​There is a snowdrift of coconut swirling around my worktable. A ginormous commercial mixing bowl is filled to capacity with a medley of unsweetened shred, desiccated chip, and sweetened flake coconut. Although the ingredients sound more like packing materials than cookie fixings, they will ultimately bake up into appropriate Passover dessert fare. Keeping track of the macaroons sprinting from my one-ounce scoop onto parchment lined sheet pans is a challenge. I scribble numbers on wax paper with a coconut covered Sharpie marker. It’s not the Sharpie’s fault; everything I touch leaves behind a coconut fingerprint. My macaroon tracking system is imperfect to be sure, but the hope is the numbers will correspond to a detailed master list of holiday orders. As I scoop, I’m contemplating Variations on a Theme of Coconut.
 
A gentleman enroute to the restroom pauses by my table, glances at the bowl and asks, “Whatcha got there?”
 
“Macaroons,” I reply, without looking up.
 
“Oh,” he responds knowingly. “The pastel-y ones, the pretty ones, with the filling. What kind of filling?” he implores.
 
“Not macaron,” I reply. “Macarooooon.” My emphasis on “ooooon” is unmistakable but he doesn’t get it.
 
“Macarons. Right.”
 
Nooo,” I continue. “Mac-a-rooooon. Coconut, not almond. Scooped, not filled. For Passover.”
 
 “Enjoy your holiday,” he says and walks away.
 
In my fantasy world, I call after him. “HEY! Don’t come waltzing back here again until you learn the difference between macarons and macaroons! This is not difficult stuff, pal. Both cookies share European lineage, but the macaron is typically made with almond flour, egg whites, and sugar. In a macaroon, coconut plays the starring role, supported by sweetened condensed milk and egg whites. You could say macarons walk the fashion cookie runway, strutting about in pastels, accessorizing with buttercream, ganache, or jam. Macaroons are more casual Friday, less fashionista, a comfortable cookie that doesn’t wear make-up. The macaron is jewel-like, to be nibbled; the macaroon is a chewy cookie, chock full of history and tradition. Both cookies laugh in the face of leavening, relying simply on egg whites for lift. Made without flour, both the macaron and the macaroon are gluten-free.  (Imagine their popularity, based on that fact alone.) If macarons could talk, they would boast a distinctive French accent. If macaroons were doing the talking, I suspect they would gesture with their hands while offering grandfatherly advice. No doubt, macaroons would tell you not to worry about the other kids, particularly the macarons.
 
In trying not to touch my face with a coconut-covered glove, I realize there’s something about this whole macaroon process that makes my nose itch. I’m fairly certain it’s from residual coconut fumes congregating around my face. Setting down the purple scoop, I use my left hand to remove the food service glove from my right hand and reach into my pocket, fumbling about for a Kleenex. There is none to be found, but now there’s a wad of coconut in my pocket. I don a fresh pair of gloves, give the macaroon mix a little stir, and return to my coconut reverie.
 
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that macarons can be patronizing, a touch condescending towards macaroons. Macarons demand pristine packaging with elaborate wax paper liners and sweeping bows. Macaroons fit agreeably inside a no-frills bakery box or a humble brown paper bag. There’s a lot of pomp associated with macarons and honestly, aren’t they just sandwich cookies all dressed up, with no particular place to go? Macaroons have a destination, a Seder, and they better not show up late.
 
Macaroons border on, dare-I-say, dowdiness. They’re happy-go-lucky in their coconut selves, and for decades, enjoyed little embellishment other than the occasional drizzle of dark chocolate. Macaroons will jostle together in airtight containers, packaged without bells and whistles, arriving at the Passover dessert table in fine fiddle. You don’t tiptoe around macaroons the way you tiptoe around macarons.
 
According to my Sharpie marker and wax paper/scrap paper, I believe Friday’s and Saturday’s macaroon orders are complete.  That’s critical at this stage of the double holiday weekend. After a thousand macaroons, I’m beginning to feel just the slightest bit flakey. Unfortunately, many of my peeps, (not the marshmallow variety) will come barging into the bakery today and tomorrow, desperately seeking macaroons. My purple handled scoop has  many macaroon miles still to travel. I am counting down the hours between now and 4 pm on Saturday. If you're looking for me, just follow the trail of coconut. 
 

