The word for world is forest

These are days to try your soul. You went from worry, to sorrow, to fear, to rage mixed with sorrow and then you went numb, until the fear came again.

You keep everything charged- your cellphone, your computer- just in case. There's bottled water in the hallway, cat food too. You keep as many of the doors as you can closed, keeping the windows out of sight, as if a plank of wood would do much help would they shatter inward- who knows- maybe it would. Sleep in pants, not shorts, just in case. Take short, perfunctory showers. Be prepared.

Your first instinct is to deny, deny, deny. But you know it is true. You know it can happen. People are people. Hate is hate. You open Facebook and all you see are the us and them, the propaganda, the provocation. It feels like a toxic cesspool, to be honest. Nothing can grow here. Despite our geographical proximity, we have so few opportunities to stand face to face and look each other in the eye.

"You don't have to call me every time there's a siren in Tel Aviv," your sister says. "I've checked in on Whatsapp." "I know," you say, and you do, but you want to hear her voice, exasperated as it is. You go about your day as normally as you can: job searches, work, cooking with friends. Others are much braver than you. They go out, they socialize, the travel far distances. Not you. You prefer to stay close to home if you can, to be in a place where at least you have plan of action. You can't always though. "Listen," you tell the cat as you're leaving the house, "if there's a siren, go into the hallway, stay away from the windows." She just flicks her ear at you and goes back to watching the birds. She can be so stupid sometimes.

Your heart-rate speeds up every time you hear the high whine of a motorcycle passing by. It's a strange way of going about your life. You water the plants. You show your neighbor where the public shelter is. One minute you are crouched in the hallway, waiting to hear the tell-tale boom that means a rocket has landed or been intercepted, the next you are sitting in your living room, finishing Americanah.

You are one of the lucky ones. The very, very lucky ones.

You've been thinking a lot about an interpretation of Deuteronomy 13: 18 that you once read (though you cannot, for the life of you, remember where): "And He will grant you mercy, and have compassion on you": In the face of great cruelty and violence it takes an extra measure of grace to remain compassionate and merciful. So much so, that compassion and mercy are considered gifts from God. Those words feel apt these days. May we all, in Jerusalem and Hebron, Tel Aviv and Gaza, be granted that extra measure of compassion in these days and all the days to come.

I'm a stress-baker. It's a thing, for-reals. And when I stress-bake, I don't want anything elegant or delicate. I want chocolate and brown butter, butterscotch and salt. I want comfort food in the form of what is essentially a big-ass chocolate chip cookie. This is what my roommate and I were confronted with when Deb's (of Smitten Kitchen) Blondies came out of the oven. We ate almost half of them right there and then. I put the rest in the freezer, because otherwise I knew I would just pick and pick at them until they were finished. To be honest, that strategy has been only semi-successful, since I now find myself making excuses to open the freezer. Make these, take a bit of comfort.

Brown Butter Blondies

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

8 tablespoons (113 grams) butter
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
pinch of salt
1 cup flour
3.5 oz (100 grams) dark chocolate, chopped
a handful of walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350 f.  Brown the butter. Place the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often until the butter turns a lovely golden-brown color and begins to smell amazing and nutty. Remove from heat.

2. Combine the butter and brown sugar, and mix until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Then stir in the flour, salt, chocolate and walnuts.

3. Spread batter into a buttered 8x8 pan. Bake for 20-25,  until set. Cool and cut into small squares. Eat in peace and quiet.

Small disasters

Friday was a day of small disasters, a comedy of errors if you will. First, three minutes after I put it in the oven, I realized that I forgot the cider vinegar in my Everything You Need Cake. I quickly poured the teaspoons of vinegar into the still wet batter, gave it a quick mix and stuck back in the oven, hoping for the best. Then, tasting the frosting I was making for said cake, I realized I forgot to add the sugar. That was when I realized that it was going to be one of those days in the kitchen where I probably should just remove myself from said kitchen. Those days happen. Alas, I had a few more culinary responsibilities. And so it went on. I had a jar of not-pesto pesto on the counter that tipped and went splattering all over the floor, while at the same time knocking over my open water bottle, sending water cascading into my pantry. That was a fun one to clean up and a waste of good herbs to boot. And then, to cap it all off, under the guise of "helping" I managed to break a glass while a guest at a friends house. I had serious thoughts about Australia, but some days are like that, even in Australia- or so I've been led to believe.

The frosting that I almost ruined is a new addition to my repertoire. Usually, when I'm keeping things non-dairy, I don't bother with frosting, I just make a simple glaze. But sometimes, you want something thicker, with more heft and less sweet, especially where chocolate is concerned (and we all agree chocolate frosting is the best kind of frosting). And since I refuse to go anywhere near margarine, frostings such as these are few and far between. Then I discovered vegan  chocolate boiled frosting, and everything changed, utterly changed. This stuff is thick and smooth and ganache-like and, with a few adjustments to the original recipe, utterly intense. I am frosting-less no more.

