Jessica Valenti’s “Eat Me” column appears every other Friday at 3pm. Previous installments can be found here.
To be fair, I probably shouldn’t have started with scones.
They’re not the easiest thing to bake – I can never get the dough right – but somehow breakfast baking seemed like less of a betrayal than straight up cookies or cake. But my sad, lumpy-not-in-a-good-way chocolate pear scones were definitive proof that I needed to up my effort.
For a long time I told myself the reason I didn’t bake was because the timing was too difficult, the results too exorbitant. Why spend time on a dessert when what we really needed was dinner? Cooking was necessary, logical; baking was a hobby. Cooking is knives and hot oil; baking is aprons and a cutesy sprinkle of flour on your face.
Baking always felt too domestic to embrace – an icing-laden slippery slope straight into housewifery. After all, if I had enough time to bake – to create something totally unnecessary and luxurious – why wouldn’t I have time to do the laundry? Or pick up his socks?
Working from home was a blessing and a curse after my daughter was born. I was able to make my own schedule and be with Layla throughout the day – even when I was writing, she was just a room away if I needed a baby fix. But as our domestic responsibilities suddenly skyrocketed with the introduction of this mini-person, so did the expectation that I would take care of them because it was “easier” for me. After all, I was home.
My husband Andrew’s schedule is set, mine is movable. If Layla is sick, it makes the most sense for me to interrupt my work to take her to the doctor – I don’t have a boss to deal with. If she needs shoes or diapers or new clothes, I buy them. I’m the one who is home enough to notice when we run out. Everything in our culture makes it easy to fall into traditional gender roles at home. It happens when you’re not paying attention, or too busy to notice. Child care gives way to picking up around the house gives way to laundry. The mental work is what kills you – it’s not just doing the shopping, it’s being the one who writes the list.
So I suppose the truth is that I slid down that slippery slope without the help of cake. But when I did finally embrace baking it didn’t just feel like tacit acceptance of this new domesticity – it was complicity. Because what makes baking so deliciously insidious is that when you share the results of your labor the validation is GLORIOUS. Whenever Andrew brought lemon bars, or blueberry coffee cake into the office, I was a fucking star. I alternated between affirmation-driven highs and a feminist shame-spiral. Half-time homemaking can screw with your head.
I don’t have a brute asshole husband (see: New York Times or The Yellow Wallpaper) who demands or fully expects me to bear the load of housework or child care. I’m fortunate to have married a feminist, someone who I can talk to, negotiate responsibilities with and express confusion and ambivalence to. It makes figuring all of this out a lot easier. And while we’re working it all out, having a cake to stuff your face with doesn’t hurt.
The Best Cheesecake That Will Ever Be In Your Mouth (aka: If my mom found out I’m giving away this recipe I will never be heard from again)
The great thing about this recipe is that you can essentially just mix ALL OF THE THINGS in one bowl and you’re good to go.
You’ll need:
1 lb of whole-milk ricotta
2 8-oz containers of cream cheese
1 16-oz container of sour cream
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 stick of butter
(Make sure all of the above ingredients are softened and not just-out-of-the-fridge)
1 tablespoon of vanilla
3 level tablespoons of flour
3 level tablespoons of cornstarch
Dash of salt
Squeeze of lemon
Put everything together in one big bowl and mix with a hand mixer (or throw in a standing mixer) – mix until as smooth as possible. Once all the lumps are out, pour it into a buttered and floured springform pan.
Put in an oven that’s been preheated to 375 degrees, bake for about 45 mins to an hour – until it’s golden on top. Shut the oven off, but leave the cheesecake in there for as long as you can – two hours would be ideal.
Take the cake out, open up the pan, and dust with powdered sugar. Now eat your pain.
Tags: baking, CHEESECAKE, eat me, food, jessica valenti, terrors, wait I have a leftover piece of cheesecake in my freezer brb
Have you all made the baked goat cheese from her last piece yet?
YES. It is heaven and I had the perfect randomly small roasting dish for it. Served with sangria and season 2 of Episodes.
Obvs
Of course! It was delicious.
No, shamefully. I’m waiting for a time when I have people over to help me eat it because me alone with dish of baked goat cheese and garlic sounds…actually, that sounds like a great time. Was going to make English muffins pizzas for my supper, but maybe it’s baked cheese night instead.
For me, the best part about the (amazing) goat cheese recipe, is that as the finish line of big family meal prep draws near, you can say “Fuck it!” and just give everyone perfectly good unbaked goat cheese.
But it is amazing. Like, super amazing. Totally worth turning the oven on for.
