Midwinter Musings: quarantine

I don't really like baking, that's what I claim. But the amount of baking I've done since the beginning of quarantine tells a different story. Some of it was about finding things to celebrate. Some of it was about lack of bread at the store. Some was because I wanted to minimize trips to the grocery store or bakery. Book food spurred me on once or twice. Birthdays were a good excuse. But no one held a gun to my head and told me I had to bake a buche de Noel. I must like baking, at least a little bit.

Here are a few highlights, starting with the buche de Noel above. The buche de Noel was inspired by one that I had a slice of last Christmas. It was from La Farine bakery in Oakland, and it was delicious!

Little did I know this was the year of buche de Noels! I saw LOTS on social media. I used this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, mainly because it used frangelico, which I know was an ingredient in the one from La Farine. For decoration we made our own marzipan (because I was unable to find any to purchase and I just happened to have some almond flour). Marzipan made up the cranberries as well as the core of the almond pinecones. The mushrooms are meringue. Even though we didn't have very three dimensional stems (because our meringue wasn't stiff enough) they still turned our incredibly well. They were also tasty. Next time I will use more frangelico in the filling and sprinkle some on the sponge cake before rolling too.

The first quarantine bake was for Pi Day. I took some shortcuts. The pie crust was a frozen one I rerolled and shaped. The interior was savory--potatoes, onions, and palak paneer (also purchased frozen from the grocery store).

Next up was a cabbage galette to use up leftovers from St Patrick's day. I found the recipe here. I subbed in oat milk for regular milk because at this point of the pandemic, you just used what you had (not to mention, that's a pretty good strategy in general).

Ariadne had wanted to go with a practical joke theme when it came to food for her birthday party. The plan was a burger cake, and a cake made of sandwiches, all at the beach with friends. The beach part was replaced with a zoom party where the kids played with legos, chatted, and watched Frozen 2. But we still made the burger cake! Ariadne helped. The 'burger' was a brownie mix and the buns were yellow cake. Marshmallow fondant made the cheese and lettuce, as well as the sesame seeds for the bun. The brown of the bun and the red of the ketchup were a challenge. I used many colors from our 16 color gel food coloring set.

Like everyone else, we got in on the sourdough craze. A friend knew a friend with a starter. Pretty soon my entire group of friends from park day had sourdough starter. At this point in the pandemic, no one could get bread at the store, and yeast was sold out too.

We tried plain, olive and rosemary, and cinnamon and raisin. Olive and rosemary (above) was my favorite. At times the starter was quite explosive!

A local restaurant was experimenting with meal kits, often paired with staples like toilet paper or bread and eggs. One of their kits was for homemade pop tarts. They came out pretty well, and were a good activity for the kids (and we got TP! Yay!). Strawberry, PB&J, and cinnamon and sugar, if I remember correctly.

For Easter, I decided to make a layered carrot cake from one of my favorite cookbook authors, Abigail Johnson Dodge. Here's the inside.

Book food! I have the most ridiculous hobby. I make food from books and other fiction. These cookies were from The Testaments, Margret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. They are basically modified oatmeal raisin cookies. Maple syrup is used in place of sugar, and they also include sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. The book references childhood memories of eating cookies with raisin eyes pumpkin seed smiles.

Random pancakes.

Cherry pie was part of our AP Week/ Hike Week. The older two kids had a full week of AP tests between them. All administered at home. In order to give them a quiet work environment, I took the younger two kids out for a hike everyday (as homeschoolers, we had the flexibility to do this). On the last day we went cherry picking! When we got home, I just had to make a pie.

Random popovers (my favorite) and GG Lois's scones--a blueberry version.

Alright, I didn't bake this one, but I need to throw it in for posterity. A tres leches cake from Safeway's bakery for Solomon's high school graduation. I will likely have a full post on this up sooner or later, but just in case I don't here is most of the spread. Caprese salad is just out of the frame. Until ordering this cake, I had not set foot in a store for months! As we hit high school graduation, I realized that I probably needed to be able to shop at least some, since instacart was frequently down and was really hit or miss for our family of six. (Often they substituted with wildly less than I'd ordered, or left out all the main courses for our meals).

A friend posted about making chocolate beet cupcakes. I needed to try it. We liked it so well, chocolate beet cake has shown up in several iterations since.

Fourth of July flag desserts! In an attempt to eat a little healthier, these have a wasa bread base, slightly sweet cream cheese, strawberry stripes and blueberry stars. Not quite baking, but they are pretty.

We did a LOT of baking leading up to Ariadne's book one violin recital, which was August 1st. The first batch were sugar cookies decorated with royal icing and stars. They needed to be sturdy to withstand shipping to friends and family in Minnesota. Treble clefs and stars were fitting for a Suzuki violin recital. And Aria's favorite color is pink.

Our second batch was for in-town guests. We made eighth note jam-jams (jam-jams of any shape are a favorite on Charles's side of the family). Nutella Cellos also made an appearance. These are the cookies we invented for Charlotte's book one cello recital several years ago. Delivering cookies, programs and coloring pages to our local friends was a surprise highlight. Aria and I got in several impromptu conversations with friends we hadn't seen in person since March.

All for one and one for all! This is not a sanctioned way to use bows, but fun nonetheless!