​Celebrity chef was a term not yet coined when Edna Lewis was born,  April 13, 1916. The granddaughter of an emancipated slave, Miss Lewis grew up in Freetown, Virginia, learning to cook under the tutelage of her mother and grandmothers, honing her skills on recipes handed down and tinkered with by generations of relatives. I read her cookbooks like novels, paying strict attention to menu titles such as, “Morning-After-Hog-Butchering Breakfast.”   I devoured her conversational recipes, the kind that might be shared across a kitchen table while trimming green beans or removing the stems from blueberries.
 
Miss Lewis chronicled her life in several books;  The Edna Lewis Cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, In Pursuit of Flavor, and The Gift of Southern Cooking. She explained, “Freetown was a community of farming people, so named because the first residents had been freed from chattel slavery, and wanted to be known as a town of Free People.” The food of her childhood  would shape her culinary career.
 
When Edna was a teenager, she moved to Washington, D.C., then in later years, found her way to New York City. In the late 1940s, she was the chef at Café Nicholson in Manhattan, garnering raves for her legendary chocolate soufflé. She returned to the south for decades, cooking and writing thoughtful, comprehensive cookbooks. What made her cookbooks so refreshing was her    conversational narrative. There was a frankness coupled with a little bit of hand-holding throughout the pages.  At a time when celebrity chef narcissism was the norm, it was unusual to  equate humbleness with a chef.

​Miss Lewis was lured back  to New York in the late 1980s, at the age of 72, to become the chef at Brooklyn's landmark restaurant, Gage and Tollner. Edna Lewis’ style of cooking was soulful, but it differed from traditional soul food. Miss Lewis brought a more gentrified style of country cooking to the restaurant, a straight-forward approach that focused on seasonally fresh, local, organic ingredients.  Her influence on the restaurant, and on Southern cuisine, impacted a new generation of chefs and home cooks.
 
While the popular culture was noticeably tiptoeing around butter, salt, and sugar, Edna Lewis embraced it. In her “Morning-After-Hog-Butchering Breakfast,” Miss Lewis recounts a menu of black raspberries and cream, eggs sunny-side up, oven-cooked fresh bacon, fried sweetbreads, country-fried apples, biscuits and corn bread, butter, preserves, jelly, and coffee. She also insisted that making your own baking powder made for better biscuits. 
 
I am unashamed to admit I house too many bookshelves, buckling under the weight of cooking magazines. One of the features I loved from those now defunct subscriptions was the end of the magazine query, “If you could invite anyone from history to join you for dinner, who would it be?” I would start with breakfast, and invite Edna Lewis to pull up a chair around the kitchen table; hopefully,   she'll bring the biscuits.
 
 

​Groaning under the weight of its contents, the door to my home freezer struggles to close. The top shelf of the freezer is overfilled with savory items, dinner suggestions dictated by the most dire of no-food-in-the-house circumstances. Situated in the corner of the freezer is an automatic ice maker that consistently works on again/off again. At this moment it chooses to add a few cubes to the rarely overfilled bin, for emphasis. A wayward cube bounces from top shelf to bottom, a cavernous vessel for frozen fruit and nuts. Bags of pine nuts and macadamias from abandoned pesto and biscotti adventures are frozen solid, refusing to budge. Forgotten in the corner are a few misshapen popsicles from summers long gone.
 
“We see how it is,” observes the bag of frozen cranberries, its ragged opening held together with a weary rubber band. “I’ve been showing signs of freezer burn since early January and not a single glance, not the slightest acknowledgement of my cranberry existence.”
 
Bag of Frozen Cherries pipes in, her tone both frosty and conspiratorial. “Other than tossing us in a rocks glass with some bourbon and bitters, we’re just playing the waiting game. Will she choose to include us in her cherry pie? Only when she grows tired of removing the pits from our fresh counterparts. She’ll rummage around in here, tossing bags helter skelter, until we’re casually thrown on the countertop, ripped open by force, falling victim to the blade of a dull paring knife.” Bag of Frozen Cherries shivers at the thought of it before continuing. “Just you wait; April is the game changer for all of us. Once she gets her hands on some fresh rhubarb, that’s all she’ll think about, morning, noon, and cocktail hour. Trust me. Just follow her instagram feed; all rhubarb, all the time. You think I’m making this stuff up? I know what I’m talking about, Cranberry. And it only gets worse; when rhubarb season begins to draw to a close, she’ll get crazy and start cramming zip-locs of that pie plant in here. There won’t be room to turn around. You’re toast, Cranberry. The only thing you can hope for is maybe one last hurrah in some kind of frozen fruit mash-up or possibly hitching a ride alongside a nice roast chicken. But the odds are you won’t be seeing the inside of a pie plate or the light of an oven any time soon.”
 
