The mornings are the best part. Invariably tired (there are no early nights in Tofino) there are boys padding around in their PJs, excited to be in Tofino, wanting pancakes or poached eggs on toast.
Some mornings we take Lou alone to the beach, but there is also the lure of the boathouse, set on stilts two flights of stairs below the house, just above the rocky inlet. I go down in the cool air with a new cup of coffee and a book to sit in one of the pair of pale green Adirondack chairs (not so comfortable, but well-suited to this particular scene) overlooking the water. Lou follows me down and dozes on the warm wood in scattered sunlight. Crows caw testily at me (or at Lou, for being a dog and snoozing rather than pay attention to their presence a few feet away in the branches?) and wildlife goes about its business of living.
Meares island sits quietly across the water as it always does – there are cows living on Meares, their descendants having swum to shore from a sinking ship in the 1800s with sailors who were later rescued by another ship that didn’t have space for cattle. The tide is out, leaving the mudflats an open buffet for sea birds and buoys left sitting on the muck. Sometimes you can see the tide turn, and barely-there waves tentatively begin to tiptoe back toward the shore. Today, it made me realize I had promised the boys we’d drop the crab trap – best done at low tide, and pulled up when it’s high, the ocean having brought crabs along with it.
I stay down as long as I can, resisting thoughts of the boys and what they might be up to – what plans are being made – everyone else must be anxious to start their day, to go on outings. Sunscreen and towels and dry clothes and snacks and bottles of water must be packed. Eventually I go up and we head to the beach, or the park, or the little aquarium in Ucluelet.
Today ran long, and by dinnertime after too much sun and sand no one had the gumption to come up with a meal plan. There was enough in the fridge, so we steamed corn, cooked spaghetti and tossed it with pesto from the beach grocery, made up a salad from the head of lettuce the 90 year old next door neighbour offered from her garden, peas in their pods, slivered purple onion, strawberries, avocado and crumbled feta, toasted kale chips and roasted the tiniest potatoes we bought at the Saturday morning market. Creamy yellow and red the size and colour of radishes – some as small as peas.
All they needed was to have their dirt rinsed off and to be tossed with canola oil and salt, then roasted at 450F for 20 minutes, until tender inside and crispy out.
I’m hooked, in case I haven’t told you this already, on kale chips.
To make kale chips: wash, dry well and tear kale into big bite-sized pieces, tossing out the thick stems. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with canola oil; toss with your hands to coat them well, and sprinkle with salt. Rearrange in a single layer and roast at 400F for about 10 minutes, until crisp and starting to turn golden. (Watch them closely – if your oven is too hot they can burn quickly!)
July 26 2010 | cookies & squares | 18 Comments »
The power of suggestion is strong with me. Plant an idea and it sits there, taking up space that could very well be used for something far more useful, until I do something with it. Case in point: the St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake.
All the cool kids are making it. It was, in fact, on my decades-old to-make list, but the version I had utilized a sugary, buttery goo poured over a particular brand of (stale) packaged coffee cakes that aren’t available in Canada. Which is why it sat there for eons on my to-make list. Now most of the versions making the rounds are made entirely from scratch, with either a cake or sweet yeasted bread base, but the crazy high butter-sugar content kept me from making it. Mostly out of fear for my thighs.
But the large-batch amalgamation of butter, sugar and flour (exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to reorganize my life so that I can be a professional athlete or mountain climber or someone who needs to pack as many calories into a day as possible in order to keep up with my high calorie output) is a perfectly suitable thing to make when you have 9 people under one roof, including teenagers and ravenous boys who have spent the bulk of their day surfing, running, kayaking and jumping in the waves. Also – there is sufficient competition to keep me from eating the lion’s share of it myself.
Still – it seemed too plain – too straight-up – on its own, like something was missing between the butter-sugar-egg-flour base and (altogether different) butter-sugar-egg-flour topping. I figured it would make the perfect ballast to tart, juicy fruit like plums, which cut nicely through the richness of butter and sugar. (Of which, by the way, I cut the quantities down a bit.)
As I puttered around making it, everyone asked what it was going to be. To tell them it was a coffee cake seemed too meh – and in fact it isn’t really a cake at all, with a yeasted, sweetbreadlike base, but then again it can’t really be labeled bread, as it’s cut into wedges and eaten much more like a cake than any sort of loaf. I suppose it should retain its rightful name – St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake – but with the streamlining and the layer of tart fruit that transformed it into something far more summery, the barefooted sandy-haired kids helping me arrange wedges of plum on the base before it went into the oven, who then ate it warm, straight from the pan, before heading out to fish from the rowboat, it didn’t seem right to be named for a city in Missouri. This cake belongs in Tofino.
I imagine it would go just as well with juicy apricots or sour cherries, and as she stood at the counter eating a wedge, my mom said, “this seems like it needs to have rhubarb in it.”
Tofino Gooey Plum Butter Cake
adapted from a few sources (with thanks)
Cake:
3 Tbsp. milk
1 3/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Topping:
3-6 plums, thickly sliced
3 Tbsp. honey, light corn syrup or maple syrup
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Make the cake dough: In a small bowl, mix milk with 2 tablespoons hot water (this will make the lot lukewarm – easier, I think, than bringing your milk to room temperature); stir in the yeast and let it sit until it foams a bit.
Beat together the butter, sugar and salt, then beat in the egg. Add flour and milk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir until you have a sticky dough, then turn it out onto the countertop (resist the urge to add more flour) and knead for a few minutes, until soft and smooth.
Pat, press, stretch and nudge the dough into a buttered baking dish that is around 9″x13″ and at least 2 inches deep. Cover with plastic wrap or a tea towel, and let it rise while you go to the beach – 2-3 hours.
Preheat oven to 350F. Lay the slices of plum in rows over the surface of the dough, which really won’t have risen that much. In a small bowl, stir the honey, 2 tablespoons water and the vanilla together with a fork. In a larger bowl beat the butter, sugar and salt until smooth and light, then beat in the egg. Add half the flour, then the honey mixture, then the rest of the flour, scraping down sides of bowl between each addition and stirring just until blended.
Spoon the topping in large dollops over the plums and gently spread overtop with a spatula. Bake for about an hour, until golden; it will still be slightly soft (gooey) in the middle. Cool completely before serving – really, do – plums hold onto their heat and you won’t be able to taste it properly until it’s cooled. Serves 10-12.
July 26 2010 | breakfast and cake | 9 Comments »