Chocolate Frosting
Adapted from VegWeb

As mentioned above, I made a bunch of changes to the recipe. The original recipe is really just a combination of sugar, cornstarch, cocoa and water, with a little vanilla thrown it. I felt that it didn't have enough oomph, so I upped the amount of cocoa, replaced the water with coffee and added in some chopped dark chocolate at the end (and a glug of whisky, because I like putting alcohol in things and chocolate and whisky is an under-appreciated combination)

1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup strong coffee
about 1 oz dark chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
a glug of whisky (optional)

1. In a small sauce whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, cocoa and salt. Add the coffee and place over medium heat, stirring constantly (and I mean constantly. No, really, for the love of everything holy, do not stop stirring! If you do, your cornstarch and cocoa will lump and stick to the bottom of the pot and burn and it will be terrible, horrible.) until it thickens and begin to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in the chocolate, oil, vanilla and whisky, if using.  Let cool, frost to your heart's content.

The Kids are Alright

This has been the summer of family. My brother, sister-in-law and the niecettes 5 came for an extended visit. They rented an apartment down the block from mine, and for the first time in over ten years, I lived within walking distance from my brother, albeit for a mere two months. Of course, the last time I lived near my brother, he didn't yet have five wonderful daughters, so this was a little bit of a new experience for me.

It was nice having my nieces living down the block from me. It was nice popping in for dinner, or just to say hi. It was nice having them raid my bookshelves, and my friends' bookshelves, because my nieces are nothing if not voracious readers. It was nice taking them to the Botanical Gardens and to the park and to the bookstore. It was nice having them in my everyday life. It was nice having them in my kitchen.

The kitchen part only happened at the way end of their trip, a few weekends ago. I had had various niece-aunt cooking projects planned (homemade pasta! caramel brownies! Marcella Hazan's pasta sauce!), but alas, this summer was a busy one on all fronts, and somehow, they never came to pass. And then, on Friday, on a total whim, I decided I needed to bake and also on a whim, my two middle nieces decided to bake with me. There was a lot of negotiating of turns (it's my turn to mix, no, it's mine  I want to pour. Why did you let her pour? You get the picture. ), but all in all, it was a good time. There was even some bowl licking.

When I was a kid, my mother used to make a vegan chocolate cake that we called Wacky Cake because it didn't contain eggs and that's just wacky. It was one of the first things I ever baked on my own. It's a fun recipe for a kid, because it involves digging holes in the dry ingredients and then watching the volcanic eruption of baking soda and vinegar doing their explody thing as they meet (see, science is fun!). I haven't made Wacky Cake in years, because even though it is an excellent cake, I have grown up and moved on to more, er, mature things (sort of, not really. Explody things are never not fun)- by which I mean coffee and beer. I like to call this cake the Everything You Need Cake, because it contains everything you need in life- chocolate, coffee and beer. Mrs. Larkin on Food 52, from whom I adapted this recipe, calls it Fudgy Stout Chocolate Cake, and that's a fine name, but personally I feel that my version really gets to the heart of the matter. I know what's important in life.

Everything You Need Cake is basically a more complex version of Wacky Cake. Like Wacky Cake, it's vegan and it gets its lift from that spectacular vinegar-baking soda combination. The two cakes are also incredibly versatile. You can double the recipe, you can cut it in half, you can bake it in a loaf pan, or cut the baking time and make cupcakes. Awesomeness all around. However, unlike Wacky Cake, Everything Cake is not afraid of deeper flavors, which is where the coffee and beer come in. And maybe, when introducing my nieces to vegan chocolate cake, I should have started with Wacky Cake for tradition's sake. But I guess part of growing up is taking traditions and then making them your own so they can, in turn, be passed on to someone else to be changed again.

Everything You Need Cake

Adapted from Mrs. Larkin on Food52.com

A note: Mrs. Larkin suggests using Guinness Stout in this recipe. I use whatever beer I have on hand, which is usually something a good deal cheaper than Guinness. Still, I happen to like dark beers, so whatever I use is usually fairly rich and bitter and malty.

1 1/2 cups flour
7 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark beer
1/2 cup strong coffee
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. Sift  the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl. Whisk in the sugar. In a measuring cup, combine the beer, coffee, water, vanilla and vinegar. Add to the dry ingredients. Mix until combine. Pour in vegetable oil, whisk vigorously until you have a smooth, loose batter.

3. Pour into a greased and lined 8 inch cake pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool. Serve plain, or with a mocha glaze like the one in this recipe