I’m the ‘she’ they’re referring to and everything they say is true. The first spindly stalks of rhubarb, outfitted in stripes of peppermint pink and minty green, with a bouffant of mildly toxic leaves, haunt my waking hours. Rhubarb is my spring light at the end of a long, cold, tunnel of winter. Every year it seems just the slightest bit further from my reach, the elusive harbinger of spring. Rhubarb is the green light at the intersection of melting snow and purple crocus. Rhubarb gives me the go-ahead to swap out turtlenecks for t-shirts, woolen socks for snarky, combed cotton anklets.
 
I’ve always linked rhubarb with Passover, a holiday that celebrates the “first-fruits of the barley,” meaning the first grain to ripen and be harvested. If ever there was a first fruit of spring, it’s rhubarb. The only wrinkle in the ‘first fruits’ theory is that rhubarb is technically a vegetable. Details.
 
As observant Jews begin to prepare for Passover by thoroughly removing chametz (anything with traces of flour and yeast) from their home, I will give the kitchen a half-hearted once over. Sure, the box of Kashi Go Lean Crunch should probably be relocated from the bottom shelf of the kitchen cabinet to the out-of-reach top shelf. The cabinet housing Bob, King Arthur, and the Quaker Oats guy should be loosely padlocked. In this particular kitchen however, it might be a good idea to look beyond the pantry and take a gander in the freezer. Not that there’s anything wildly inappropriate in there, save for the dented boxes of Trader Joe’s spring rolls and spanakopita. It might be time however, to emancipate those frostbitten bags of fruit that have been held in the icy clutches of the freezer for far too long. In doing so, I can free up some valuable freezer real estate and make room for the incoming zip-loc bags of pie plant. This might be just the weekend to roast a nice chicken.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 We are a fickle holiday bunch, aren’t we? No sooner have we turned off Pi(e) Day’s convection oven, we jump smack dab into St. Patrick’s Day. In this case, the shamrock-riddled holiday falls on a Sunday, prompting a full weekend of eating of the green.
 
Sugar-riddled cookies smothered in various shades of verdant and orange lie in wait on the bakers’ racks. Scones run the gamut from humble to extreme. Irish Soda scones studded with little more than currants share rack space with a scone of epic sweetness proportions. Not only is the Confetti scone ablaze in technicolor sprinkles, it is glazed with chocolate then capped off with the tiniest of Sprinkle King shamrocks. Odds are high the scone with the most sugar will be washed down with an oat milk espresso drink, thus mitigating our concern for the planet and our personal health.
 
My tastes better align with the Quaker Oats guy, relatively old school and old-fashioned. I’ve not boarded the almond milk nor the oat milk train because I prefer the real deal in my coffee, whole milk, and milk in my oatmeal, not oatmeal in my milk.  
 
Personally, St. Patrick’s Day is one of those holidays prompting a 'duck and cover' reaction. I will take refuge in the way back of the bakery at a small worktable, within earshot of a massive ice cuber. Every now and again, a kindly barista will wander back to fill a cavernous bucket with ice, breaking the silence of my Guinness bundt cake reverie. Key Lime pies are also on the St. Patrick’s Day docket, with a subtle hint of greenness and the sprightliness of a leprechaun, but far less critical to the weekend festivities.
 
The next holiday on my radar is the hit and run holiday of Purim. I’m gearing up for the triangular goodness only a hamantaschen can offer, just as soon as I clear out the Guinness chilling in the walk-in.

​Studies show that 5.5 million pints of Guinness are downed around the world on a daily basis. On St. Patrick's Day that figure is doubled. I’m happy to do my part, if only by peeling back the flip tops on the heady stout. Five cans of Guinness are needed to yield 9 pudgy bundt cakes. According to the parchment paper list tacked to the commercial freezer, 30 cakes are indicated for the weekend. Pi will not factor into my bundt cake mathematics because that holiday is blissfully over. Treading cautiously into the Ides of March, I will keep my head low, avoiding the sweet surprises of this not-so-magically delicious weekend.
 

In a feeble attempt to feign warmth and a devil-may-care attitude towards single digit temps, I ignore the fact that my shoulders have inched up to my ears, refusing to budge. The bakery kitchen is warm, perfumed with butter, offering a respite from January’s cold, cold, heart.
 
There are slim pickins’ in my little corner of the pie world. A case of apples taunting with the word organic are tired and gnarled, almost as depressing as the incessant rain pounding against the cracked skylight above my workbench. Last week’s pears remain about as flavorful as the wooden crate they rode in on. Despite my daily glaring and prodding, they are unmoved, refusing to ripen. Change is hard but the pears are harder. They should be ready around Valentine’s Day.
 
