Tuesday 25 October 2011

'Quite an Accomplished Baker'

I found this item - which came to me via Frank Wilson and Dave Lull - strangely cheering. There's something about the image of Emily Dickinson in an apron working up a healthy glow as she gets to work on her cake mixture (no food processors then) while the oven heats up... I wonder which other great writers might have made good bakers - apart, of course, from Mr Kipling with his exceedingly good cakes. My cousin suggests Emily Bronte - 'given the right ingredients'. Charlotte too was probably a safe pair of hands in the kitchen. I doubt George Eliot could bake a cake...

4 comments:

  1. Henry Thoreau is said to have been the first person to bake raisin bread.

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  2. Good Lord! Thanks for that Patrick - I suspect it will lodge in my mind for ever...

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  3. I remember seeing Julie Harris in The Belle of Amherst in Chicago in 1976. She opened the play by reciting the recipe for ED's black cake*:

    http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=556

    ===
    *"This is my introduction. Black cake. My own special recipe. Forgive me if I'm frightened. I never see strangers and hardly know what I say. My sister, Lavinia — she's younger than I — she says I tend to wander back and forth in time. So you must bear with me."
    http://tinyurl.com/3rqgh9d

    Continued here:

    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/cake/belle-amherst-black-cake.html

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  4. Magnificent, Dave - thanks! That's quite some cake...

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