Eating and Reading: Yes, I’ve Got Crumbs in My Pages [Fierce Foodie]

Reading while eating is luxurious habit but not easy to accomplish, at least not if you like creamy, yummy treats and the pages of your books unstained and unspotted.  My favorite books to read while eating are books about eating and cooking: John Thorne’s Outlaw Cook, Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking and the complete works of M.F.K. Fisher, all of which bear marks of my habit.  I am not overly fussy about the state of my own books, but as I have started to use the library more frequently it has become necessary to monitor the whereabouts of the Nutella and the tea. I prefer a sweet treat, so the following is a generally book-safe recipe from Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking for an easy and delicious sponge cake:

Sponge Cake

(Very nice with raspberry jam and sprinkled with powdered sugar.)

Cream 1 stick of sweet butter and ½ cup of sugar. (For non-cooks, this means softening the butter to room temperature and then combining sugar and butter with an electric whisk or your muscles and a wooden spoon. I found this out the hard way when I first started baking and confusedly rolled hard, cold butter in sugar.)

Beat in 2 eggs (or 1 yolk and 2 whites). Beat until light and fluffy with either a whisk or an electric beater.

Fold in 1 cup flour to which you have added ½ teaspoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon vanilla, if you like. (You can actually do without the baking powder and vanilla if you are out of nearly everything but must have cake.  I know, it happens,)

Bake in a buttered dish (8 inch square baking tin works nicely) for 20 minutes to a half an hour at 350°.

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featured image credit: huppypie