A stack of pie shells doze in the freezer, amidst five pound bags of wild blueberries offering more color than flavor. The tiny berries cannot stand alone in pie and are best left to crumb-topped coffee cakes. Ziploc bags busting with chopped cranberries are frosty beneath a veil of freezer burn. I haven't the heart to  pair them with the  organic apples. I shift my attention from freezer to walk-in.
 
Pie options are limited to a case of lemons, one of oranges, and bottles of tart-tongued key lime juice. Key lime wins, with lemon a close second. The oranges are better suited to cakes, rarely associated with pies, although their fragrant zest is a welcome addition to the pies of summer and anything cranberry. Two of winter’s brightest additions haven’t crossed the walk-in threshold; fragrant Meyer lemons remain elusive and grapefruit never makes the cut. It’s such a shame, because Meyer lemons with their floral sweetness, and grapefruits with their sweet and  sourness provide the perfect antidote to the drab, gray of winter. 
 
Disengaging from a cavernous Cambro tub filled with graham cracker crumbs mixed with sugar and melted butter, I toss my slightly used apron in the laundry bag.   Braving the steady downpour, the car knows its way  to Trader Joe’s. Paying careful attention to any and all display items likely to come crashing to the ground as I breeze past, I  navigate my shopping cart towards the produce aisle.  Wandering amongst the bright pyramids of citrus, I pretend I’m on vacation. Grabbing a bag of Cara Cara oranges and a handful of small but respectable pink grapefruits, I totally bypass the pears, without so much as a sideways glance. I know better.

Based on the number of Amazon delivery truck sightings in and around my neighborhood, it appears much of the world shops online. I prefer to see and handle things up close and personal. On-line shopping gives me pause, unless I’m receiving support from one of the friendly phone operators on the other end of the 1-800 L. L. Bean telephone lines. They understand me, provide guidance, answer my questions, never force me to click that tiny little shopping cart that pops up in the right hand corner of the computer screen. That shopping cart icon causes me anxiety, never willing to accept one single item, always making additions.  It loves to taunt with the promise of express check-out, only to leave me dazed, confused, and exiting the site having purchased 13 baking pans when all I want is one.
 
My housemates will tell you that I will never, ever, need to purchase another baking pan for the remainder of my baking days. From their perspective, they are constantly attempting to free a simple item from a cabinet, or a drawer, or a shelf, only to face an onslaught of bakeware. The pans range in size from diminutive tartlets to individual springforms to cavernous cake pans capable of easily feeding one hundred wedding guests. I have pans with removable bottoms that love to separate and crash to the floor, assorted cupcake pans of varying depths, and more than enough pie plates to satisfy a calendar’s worth of offerings.
 
The same can be said for the cabinet filled with sugars, flours, and extracts. Following a series of
 interventions, it was suggested that my baking items be shifted from the entire kitchen to one substantial cabinet. It is a struggle that I have learned to acknowledge, re-aligning decorative sugars and quirky spices to accommodate various bags of flour and a wide assortment of sweeteners. Although one would think that I couldn’t possibly need to add to this baking pantry, I have recently, and  joyfully, made room for a few additions.
 
A few weeks back, before the holiday craziness breezed through town, I received an extravagant package from the kind folks at Jones and Co. Flavorings. The company prides itself on sourcing vanilla from small-plot vanilla cultivators, local farmers often overlooked by large producers. In addition to vanilla, they offer many wonderful extracts, sugars, and flavorings from all over the world. My work and home kitchen environment is tethered to vanilla extract; it is an integral part of every baker’s pantry. It is the ingredient that is linked to our childhood baking memories, a small, red-capped bottle that when opened, unleashed a flood of baking possibilities.
 
I have made room in my chaotic baking pantry to welcome some beautiful sugars and extracts, just begging to be used. This week’s recipe takes advantage of January’s abundant citrus crop. Before the three-day weekend envelops us in snow, make a stop at your local grocer and pick up some lemons, limes, and oranges. In the midst of winter, we can all use a little sunshine and if you’re lucky, a very good bottle of vanilla.

