Kitchen Note: Holiday Shopping. Flourless Chocolate Cake.

December 1 and the madness has begun. Well, we knew that, didn’t we? That the madness was well underway?

(Technically, December 2 now.)

The questions is this: what with Brexit and the looming inauguration of persons no better equipped to be president than the IK is to perform neurosurgery (there’s a run-on!) will people holiday soberly, or will utter mania ensue?

The IK, being a Jew, albeit an agnostic one, can only wonder. Her significant other, nominally Catholic, is hardly observant (he married her, right?). For all that, the couple bestir themselves to acquire a Christmas tree, and having been married for some two decades, have acquired quite the ornament collection. Indeed, the IK has gone from being the proverbial confused Jew at the Christmas tree lot (a common personage in the San Francisco Bay Area, what with intermarriage) to actually having some notion as to what constitutes a decent Christmas tree. This knowledge extends to inexpressibly exotic items like tree stands and wreaths. If you’re laughing, trust us when we say this is hard-won knowledge for those not born to it.

(Christmas tree photos tk, as they say in the publishing biz. This means “to come.”)

So today (uh, yesterday) the IK made her bi-annual Target pilgrimage. This just happened to coincide with any number of earlybird holiday shoppers making identical trips. Not that the IK had any idea of this when she set out. Not until she pulled into the full parking lot did the reality hit her: December. Holiday. Shopping.

The IK is not, at the best of moments, much of a shopper. Note the bi-annual up there. Also “pilgrimage,” implying Target is miles off when in fact it’s up the street.

We were not Christmas shopping, unless one considers electronic toothbrushes and 40-watt light bulbs gift items.

(Do you really want to view a photograph of an electric toothbrush? or a light bulb? We thought not.)

(How about a nice body of water? Here’s the Richmond Marina, in Northern California, taken Monday, November 21st. The IK lives quite nearby. Despite this, she’d never been to Marina…until Monday the 21st.)

Shopping seemed to take an ungodly long time. Perhaps this is because we find it so unpleasant. Detouring briefly into the media aisle, we were appalled by the oversized televisions, blaring many different movies simultaneously.

Fleeing the media section, we found ourselves in the toy aisle. Dolls have changed a great deal since the IK was small. Back in the day the best you could hope for was Barbie’s Dream House and maybe Mod Ken. Remember him? Those stick-on sideburns and checked pants? Things are different now. This may be the understatement of 2016. These dolls, they come with real estate. Dance studies and horse stables and kitchens and trailers and beauty parlors. It’s insane.

You know how packages warn about choking hazards for children under three? The IK looked at these doll kitchens with all their doll food products and found them a choking hazard for adults nearing fifty.

Check out that dance studio. Yeah, sort of unwitting selfie. A little warped. Appropriate, yes?

Notice the advertising. It reads: “This is OUR STORY.”

Just like our adult social media, doll p.r. people, whoever they are, encourage children–girls, really–to think of play in terms of narrative, inventing stories making perfect sense. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, until some event or person happens along refusing to conform to OUR STORY. The IK doesn’t know about you, but she was quite young when HER STORY, insofar as she was fashioning one, fell to bits. Mod Ken left Barbie and her Dream House, Skipper got into the Jack Daniels, and P.J. lit out for parts unknown.

(Not an entirely accurate retelling of THE IK’S STORY.)

Anyway. Shopping.

Having paid for everything and schlepped it all home, the IK found herself completely wiped out. Shopping in combination with collagen disease will do this to a person.

—

In happier news: flourless chocolate cake. As in, I produced my first, a roaring success. Given my–now overcome–extreme phobias of both whipping egg whites and flourless cakes, this was quite the event Chez IK.

I know what you’re thinking: this person professes quasi-expertise in matters food and cooking. Now she tells us she’s afraid of egg white?

Look, everyone has their mishegoss (Yiddish for idiosyncratic lunacy). Me, I’m late to the baking party. Would you rather I lied?

This said, I’ve been chipping away at my baking phobia over the past year or so. And I’ve long wanted to learn how to bake flourless chocolate cake. Much as I’m not a dessert person, I do love a good flourless chocolate cake. Done right, it’s rich yet light, deep without being overly sweet. And let’s face it, show up with flourless chocolate cake in hand and you’re met with rapture (well, your cake is, anyway). Duck confit, preserved lemons, even homemade jams don’t elicit quite the same response.

On Tuesday afternoon, I put my big girl pants on (i.e., strapped on all my arm braces, downed three ibuprofen), opened Diana Henry’s Simple to the Flourless Bittersweet Chocolate Cake recipe and tuned in NPR to Terry Gross.

I consulted Joy Of Cooking, reading up about egg white.

Then I read Henry’s recipe, which calls for 1 2/3 sticks of butter. No ounce or metric measures are provided. Butter, if you live in the United States, is most commonly sold by the pound. Said pound is divided into four individually wrapped 8-ounce sticks. Each stick is marked off in tablespoons and ounces, but not thirds.

I stared at the butter, willing it to resolve into sensible measures. It refused. Fortunately I am married to a human calculator, otherwise known as an engineer. One frantic call later, I measured off 5 1/2 tablespoons of butter.

Then I just got down to it. Everything went along swimmingly until I picked up the batter-filled pan–a brand-new, restaurant quality (or so it claims) 8-inch springform. The pan bottom tried parting ways with sides. Perhaps you heard my screams. No matter: a baking tray was seized, slid beneath the offending bottom, and all was slid into a waiting oven. Thirty-five minutes later, victory was mine. And Diana Henry’s. After all, it is her recipe.

Three days later, little of the cake remains. Then again, the fact that any cake remains at all is amazing.