I made a pound cake last night. It was a feat for me because in my mind pound cakes were expensive, complicated and infinitely touchy. I think the perception comes from the fact that I had grown up hearing my grandmother say things like "I spent the whole afternoon baking a pound cake for the church supper tomorrow." or "Don't y'all run through the kitchen. You'll make my pound cake fall." Or my favorite, "Don't you be opening my oven door. You'll make my pound cake fall." even though the possibility that someone would open the oven door didn't really exist until she suggested that it might happen. My mother's special Christmas Eve cake was a seven flavor pound cake. She divided the batter, flavored each of them with a different flavor from a bottle and then put the batter section by section into a tube pan. The problem was that there was no way of knowing until you bit into the cake which flavor you got. You could be hoping for lemon and end up with butter rum. It all seemed so complicated. So for me there has always been a mental barrier to baking one.
It turns out that a pound cake might just possibly be the simplest cake to bake. Just cream the butter, egss, sugar, flavor and cream together, then slowly add the flour. Put it in the oven to bake and take it out when it is finished baking.
I think my cake turned out kind of pretty. I had a piece of it last night while it was still warm and thought that I really need to do some work on the recipe. It just didn't seem quite right to me. But today when I ate a piece of it cold, it was more like I remember my grandmother and mother baking. Mine wasn't quite as good as theirs, but definitely worth doing again, somewhat regularly. It was good enough that I had a second piece with some ice cream. I enjoyed it immensely.
It's funny how things throw up mental barriers isn't it? Like if you live with someone and they always leave their clothes in the washer and dryer, it puts a mental barrier to you being able to get your clothes washed. Or if you have to clean up their coffee mess and fight their cats off to enjoy a fried egg for breakfast, you might just give up and eat peanut butter toast all the time, And if you have to transverse through someone's bedroom to get to he vacuum cleaner, it is a discouragement to using it. All of those things are just minor things to overcome. But they do throw up motivational barriers that become a drag on effort.
My son gave me a nice board that is meant to sit over the top of the stove. It's been in a few of my posts like the one about baking bread. The intention is that it will be added counter space in a small kitchen. It can be placed across the sink when the stove is being used. But when I'm cooking I use both the stove and the sinks. The board was just in the way. It was becoming a barrier to me using the stove. I was opting for the peanut butter toast again.
My oven is a Hot Point; the back right hand burner has an opening that lets heat from the oven warm a pan that is set on top of the burner without turning it on. If you are roasting a chicken in the oven, you can set your pan of potatoes on the burner and the heat from the oven will cook the potatoes, or green beans or whatever side you have. It's a nice feature if you cook that way, but I don't. So I didn't think about it when I was drying the salt dough beads I made the other day. I left the board covering the stove, and the heat dried the board out and it started to crack. I noticed it when I picked it up to heat something. I was able to apply some wax and restore the board, but it gave me the reason I need to expel the board from the kitchen. It is now making a nice tray on my couch. I am enjoying it so much more there than I ever did while it was in the kitchen. Of course when guests come over, it will be in the way again. But for now, the barrier is removed.
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