​January, barely two weeks old, is jam-packed with conflict and contradiction. On my short drive to work, I am assaulted by an abrasive commercial crackling out of the car radio. It seems the only way one can find happiness in 2019 is to contact Dr. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T-N-O-W. The overly exuberant radio personality provides me with the 1-800 phone number necessary for connecting with the good doctor. Impatiently turning off the radio, I emancipate my paltry 8 oz. water bottle from the cup holder, adjust my bandana, and trudge down the street to work. Is this persistent commercial a sign to clean up my act, focus solely on fruits, vegetables, and the occasional rice cake? Will Dr. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T-N-O-W  be simpatico with my daily dessert intake and more critically, how will the doc feel about my day job? Staying faithful to a profession where the primary focus is filling butter-riddled pie shells with sweetened fruit may not align with the doctor’s orders. Do I follow in the Teva-sandaled, Sorel-booted footsteps of those embarking on a clean eating journey? As I watch my resolutions continue to waver, then falter, it seems unlikely. I’m struggling with my feeble promise to consume less than half a bag of Cheesy Puffs in one sitting. As for skim milk in coffee, that resolution kicked off on January 1st and promptly ended on January 2nd.
 
Contrary to what the general population believes, individuals who spend the months of November and December plying others with holiday treats often feel deprived themselves. It is my belief that professional bakers deserve a sweets pardon, allowing them an extension on sweets consumption. The occasional gingerbread man with the broken arm and the crumbled meringue mushroom abandoned by a Bûche de Noël do not constitute a holiday dessert buffet. While the rest of the world is swearing off sugar, I’m hungry for something sweet, and someone to share it with.
 
How fortunate that Sibling-Sister-of-Toronto is swinging through town this weekend. There is only one woman who will patiently listen as I tick off my ‘Greatest Hits’ list of pies, cookies, and cakes, imploring her opinion, only to disregard her input. As the one driving the dessert cart, it is my job to choose and this weekend, I choose chocolate with a side of strawberry/rhubarb.
 
My week has already been filled with too many pie shells and graham cracker crusts. Taking a step back from my rolling pin feels necessary and restorative. Reaching into the depths of an unruly kitchen cabinet, I unearth my grandmother’s 9” Bake King cake pans and take them for a spin. Lined with parchment circles, they submit to buttering then flouring, then knocking out the excess. There is nothing flashy about these pans; they are steadfast and reliable, not too shallow, not too deep. The pans hold just the right amount of rich, chocolate batter that perfumes the kitchen, announcing ‘clean-test’ just before the oven timer beeps.
 
This particular chocolate cake was originally served at a very long table, in a very small Manhattan restaurant, at a milestone celebration, several milestones ago. It was one of the few times in my life that Jessie didn’t bake my birthday cake, a sobering realization that Jessie’s presence in our kitchen was finite. Jessie taught me the hows and whys of cake baking, defining and demonstrating ‘springy to the touch’ and ‘clean test.’ She preferred dramatic swoops of frosting to buttercream roses coaxed out of piping bags. One year, yielding to elementary school peer pressure, I pleaded for a Barbie doll cake from the Cedarhurst Bake Shop. Behind her black-framed glasses, Jessie raised her salt and pepper eyebrows in disdain. The Barbie doll cake was wildly popular with my fourth grade classmates, but couldn’t hold a candle to Jessie’s towering checkerboard cake with dark chocolate frosting.
 
For decades, Jessie’s vast repertoire of cakes held center stage at our dining room table. Years later, my sister whipped up some of the most exquisite and delicious celebratory cakes. When life-changing cakes were in order, my dearest pal/professional pastry chef, Betsy, outdid herself. We bakers are a strange lot, spending much of our lives turning out cakes (and pies) for people we will never meet. And when it comes time to don the paper crown, some of us whine and complain. Maybe what we’re really saying is, we don’t want someone else to do it.
 
A celebrated pie baker/author once whispered to me, “I don’t want someone else to bake my pie; I want to bake my pie.” I understood exactly what she was saying. Cake, just like pie, creates indelible food memories. We want to get our hands on those memories and re-create them. And we think we are the only one who can do it.
 
So when I head to the kitchen with the intent of baking a very specific, triple layer chocolate cake, it’s because my food memory is telling my brain, this is a proper candle blowing cake. The kind of cake that should be blanketed in great swoops of frosting, crowned with but a single candle to signify celebration. The very cake to slice with a multi-pronged, silver cake breaker that will dot the tablecloth with confetti crumbs. The cake that calls for the very best butter and cocoa the color of midnight and maybe, because it’s January, something that hints at the promise of spring. A cake that will became fixated in one’s food memory, the fragrance of chocolate and flame and candle wax permeating the air, long after the last licks of frosting have been scraped from our plates.