes longer to begin fermenting. I started the sponge and went to bed.
The next morning, the sponge was not the bubbly and risen mass I was expecting. It was a little bit puffy, a little changed from the night before, but not its usual frothy self.
Now this is where it's useful to be paying attention. To be in the moment. I heard the little voice telling me that this would not end well. I knew on one level that I'd better re-think the project. But this knowing was overridden by a determination to do it—to go ahead and make the coffeecakes using this sponge. "It will all work out" is my mantra, and it usually serves me well, but sometimes that mantra needs to be informed by reality.
I made the coffeecakes. Two pounds of butter. A dozen eggs. A couple cups of sugar. A quarter-cup of cardamom. And enough flour to feed an army. I mixed it, kneaded it, and set it to rise.
Did it rise? Of course it did. Not as much as I'd have liked, but it did rise. Some.
So I shaped my braids. A dozen cute little rectangular braided coffeecakes on my three over-sized cookie sheets. I let them rise again.
Did they rise? Of course they did. Not as much as I'd have liked, but I knew the blast of heat from the oven would puff them up nicely. Wheat products respond well when you put them into a hot oven.
So I baked them. All day I'd been shouting down my misgivings or ignoring them completely as I immersed myself in the chaos of getting ready for Christmas. I had already prepared the neighbours' little baskets, complete with cards and notes. As soon as I added a coffee-cake to each basket, they'd be ready to deliver.
When I took the coffeecakes out of the oven, they were flat and heavy. Definitely not all right. Oh well, I thought, I'll just tell people to slice them and toast them. I'll just say they aren't as good as usual. I cooled and iced them, packaged them and delivered them, telling people to use them for toast.
And the next day, I cut a slice from the coffeecake I'd saved for us, to toast it for my own breakfast. Oh, disaster. Worse than I had thought. Not just dense and flat, but almost raw in the middle (unrisen dough doesn't bake right). I was undone. But it was too late.
Did people eat them? I was afraid to ask.
But here's what I did. On January 2, after all our visitors had gone home, I made a dozen coffeecakes using dry yeast. Newly purchased dry yeast. The coffeecakes were beautiful! I delivered them to neighbors with this note: "Attached is a delicious coffeecake to replace the dense, inedible loaf delivered earlier by some malevolent elf."
And I think I've got it now: I'm supposed to pay attention. To be there, wherever "there" is. Okay. NOW I've got it!
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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