I just went Dairy free two days before I read about the baked goat cheese. (And by that I mean I had already given up all the dairy except for cheese.) Since I gave up cheese I have eaten One slice of smoked gouda and One plate of ricotta gnocchi, so maybe the Goat Cheese is next. (I am actually considering trying to reincorporate goat cheese anyway because some lactose free humans do goat cheese better.) Anyway needless to say Cheesecake is not a think I can consume with out a very uncomfortable and smelly result.
“2 8-oz containers of cream cheese
1 16-oz container of cream cheese”
??
The answer is you need more cream cheese.
Fixed! The second amount is for sour cream. I briefly hoped it was just THE MOST CREAM CHEESE YOU CAN FIND.
“1 lb of whole-milk ricotta
all of the cream cheese
4 eggs
…”
And while we’re working it all out, having a cake to stuff your face with doesn’t hurt.
YES.
The Fella came home after work last night and made me a sneaky midnight birthday cake while I sat in the living room pretending I couldn’t smell the luscious notes of sugar and vanilla and fake butter scent all wafting through our tiny apartment. Then he came in and said “I made a cake. It… it isn’t too good, I don’t think.”
I made all the consoling noises and assured him it was almost certainly great (how wrong can box cake go, anyhow?) but he insisted. “I don’t think so. It… it isn’t too good. I tried, though.”
Between cooling cake time and kissing sweet husbands and general midnightyness, we went to bed without tasting the cake. This morning, we had this conversation:
Me: Ooooh, I’m going to have birthday cake for breakfast!
The Fella: GOOD LUCK.
AND…?
IT’S DELICIOUS.
YAAAAY happy birthday to YOU
Like, I really can’t figure out what he thinks is wrong with it. It’s delicious, it’s light and moist, my piece was completely intact. I still can’t figure out what he thought went awry, and he ain’t sayin’.
As far as I can reckon, he did bake a 2-layer cake in one slightly-large square cake pan, so it probably bulged alarmingly in the oven, and might be a little less than ideally cooked in the center? I haven’t gotten to the center yet BUT I WILL, oh I will.
I was luckily raised by a feminist who was also a famous baker, so I have no baking ambivalence but HOLY SHIT something about things like home decorating or organizing sends me into a feminist panic/rage/tizzy.
I am really really bad/not into home decorating or organizing or any sort of crafts, anything that involves scissors or glue or being coordinated and knowing what colors go with what? Like, I’m just NOT GOOD AT it, and that’s fine! I’m good at other things, ya know? Like, do you want a book recommendation? I’m all over it! Need to integrate something? I can do that!
So it just drives me absolutely insane when people assume that I should be better at those things just because I’m a girl. Especially at work, when I get handed a poster and told to decorate it or asked for advice on where something should be hung on a wall. I have no freaking clue! Or when people come into my sadly lacking decorations house – do you think it should have more color? Come do it for me! I’ll even pay you.
This reminds me of a story from art school. My gay boy BFF was in a class that was all women, plus him and one straight dude. At one point the prof was trying to make a point about history’s devaluation of women’s creativity as being ‘craft’ vs men’s being called ‘art’ and so she asked the class “who here crochets?” And the only TWO people who put up their hands: my friend and the one other dude. So then the teacher was like “Ugh, but I’m trying to make a point here.” ART SCHOOL. It really is like that sometimes. (PS despite 4 years in art school, I’m completely terrible at crafts too. Solidarity! Computers all the way everyday forever.)
my mum is also a feminist and a baker (amateur till she retired from her 1st job, now runs a bakery)- she once wrote me a letter about how she had spent her whole time in 1960s England being horrified by her own mother’s domestic work, then got to America in the 70s and was all like TASSAJARA BREAD BOOK THIS IS POSSIBLE AFTER ALL.
I’m so in love with this column. Every time I am in love with it.
OMG i can’t wait to have this cheesecake in my mouth. Question: what is the difference between the two cream cheeses listed? do i just need 32 oz total?
Sour cream for the second measurement.
this sounds like something I need to make (when we have extra money again) – no nasty crumb crust = perfection.
oooh oooh, cheesecake secret*: if you don’t like graham-cracker crust, press sugar cookie dough (ideally with a little nutmeg, but WHATEVER) into the pan and par-bake it, then cool and fill with cheesecake goo, and finish baking. So good. Too good. Too so good.
I like to bake it in a loaf pan, then cut it into bars, then freeze them, then eat them all without telling anyone. I mean, then serve them whenever I have guests over and let them think I worked all day on the cheesecake.
*I can’t decide if that’s a band name or the most domestic witchcraft ever.
Or crush your favourite boxed cookies (Oreos work well), mix them with some melted butter and par bake them.
