Flop House

Vin lives up the street from me. And I mean UP. His house is in between Big and Little Cottonwood canyons, which are world renowned for ski resorts that boast some of the best powder on earth. This location is conducive to fantastic views, great hiking, cool evening breezes, and bird watching. It is not conducive to baking.

Baking was one of the things I used to do with my dad, who taught me all the little secrets about how to melt chocolate without burning it, even if you don't have a double boiler. He turned me into a walking cooking/baking dictionary. My friends know that I am the one to call if they want to know what it means to "cut in the flour". Or to find out the difference between chop, dice, and mince. He did not teach me how to bake at 6,000+ feet above sea level.

Baking has always been an activity that centers me. One evening during the war in Israel, I stopped by the market to pick up vegetables for dinner. On the way home, I sat in the bus in a sea of plastic bags overflowing with dark purple eggplants, the last persimmons of the season, rich red bell peppers, and the first figs of the season. My cell phone rang and when I answered it, my friend Mimi in Nazareth spoke.

A bomb had just hit her street; she had stayed late at work or she might have been out on the street walking home when it fell. She lived in an Arab part of town, which made it less of a target, which meant that their were two children playing in the street, which meant that the children were dead. We didn't know this yet. All she knew was noise and fear and impossible loneliness and needed to hear some one's voice. All I knew to do was to tell her to move toward the supporting walls and to stand away from the windows and to sit down, since she was probably in shock. Was she cold? Was she hurt? When was she running away from the north and joining us in Tel Aviv, like the million or so others who had already joined us in the city?

My bus stopped. I gathered my heavy load of groceries and went home. And then I decided that this situation called for chocolate chip cookies. And couscous. I made a three course dinner for the two American friends who coincidentally had timed their visit to coincide with the start of the war. "My cooking is usually better than this," I told my friends, "I was a little distracted this evening."

"Why?" one asked.

"Um, well, war is a little hard on your concentration," I responded. He had spent the day at the beach. I had spent the day practicing moving down from the 17 floor into the bomb shelter. But even that day the cookies were perfect. Which is why it was incredibly frustrating when the chocolate chip cookies I made to thank Vin's neighbor for plowing us out one incredibly snowy day were a total flop.

Vin had urged us to get Pillsbury dough. "They are just as good," he said.

"Whatever! You have just forgotten what a home made cookie is like!" And the hard, flat disks that I pulled out of the oven an hour later didn't serve as a reminder. He was too embarrassed to take them to the neighbor. I couldn't figure out what went wrong, until someone clued me in on the altitude.

That was the last time I made cookies until this week. I made pumpkin cookies (a little out of season, I know). As I slid the first batch into the oven Vin asked, "Did you remember to account for the altitude this time?"

I gasped, paused, and then wailed. But apparently you can't ruin a pumpkin cookie. They came out their usual cakey selves. Which is what gave me confidence to try my hand at a cake this morning. I decided to look up high-altitude baking on the internet. It can't be that complicated, I figured. Well, apparently it is. In order to adjust the cake I learned I was supposed to:

Subtract 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of baking powder and baking soda for every teaspoon
Use 3 tablespoons of extra liquid for every cup of flour
Subtract 3 tablespoons of sugar for every cup
And depending on the website, either do or do not use extra large eggs,
And do or do not turn the heat up by 20 degrees and cook for a shorter time span.

It was more complicated than I thought it would be, but I'd already bought the ingredients and I had already agreed to bring dessert to a dinner tonight. So, I went for it. And out the cakes came, smelling like heaven, perfectly moist, and less than one inch high. I made the frosting according to the recipe and I have two cups of it left over in the fridge; there was just not enough surface area with a cake that height.

I am a little embarrassed to bring my two-layer, one-inch high, lopsided cake over for dessert. I think some of the guests might die of sugar poisoning from the density of the cake. Perhaps I'll pretend it's supposed to be that height. We can call it Tarta d'alta, after one of the nearby ski resorts. I'll pretend it's a high class European specialty. Which it might have passed for until I decorated it with pastel, star shaped sprinkles. So much for class.

It's amazing how much my life has changed in under two years. My biggest concern on this May Saturday is how to learn to bake at high altitude, and not whether I or my friends are in danger. It's a strange life. And I am a damn lucky girl. I think I'll have a piece of chocolate cake to celebrate.