Gingerbread Cake

At the grocery checkout I swipe my credit card in the reader, tap the “OK” button, and the pleasant fellow hands me my receipt and then stuffs a box of cookies in one of my bags.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“A box of ginger snaps. They’re free!” he replies.

I wonder what’s the catch. My dad once told me, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And he was right, so I doubt there could be any such thing as a free box of ginger snaps. I look at the fellow and raise an eyebrow.

“Yes, they’re free,” he says with a broad smile. “We just opened our 365^th store, and to celebrate we’re giving everyone who makes a purchase today a box of cookies.”

“Well, thanks very much,” I say, gathering up the bags. “Free cookies, how cool is that?” On the way to the car I wonder how many times could this opportunity be worked - you know, buy one mushroom at a time and get the free box of ginger snaps - before they call security. Tempting to find out, but no. I like these people, and want them to let me in the store the next time I need groceries.

Cookies around here are not a good idea. Once the box is open, things slip past the point of no return and I have great difficulty eating just a few. So when I get home I stuff the box on the shelf and largely forget about it. Until one day, oh look, there’s the box of ginger snaps, and it just so happens I’m making an afternoon cup of tea. I take the box from the shelf and open it up, and find for store-bought (or in this case store-give) they’re pretty good.

No surprise, they go fast. Later that afternoon I go for another cookie, and boo-hoo, they’re all gone. Just kidding! The box lasts a few days, but a point in time comes when there are no more. And sniff, it’s again time for tea and I’ve gotten rather used to a few (O.K., more than a few) cookies along with it. Bummer. Sipping the boring, lonely cup of tea, I get thinking about making ginger snaps. But past experience tells me as much as I love eating cookies, making them is a pain. Way too fussy, all those little balls of dough, and trays going in and out of the oven, and if you space out, that trayful is burned and so on.

Flash! A bolt of inspiration to make a gingerbread cake hits me. The last time I had gingerbread cake was at The Tea House, served warm, with fresh whipped cream on top… oh my. And making a cake is more my style.

I consult the source of all truth and find a recipe. It calls for a 9 x 9 pan and I actually have one. This must be a sign. Moving on to the ingredients, most already reside in the kitchen, except for ginger, molasses, and a fresh lemon, so they go on the list. And I decide to get another pound of butter. Winter’s coming on, so ‘tis the season for having some extra butterfat on hand, and in turn, on mid-section. On the way to the store I decide to use fresh ginger instead of powdered. Fresh is always better, right? So I buy a gnarly brown rhizome of ginger, aka the root.

I get home, it’s a grey afternoon. O.K., I’m all set. A gingerbread cake is in my immediate future. I lay out all the ingredients. But how much ginger root equals one teaspoon of powdered? Going back to the source of all truth, everyone says the same thing: do not substitute ginger root for powder, or visa versa. Apparently the flavors can be quite different. But I didn’t get any powdered ginger and I do not want to go back to the store for just one item. Ugh.

Ah, but there’s The Spice Lady. Her shop is within walking distance and getting out for a stroll would be good. It’s cold and raw outside, the air smells like snow. I bundle up and head out, take a new street and discover a whole little sub-neighborhood I never knew about.

The Spice Lady has powdered ginger and I buy a little packet of it. And we talk about making curries, something I’ve been procrastinating over for a long time. After expressing my enthusiasm on the subject to Vic, two, count ’em two years ago, she gave me a lovely mortar and pestle for grinding the whatevers to make curry, and well, it hasn’t seen any use. Yet. Anyway, the lady who is The Spice Lady has a few pointers to get me on my curry journey, like first I’ll need to come up with a recipe. So I put the packet of ginger powder in my pocket and go home. By the time I get back it’s more the time to cook dinner than gingerbread, so I put all the ingredients away.

The next day I pull them all out. Again. This is when I discover the plastic bagful of brown sugar is hard as a rock. Oh c’mon! There is however a trick of putting a slice of apple in the with sugar, seal it up and put it in the fridge. For a few days. I look in the fridge and find I do not have any apples. At this point, no way am I going to the grocery for an apple. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I moisten a piece of paper towel, stuff it in the bag, seal it and put it in the fridge. And put all the other ingredients away. Again.

I check daily on the sugar. Day one: hard as a rock. Day two: hard as a rock. Day three: slight signs of softening. I look at the lemon. It’s not as perky as it was three days ago. The time is now, I gotta make my move. I take the paper towel out of the sugar bag, dribble a bit of water directly on the sugar, seal it and put it in the sun on my work table. While I’m at the computer trying to figure out which word comes next, I mess with it. I poke at it, push it, twist it. In all, I worry it to death and with the help of old sol, by mid-afternoon I have a bag of soft brown sugar.

I get all the ingredients out and go to work. I am on a mission.