Oh yes, Oreos work extremely well for cookie crumb crusts. Cooks Illustrated wrote a whole complicated Thing about that (as is their wont), explaining something-something about how the shortening in the filling holds together firmly but tenderly*, resulting in a resilient but delicate crust.
*To cross-stitch on a pillow: “A good marriage is like an Oreo-crumb crust.” Or maybe not.
Jessica, how did you know I needed a piece about feminist housewife anxiety sweetened with CHEESECAKE?! You are amazing and I am making this cake this weekend, probably, as soon as I can locate a springform pan. (Can anyone else come up with other uses for a springform pan besides cheesecakes? Even the Wikipedia article sounded apologetic about it.)
You can make any kind of cake in a springform pan! You just pop the ring off and frost the top and sides instead of inverting it onto a plate.
Springform pans are pretty good for making deep dish pizza, I think. But other than that, I’m out of ideas. Still, pizza!
You can use a springform for any cakes you’d like, as well as some deep-dish pies! Bonus bonus, it makes getting the cake out of the pan a lot easier. The insane genius over at Sprinkle Bakes uses them a lot, here’s some of her springform recipes and such.
Yes, springform pans are especially great if you’re making a delicate cake, or a dessert that’s going to be presented without a camouflaging slather of frosting. I often make flourless chocolate cake in a springform pan because it’s so easy to pop off the metal collar and slip the fragile cake onto a platter — much easier than trying to ease it out of a regular cake pan without shattering the shell of sweet crust or breaking the crumb of the cake.
Thank youuuuuuuu!!!!! My youngest batling absolutely loves cheesecake, and I’ve never tried to bake one! THAT SHALL BE REMEDIED IMMEDIATELY.
BAKING FEELS. I’ve been baking a lot more in the past year or so, and I still haven’t fully figured out why (I now do cakes for friends’ occasions, including weddings because I am legitimately insane). I think it has something to do with the fact that it’s relatively orderly and controlled (SOMETIMES NOT, sometimes I explode my cupcakes for no apparent reason) and things react in a prescribed fashion and it helps my anxiety about life, where things don’t react in a prescribed manner. Also because I have Feelings about the wedding industrial complex and the cakes that come out of it (overpriced dry sugary nonsense) and my friends deserve better than that.
Um, off to bake now, obviously.
See, this is why I always loved baking and feared cooking. Baking is numbers and chemistry and reactions and instructions and organization! I’m good at those! Less good at improvisation and judging things by ~feel~ and the mysteries of flames.* It’s only in the past couple of years that I’ve gotten more comfortable with what goes on top of the stove instead of inside it.
* Cooking with Melisande, featuring Stannis Smoked Ham and Renly Kebabs.
Ugh, me too. Baking has such precise instructions and I have no problem with it, but I worry intensely over whether meats are done enough (and then probably overcook them) and have to look up how to tell when things like potatoes are done.
Holy cheesecake, my favorite dessert. I used to make them weekly when I started baking in high school, but no matter the recipe, they’d inevitably end up with these teeny tiny lumps that caused all the rage. Recently, I found out you’re not supposed to scrape the sides of the bowl, just let it ooze into the pan. I don’t know if I can do that; it’s so much ooze left behind with the potential to become delicious fluff. I’ll suck it up for this recipe.
So, I’m passionate about all things related to food, as in it’s my most serious hobby and I spend as much free time and funds as possible concocting food disasters and deliciousness. When I first started baking and cooking, I was so consumed with this love I didn’t even register all the weird implications surrounding women doing kitchen stuff until I went to college and girls would tell me “I WISH I had all that time to bake” and guys would pretty much say, “of course you bake, you’re a girl, but I could never do it, but it’s so great you do and give me delicious things to eat.” I was a student and not a homemaker, but people were very quick to box me in as the little domestic girl who tinkers with sugar and spatulas. I mean, good lord people, just shove the food in your mouth and stop talking.
Yes, springform pans are especially great if you're making a delicate cake, or a dessert that's going to be presented without a camouflaging slather of frosting. I often make flourless chocolate cake in a springform pan because it's so easy to pop off the metal collar and slip the fragile cake onto a platter — much easier than trying to ease it out of a regular cake pan without shattering the shell of sweet crust or breaking the crumb of the cake.
Oh yes, Oreos work extremely well for cookie crumb crusts. Cooks Illustrated wrote a whole complicated Thing about that (as is their wont), explaining something-something about how the shortening in the filling holds together firmly but tenderly*, resulting in a resilient but delicate crust.
*To cross-stitch on a pillow: "A good marriage is like an Oreo-crumb crust." Or maybe not.
I hate to be daft on an old post but is there a crust mentioned?
There is no crust. The sides harden/caramelize and hold the cheesecake together. Mmmm.
That looks delicious! So different from the European cheesecakes.