Good Eats

It's maple sugaring time. Actually, it's been such a warm winter the sap has been running for a few weeks. It drips out of the tree at such a fast pace that you might think water was running off the roof and splashing into a puddle. You can hear it splash into the bucket. Drip drip drip without much pause between drips. It looks like water but cooks down to syrup consistency. It takes 10 gallons of sap to cook down to one quart of syrup. Definitely a labor of love.
This is the tree in my daughter's back yard. She said this tree is so full the sap runs right out of the ends of the branches!

We had SarahBeth for dinner again last night. I told you in my post of 1/8/12 that I was going to bake my way through her cookbook Sarah Beth's Bakery. I gave the book to my daughter for Christmas and she's also on a baking adventure but she's been tackling recipes different from mine. Yesterday for dinner we had the brioche rolls and this amazing cake. It's called Chocolate Souffle Cake with chocolate whipped cream.
When we arrived for dinner Elizabeth took me right over to the cake and said, "Grandma, did you know that cake is supposed to look like that?" The top was all cracked, as it's supposed to be, and she's used to pretty pink frosting on her cakes. I explained the aerating part of souffles to her but she didn't look convinced. She screwed up her nose and asked "but WHY does it fall?" Well. Once again, all I can say about a SarahBeth recipe is "Well!" It's light, even though it looks dense and heavy, it isn't. Dense yes, but it really literally melts on your tongue. The chocolate whipped cream wasn't a second cousin either. The girls ate their whole piece each. I've seen them lick the icing off cakes and leave the cake. I've watched them eat just the ice cream and leave the cake, but they ate the whole piece of this. Each. We all took our first bite and around the table each of us said, "Oh, My God." Seriously, folks. If you never buy another cookbook in your life, make that pledge after you buy this one. It's called SarahBeth's Bakery and you won't be sorry.