CHAPTER ONE
The Witching Hour
3 a.m.
I WAKE UP AT THE WITCHING HOUR. 3:30 a.m. According to folklore, it’s the very moment when witches, demons, and ghosts are at their most potent. It’s also when most bakers roll their flour-logged bodies out of bed.
My husband, Ray, sleeps through my alarm. I can’t look at him, sleeping or awake, without getting a little weak in the knees. He’s more handsome now than he was ten years ago when we first met in Hollywood, home to the prettiest boys and girls on the planet. My job was to develop films for those beautiful people. It was a miracle that I could find anyone attractive, I was so anesthetized by the constant parade of bleached smiles and spray-on tans. But there he was, sitting across from me at a conference table at a big studio meeting, an honest-to-god Man, handsome as all get out. And smart. And funny. And not an actor. An illustrator for film, in fact. An employed artist and a grown-up, something in rare supply in Los Angeles among the insecure, fame-hungry hordes of beefcake.
I sit up. Stretch. The dogs wake long enough to yawn and deliver a few sloppy kisses, and then all three jump into my still-warm side of the bed, burrow under the covers, and snuggle up to Ray.
I take a bath, brush my teeth, and pull back my hair. For this very brief moment I see what’s become of my black mane. I’m in possession of Crystal Gayle–like, snake-handling, ankle-skimming hippie hair. Only a few years ago I’d drop major cash to get it permanently and perversely straight. To look at it now, you’d think I’d been scheduling regular appointments with a live power outlet.
I pad naked down the stairs, wanting so much to take a detour to the kitchen to make coffee but head instead to the laundry room and rummage for something clean to wear. I don’t care that our clothes never make it from the intertwined dance of the dryer to the smooth folds of the dresser drawers anymore. If it’s clean and comfortable, I’ll pull it on.
Today I’m sporting a dryer-culled ensemble consisting of an ancient Al “Big Daddy” Roth T-shirt emblazoned with his signature hot-rod-straddling rat caricature flipping the bird. It’s unbelievably soft, manhandled by some grizzled biker into buttery suppleness and then graciously sold to me on eBay. At the moment, it’s both graphically offensive and soon to be encrusted with chocolate. It also sets off my growing collection of knife and burn wounds to great effect. My pants are ratty blue cords with a malfunctioning zipper circa 1978. They are number one on my queue of pants to wear to work, being both roomy in the thigh and so fantastically high-waisted that they don’t require a belt. My clogs are encrusted in flour and my socks don’t match. If my mother were alive, she’d be horrified that I’d half-consciously chosen this getup. She was, after all, the only mother at my elementary school who routinely wore leather pants and high heels. But if she knew my purpose, she’d forgive me any sartorial sin. She may have been a well-respected opera diva and an outrageously sexy and fashionable woman, but she was also our family’s resident master baker.
I was once a beautifully dressed woman. I have storage bins, tucked away in the attic of our barn, filled with “grown-up” gear—smart pantsuits and death-defying heels, leather briefcases and tailored overcoats. I can’t bring myself to give the stuff away; I dragged every stitch from LA to rural Vermont. My beef was never with the clothes I had to wear to work in Hollywood, it was with Hollywood itself. So I keep them because they were innocent bystanders in my past misery as a cog in the wheel of the entertainment industry. And many of them are from my sister, better known as “Sand-me-downs.” Luxurious, couture bits of fashion she gets for free for being a movie star. Every few months she weeds through her closet and sets aside things she’s never worn and will never wear. And since she’s a loving and generous big sister, she sends me the prime nuggets. So they have sentimental value as well.
Unlike me, my sister found her calling early in life. Sandy’s also gifted genetically. She inherited my mother’s razor-sharp jaw and mile-high cheekbones. Her thick black wavy hair came from our father, but she blessedly missed that family’s predilection to start graying as teenagers. She pulled the dimple in her chin from a source so distant that no one in living memory has possessed one, and her sweet nose comes from Germany by way of my grandfather Meyer. Her wit and winning personality surely come from the Bullocks; both our father and Aunt Luddy can spin a yarn and charm the pants off anyone. Her talent could have come from either side, artistry bursting from our DNA at every angle. My sister was also blessed with great humility and cultivated a habit of downplaying her attributes and rerouting any and all attention or praise on me. Usually she does this in my absence. She’ll meet someone and feel the need to tell him or her I am brilliant. And she tells them I am beautiful and tall.
In the face of someone as beautiful as my sister, they come to think that I must be an otherworldly beauty if she describes me that way. Bless her; I think she really thinks all these wonderful things of me.