More book food! In the last Harry Potter book, Harry has a birthday cake in the shape of a snitch. Charlotte finished the book series this summer and insisted we make the snitch birthday cake. Small wouldn't do, so we used two mixing bows for baking! The cake was chocolate beet cake, and excellent combination. Marshmallow fondant and edible gold dust covered the entire thing, with paper wings to make sure everyone knew it was a snitch. Then we watched the book seven movies after Aria was in bed.

Asana cupcakes. Charles got a new job during the pandemic. I made cupcakes in the shape of their logo.

In fall we tried out a recipe for apple cider caramels my friend Marina made the year before after our field trip to an apple orchard. They were SO GOOD! I made a second batch and we shipped some to family in Minnesota, along with some more of those oatmeal smile cookies I'd make for book club months back. The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen.

Book food strikes again! Conchas from The First Rule of Punk turned out to be one of Charlotte's all time favorites.

The conchas came back at Thanksgiving by special request, along with bao, inspired by the Pixar short. We had a bun brunch on Thanksgiving, with baking headed up by Charles and aided by Ariadne and Charlotte.

December 1st 2020, the universe conspired to give me a cake. This is when I knew I'd been baking too much. Miraculously, I had all the ingredients for a very particular recipe I had never seen before, Bon Appetit's heartbeet cake.

Beets--check

Dutch process cocoa--check

coconut oil--check

everything to make chocolate ganache--check

edible gold dust for decoration--CHECK!

Too. Much. Baking. I made it anyway, it was delicious! I don't think it was as healthy as the recipe made it out to be.

This summer Ariadne had her book one violin recital! A book one recital celebrates a ton of work and a major milestone for Suzuki kids--finishing book one. Most kids start between age 3 and 5, and most finish book one 2-4 years later. It also is an excellent way to solidify all those book one songs that may have gotten a little fuzzy. She finished book one back in the spring, but between AP tests and high school graduation, summer was a better time to have the recital. [Note: if you want to see some video highlights of the recital skip to the end of the blog post].

Below is Ariadne on the day she got her first real violin, the adult voice is her teacher (and she took the video too). It was mid August 2016.

Her she is with her box violin, which is how most Suzuki violinists start. The use it to learn to hold the violin without dropping it, and can learn parts of the violin and even basic bowing rhythms. It is a breakfast bar box covered in paper with a ruler for the fingerboard and scroll.

And the real thing! I believe it was a 1/10 size. She was almost four and a half.

Being so far from our music teacher and school (not to mention covid), we decided to have her siblings accompany her. They split up the book and I got to work finding duet parts for various instruments. Most we found in the Suzuki violin duet book. Charlotte listened to Nova play them on violin, then transposed them for cello by ear. We found an excellent (and original!) duet part to Minuet 3 by Bach. In the non-Suzuki world it is entitled Minuet in G and it is in the Anna Magdalena Notebook. Solomon and I found a Youtube video of a duet part for Gavotte by Gossec and he ended up doing a cross between that and something of his own invention. The Happy Farmer duet part was his own arrangement. Everyone joined in for Twinkle Theme.

Solomon and Ariadne practicing Gossec Gavotte

Ariadne decided she wanted dress up for the occasion. She found a beautiful blue dress Nova had worn when she was a junior bridesmaid for her aunt and uncle's wedding.

We dug out the dress black and whites for the older kids.

In order to make it feel like a real party, we decided to send out party packages to our guests. Round one was for the out of town folks. The house was turned into a cookie factory. We sent sugar cookies with treble clefs in pink royal icing and star sprinkles, treble clef napkins, a program, and musical coloring pages of violins, Bach, Mozart, and Schumann. In-town guests got Nutella cellos and eighth note jam-jams, along with the programs and coloring pages. Driving around town and dropping things off was the most contact we'd had with our friends in months, which was a surprise benefit of the recital.

After all the practice and baking, August 1st finally came and it was time to start the zoom call! The way the songs were split up, the older kids usually did a couple accompaniments in a row to minimize reshuffling time.

We had an intermission, both because an entire book is a lot to play in a row, and to deal with the 40 minute time limit on zoom. The songs probably would have made it just under the wire, but we wanted a few minutes to chat afterwards, and also knew there would be a little extra time switching out the cello.

Feeling good at intermission

Here we are at the intermission blowing off steam (and you can see our set-up with microphone and laptop). Charlotte and Nova are looking over the songs in her new Suzuki Cello vol 6. Solomon is playing some fast runs in the background and Ariadne is singing along. She has a flare for the dramatic.

I do not know what Solomon was thinking about here. I was thinking that in a few short weeks, he would be off at college, and life would be forever different. Not that we can stop these things, nor that we should. But sometimes I catch myself looking over a precipice of time, anticipating the leap.

Afterward we convinced the older kids that we did indeed need to take a couple group pictures, which ended in goofing around with the camera.

Below are a few video highlights from the recital. I put the last song first, because there is no song more quintessential to the Suzuki method than Twinkle Theme (aka Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). It also happens to be the only song with all four kids playing.

During the actual recital we started with the last song in the book and played all the way through to the beginning, breaking for intermission a little before the folk songs. The backwards order was Ariadne's teacher's suggestion, and I am so glad we did it that way. There's nothing as daunting a Gossec Gavotte when you're all tired out.