Standing there with the mixer going, the butter, eggs, sugar, and molasses splatter around in the bowl. We’re on our way. Hmm… I’m wearing a dress shirt. No apron. I don’t even own an apron. I think of my dad. He’d come home from work in his jacket and tie, pull in the garage and immediately start tinkering with something under the hood of the car. Having a propensity for old British and French iron, there was always something needing tinkering, and the tangle of odd bits and pieces called an engine was always a grimy, oily mess. This would drive my mother crazy. “You don’t do the laundry!” she would sputter. He’d look up and pretend to wipe his hands on his jacket, and grin. The apple falls close to the tree. A good blob of what’s flying around in the bowl landing on the front of my shirt will total it. But I do not stop and change shirts. No. Nothing will stop me now.

Glancing at the recipe, it says, “Preheat oven to 350 degrees.”

Haven’t done that yet. I hope the oven works.

Gordon Bunker

The Left

A Sunday ago I rode the R1200R to Cedar Crest. This is a ride I do often, 100 miles for a cup of joe. I know the road well, I clear my mind.

There’s a coffee shop in the village where motorcyclists hang out, and a certain amount of “mine’s bigger than yours” goes on in this crowd. That’s a vibe I’m more than happy to skip, so I go to another place, easy to miss, tucked on the end of a little strip mall. The place is quiet, the coffee is good, I like the people and they like me. I’m almost a regular and almost always the only motorcyclist. Over a cup I peruse the latest car mags. No motorcycle mags, must speak with the proprietor about this oversight.

Heading back to Santa Fe, north of Golden past the old Ortiz Mountain Ranch the road is straight as an arrow. I pass a few slow moving cars, but not at an exceedingly fast pace. There may be a Karmic component to speeding tickets so when the road is boring, a.k.a. straight, or when I’m passing through a village, relaxed is the pace. This way, I save up my Karma points for the curves and I can let it rip. Can’t remember the last time I had a close call with the law in the curves, so it must be working.

In a moment I see three other motorcycles have also passed the cars and are reeling me in. In a triple-digit flash they are right on me. I keep a constant and moderate speed and hope they pass. I don’t like leading a parade, or being any part of one for that matter; unfortunately they hang on my tail.

The road then climbs into the Ortiz Mountains. It’s a steep grade and some delicious curves lie beyond. I decide to see what these nimrods are all about and grab a handful of throttle and open it. The BMW pulls hard, I check the speedo, I’m doing 80. Sixty in here is cruising, 70 is quick, and 80 is my limit. When I had the Ducati, it was 80 through here every time. That was then, this is now. Up the grade the three bikes are with me. Still climbing, it’s a sweep to the left, then a right. I pull some distance on them. A wicked little grin of, I admit, smugness creeps across my face. Another left at the top of the pass, and then the road descends in a right, and drops yet more quickly into the mother of all lefts.

Motorcycles are just as adept at turning left as right, but many riders, most even, find one or the other less comfortable. It’s a funny thing. Lefts, in my case, spook the hell out of me. It’s completely irrational, but there it is. You can see it in the wear on my bike’s tires. On the right side the bulk of the wear is out toward the tread’s shoulder. On the left, it’s a bit closer to the center.

Going down hill the road surface is dropping away from the tires. The result is less available traction and the feeling in a curve, at speed, is a palpable airiness. This left is cut into a hillside so sight lines are limited, and it’s bound by a guardrail on the outside beyond which is a cliff drop into a canyon. All the while, the pavement drops like a trap door. The speed advisory is 35.

All things considered I usually take it at 40-45. This time, plunging down the slope at 80, I shut off the gas. For better or worse, one of the attributes of a high compression engine is a lot of engine braking; on the approach the bike slows, the curve comes up. I glance at the speedo: 65. At this rate, 95 feet goes by per second, a sobering thought. Things are happening quickly, I am in too deep to brake, and well beyond my comfort zone.

The engineering and design of this bike are the stuff of brilliance, superior to any other I’ve ridden (including the Duc), and this is especially apparent now.

Thank you BMW.

So little in life, today, requires any real nerve. I swallow my heart, keep my chin up, look into the curve and get on the gas, just enough to transfer load to the rear. I lean a sharp angle to the left. The bike hits a series of spots where the most recent layer of asphalt has broken away. The chassis twitches ever so slightly before the steering damper calms things down. Most of my weight is on the outside foot peg, my rear end is slightly elevated from the seat, my hands barely touch the grips, everything, including time, floats… ninety five feet per second… I stay on the gas, and I am around the bend.

I check my mirror, my followers are things of the past. The sweeter this is the greyer I get around the muzzle. The road straightens, and lo and behold there they are again. I grin. No smugness. Just satisfaction.

Gordon Bunker