To be honest, I’m bright but not brilliant. Bookish and being a smart-ass really don’t add up to genius, though I wish they did. And the words most often used to describe me physically—exotic or striking or stunning—all translate to tall, pretty girl with black hair and a prominent nose. On more than one occasion, someone has pointed at me as evidence that my sister has had “work done.” I’m the “before” to her “after.” But more often, I’m asked why it is that I don’t look more like her, to which I reply, “So sorry to disappoint you, you ass.”
She also forgets to add to her long list of superlatives for me that I am a socially retarded misanthrope, awkward on the best of occasions and completely witless and offensive on the worst. So my chosen profession, one in which I am required to work behind closed doors in the darkest hours of the morning with very little contact with other humans, is quite fitting.
On this black morning, dressed in “baker’s casual” with my still-wet hair in a sloppy ponytail, I’m searching for my car keys and I look out the kitchen window to see where the moon hangs. If it’s just above our first ridge of pine, lighting my path to the barn door, I’m making good time. Any hint of daybreak and I’m screwed. In the winter, the path is a slippery white corridor. Pearly walls reaching up to our chins, small arterial tunnels dug by the dogs breaking off from the main throughway and leading into places unknown.
In the summer, moonlight permitting, I greet the toads that linger at the side door, tales of soggy midnight rainstorms and dewy grass clinging to their skin. Apple green luna moths, as big as my palm, loiter on the glass of the kitchen door. I see their fuzzy bellies first and carefully open the door to admire their handsome wings before they fly away.
My headlights flood the ghostly dark dirt roads twisting from our house to the paved street that leads to Montpelier. I have fifteen minutes of uncorrupted driving ahead of me. Not one luxury car cutting me off in the narrow canyons of the Hollywood Hills. Not a single Harley shattering my solitude on Sunset Boulevard. No road rage, no cell phones, no fake tits or tans, no prestige handbags, no billboards, no stoplights, no braking, no traffic, no nothing. Welcome to Vermont. Just heaven.
Golden Eggs
I HAVE THOUSANDS of great recipes but only one magic recipe. It’s vanilla cake, really just an ordinary yellow cake. Plain old humdrum yellow cake. Big deal. So where’s the magic?
Made simply, with pure vanilla extract and vanilla beans, this cake is hands-down the best thing ever. It’s moist and dense but still effortlessly springy. The vanilla lives deep in this batter; it permeates every molecule of butter and imparts a richness of flavor that trumps every other yellow cake out there.
But you can take out the vanilla and still make grown men cry. Add lemon extract and fresh blueberries and you’ve just made a groundbreaking muffin. Add sour cherries and orange extract, sprinkle a buttery streusel on top before baking, and you’ve made every other coffee cake obsolete.
But if you really want to mess with people, if you want to make something that is both confusing and outrageously delicious, make a Golden Egg.
I created the Golden Egg for Easter. I make hot cross buns too, but I wanted to offer something else. Something special. I consulted my magic recipe. And I remembered reading about a technique that made ordinary cake taste like donuts, without all the deep-frying. That’s pretty special.
I make Golden Eggs year-round now; they’re not just for Easter anymore. And they are coveted as if they were indeed genuine 14-carat gold.
MAKES 12 EGGS OR ABOUT 12 MUFFIN-SIZED CAKES
For the cake
Nonstick baking spray
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1¼ cups nonfat buttermilk
For dipping the eggs
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon mixed together in a small shallow bowl
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Spray your molds with nonstick spray (I, obviously, use egg-shaped molds. You can use a muffin pan or any other small baking molds.)
Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Set aside.
In an electric mixer fitted with either the paddle or the whisk attachment, whip the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. This can take up to 10 minutes, depending on the temperature of your butter. As you’re whipping away, stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all the butter is incorporated into the sugar. You can’t make magic without a lot of patience. So keep whipping and keep scraping.
Add the eggs one at a time, whipping after each one until the egg is fully incorporated into the batter. Scrape down the bowl every now and again as well. Add the vanilla.
Once all the eggs are incorporated, alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk, mixing slowly. After they are well incorporated but not overbeaten, take a rubber spatula and fold the batter a few times to make sure everything is evenly distributed and the batter is smooth.
Distribute the batter into your molds, filling each cavity a little less than halfway. Bake for about 15 minutes. Baking time varies depending on the size of your mold, so check for a very light golden brown color and make sure the cake springs back when you touch it.
Unmold your little cakes and while they are still warm, dunk them quickly in the melted butter, then dredge them in the cinnamon and sugar. One warning: people are going to call you a stinking liar. They will not believe that these precious morsels aren’t fried like a donut. But that’s the cost of making magic.