Author: doodledweller
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Chocolate Cake
Chocolate cake is a staple dessert – rich, dark, and decadent. Some folks prefer milk chocolate, but if one truly loves chocolate, one wants it dark. It’s akin to the idea that if you eat your steak well-done, you don’t enjoy beef. I personally have my chocolate cake as black as midnight; something like Hershey’s…
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Patching
My grandparents had a sewing machine. It was a treadle machine, which was solely foot-powered: through pedaling your feet back and forth to keep it running. It was so vintage that it could probably sit in a museum now. They had a few pattern booklets, not only for making shirts and pants, but also for…
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Concept Evolution
How we view the world reflects who we are, so that two individuals witnessing the same event or reading the same text may have completely different understandings of it. That one is always evolving means what one hears, sees, and reads is always evolving too. At different stages of life, we are moved by different…
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Ode to the Persimmon
The persimmon is a gorgeous tree – of large, glossy foliage, – of tall, hard wood, and bedecked with orange-hued sweet fruits in globular or teardrop figures. Though not only is it ornamental, this fecund tree also nourishes throughout the cold winter. Revered in East Asia, particularly in Japan, it has inspired much poetry, perhaps…
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Coffee Cake
Coffee cake is served with coffee, typically sweet and spiced to complement coffee’s strong flavor. Coffee cake is another kind of cake with layers being baked together simultaneously. Unlike the tarte Tatin, a layer of crumb, similar to Germany’s streusel, is spread and baked atop the cake batter. Streusel means sprinkle or strew in German,…
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Rosemary Apple Cake
To give complexity to a cake, whether to contrast or to compliment its flavors and textures, we build dimensions into it. One method is to add layers after the cake is done baking, such as frosting. Another way is to bake separate layers simultaneously. Because layers require different settings to be correctly cooked, the challenge…
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The Art of Reading Poetry
“O my deare master! cannot you (quoth I) Make me a Poet, doe it if you can, And you shall see, I’ll quickly bee a man.” -Michael Drayton Not only as a painting, but a poem can be seen in different ways. In The Art of Reading Poetry, Earl Daniels outlined how a poem could…
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Notes on Cake
In making cakes, size matters. Different baking pans require changes to the original proportion between ingredients, else it may no longer allow for a sufficient rise or may lead to over-leavening, causing the cake to collapse. As Shirley Corriher noted that “a sad cake is a happy cake”, a soft and moist cake, which is…
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The Art of Poetry
“Poetry’s like painting: there are pictures that attract you more nearer to, and others from further away. This needs the shadows, that to be seen in the light, Not fearing the critic’s sharp eye: this pleased once, that, though examined ten thousand times, still pleases.” -Horace There is more than one way to appreciate poetry. …
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