Weekly Dish

Towards the end of last semester, I made a careless scheduling mistake in one of my classes — I miscalculated the number of minutes each student could have for his or her presentation, and it took me a good day to figure out why we kept running out of time. When I explained my error to my students, I told them I didn’t know how I could have come up with those numbers. One of my especially clever students raised her hand and said, “Do you think it has anything to do with your brain shrinking? I read in an article that pregnancy can cause your brain to decrease in size.” Now, of course, I know that science indicates that actual brain size has nothing to do with intelligence or with the brain’s ability to function properly. At the same time, I have to say that pregnancy has, at times, made me feel like part of my brain has gone inactive or shorted out on me. I am usually a very organized, task-oriented person, and all of a sudden, I have turned into a chaotically scatter-brained crazy woman. And the baby isn’t even here yet!

It isn’t just that I haven’t been posting. The holidays were nuts for us — we spent a lot of time away from home and our computers, and then getting back into the rhythm of a school schedule always makes life extra busy at the beginning of a semester — perhaps, it makes sense that I would take a blogging break until I’m in a more regular routine and things have settled down a little. No, the really troubling part of this whole brain chaos is that — I don’t know if I can make myself say this – I don’t really feel like cooking.

I am, of course. Cooking. Just not anything very interesting. I find myself poring over my new, glossy, pretty cookbooks and feeling completely at a loss for how to decide what to make. Part of it is that I am overwhelmed by what is actually happening in the formation of this new little person in my body. I feel so much pressure to make sure I am getting the right nutrients to help him or her grow that I find myself relying on familiar recipes (all of which you already know about).

Another part is that in some ways, I feel like all I do is think about food. I wake up starving, and if I don’t eat every two hours or so, especially in the mornings, I have dizzy spells. David’s favorite joke these days is, “Have you eaten all three of your breakfasts yet?” By the time dinner rolls around, I’m still hungry, but I can’t bear to really think about what to make. So, we have roast chicken and vegetables. Again.

I’ve only found one remedy for this culinary dry spell: baking.

Now, I know that sounds contrary to maternal instinct and, well, just plain good common sense. In order to gain a healthy amount of weight and get the nutrients the growing baby needs, one should avoid refined sugar and high-calorie sweets. So goes the conventional pregnancy-book wisdom.

But, the making of sweet, pretty things makes me so happy. It isn’t really the eating of them — although I won’t lie and say I don’t love that part too. It’s the sheer joy of putting them together.

Perhaps I’m still in holiday mode — my sister-in-law, Hannah, and I had such a lovely time whipping up fun treats in the kitchen, and then, before I knew it, her weeks here had passed and we were all on the road for Christmas celebrating, and then, to move Jon and her to Texas.

Or, maybe, it’s the weather. It has been wet and cold here for weeks on end, and if I don’t see more than one day of sunshine in a row soon, I’m likely to hide under my covers indefinitely. Folks in the Pacific Northwest, my sincere condolences. I don’t know how you do it.

Whatever the reason, after a long, long hiatus, I have not a menu or a quick dinner recipe to offer you, but what has been a bright spot in several a dark, rainy January day for me: a lemon cupcake.

I first made these for our friend Billy’s birthday right before we left for Christmas holidays, and I used the last of the Meyer lemon crop in these parts to make another batch not too long ago. The cake part of this recipe comes from the ever-reliable Rachel at Coconut and Lime: I adapted her Lime & Buttermilk cupcake recipe to suit my hankering for a lemon-only affair. To make the lemon flavor even more pronounced, and because I had some left over from a round of holiday gift-making, I filled the centers with lemon curd. Frosting, in my opinion, should match its partner: heavy buttercream works well with a hefty chocolate cupcake, but for these lighter, lemony ones, I opted for a dollop of plain whipped cream and a garnish of sugared rind.

If you need a pick-me-up in the midst of a hectic schedule, a rainy day, or simply the doldrums of winter, one of these cupcakes might just inject some sunshine into your soul. And if you’re six months pregnant and without the inspiration for a single meal, they might just make you feel like a cook again. Or, maybe that’s just me.

Lemon Sunshine Cupcakes

There are a variety of ways to make filled cupcakes, but most of them require some sort of assembly after the cupcakes are already baked. I wanted to see what happened if the curd baked right along with the cupcake batter. You won’t get a neat pocket of filling right in the middle of your cupcake that way; instead, the curd sort of soaks the whole cake, so that each bite is bursting with lemon flavor. Be forewarned: eating these cupcakes does make for sticky fingers.

For this recipe, I like long, thin strips of lemon zest, which you can get with a claw zester or with a really sharp vegetable peeler.

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
Juice of 1 large lemon
Zest of 3 large lemons
About 1 cup of Lemon Curd
Half pint of heavy whipping cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with baking cups, aluminum or paper, and spray with baking spray. Stir together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. With a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and continue beating, until the mixture is well-combined.

Toss half of the zest with a teaspoon of sugar and set aside; stir the rest in with the butter, sugar, and eggs.

Stir the buttermilk and lemon juice together in a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout. With the mixer on low, add the liquid and flour mixtures alternately, until the batter is thick and creamy.

Fill each muffin cup a little less than half-full and make a well in the center. Fill the well with a spoonful of lemon curd. Top with the remaining batter, to cover the curd. Bake for 18-22 minutes, until the tops are just beginning to brown.

When the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost with whipped cream and top with the sugared zest. Keep in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

PS: If you are reading this post, I’d just like to say THANK YOU for returning. After so many glimpses of my very fat cat in a Santa hat on your computer screen, I’d completely understand if you never came back. I truly appreciate all of your comments and emails and the simple fact that you’ve checked in again to see if I’ve managed to post again. I am also terribly behind in responding to those kind comments and emails, so if you’ve written and not heard back from me, please accept my sincere apology for my silence. If pregnancy has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t know what the future holds, so I won’t make any promises I’m not certain I can keep, but I will say that I hope to be a more regular presence, even if it’s just to tell you about another fun sweet that’s emerged from my oven. Just promise you won’t call the pregnancy nutrition police, okay?

PPS: After catching up on my blog reading, I was delighted to discover that Garrett at Vanilla Garlic and Cheryl and the Cupcake Bakeshop are collecting cupcake recipes! Head over to their sites to check out more ways to spend a rainy day baking on January 29th.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Cake, Food Blogging Events, Fruit, Something Sweet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.