Top 100 Cake Blog

Top 100 Cake Blog

Friday, July 30, 2010

Emergency Room Cake


There are two kinds of people (well, maybe more but please bear with me. After all, this is a baking, not a psychology, blog).

One type of person thinks that lightening will strike them, that they will be a passenger on the one airplane that crashes this year, etc.  The other type assumes that everything will be fine.

I tend to fall into the latter group, but sometimes am persuaded otherwise.  That's what happened a few weeks ago when I awoke with a painful cramp in my calf.  The pain got worse over the next few days, but I assumed it was a muscle pull that would get better eventually.  However, several people whose opinions I normally trust (including DH who "diagnosed" me from the Bahamas) convinced me that I might have deep vein thrombosis.  "At your age, I'd be worried about a blood clot," said Josh, DD's charming (really!) boyfriend.

So off I went to the emergency room, but not before enlisting the assistance of a doctor friend whose efforts both reassured me and made my ER experience easy --- a piece of cake, if you will.  (Of course, I didn't have a blood clot.)

This is a long way to get to the lemon cake pictured above, but I wanted to thank the doctor and what better way than with a cake?

I didn't have a lot of time, or room for failure, so I decided to go with a more modern recipe.  At first, I planned to make the Persian Love Cake (below) but I knew that the high humidity on cake-baking day would torpedo any chance of success.


I settled on the Glazed Lemon Cake from the first Silver Palate Cookbook,  c. 1978, which I thought would guarantee a delicious result.  But, it was just ok (though the doctor declared it a "masterpiece") and I felt obligated to embellish it with a lemon curd (basically lemons, sugar and egg yolks cooked to make a custard) and some fresh berries.

From now on, I'm sticking to pre-1960 recipes and ignoring the advice of well-meaning friends.








4 comments:

  1. Blood clots are serious and nobody thinks they have one... so its good to have friends in the worry camp!

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  2. Glad you're still healthy and able to keep baking through the HHH summer of NYC. As for me, based on photos alone (!), I'd love to try that Persian Love Cake some time. ALLEN

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  3. ER - Dr. Cake your wanted in emergency...patient Ortiz needs you......

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  4. Well, the story continues...the doctor was paged by his staff, stating: "there is a cake on your desk?!!!" As as he rushed to the office, he was filled with "I weant it NOW! I want it ALL!"...amazing by how all senses were stimulated by the beautiful, deliscious and aromatic cake....
    He ended up sharing the cake with 10 office staff, who were also awed by it.....but he had a smirk...remembering he has kept a tiny piece tucked away in the freezer...for when the going gets tough....

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