smitten kitchen

My German grandmother never made mazto ball soup with chicken stock, or so my mother tells me. In fact, she never made chicken stock at all. Compared to beef stock, chicken stock’s flavor paled, she felt, so why use it?

After our central European vacation, I can see that she’s not alone. We didn’t find one restaurant in Prague or Vienna that didn’t have some version of a beef consomme soup on the menu–all extremely dark and abundantly flavorful. I found this a great relief, as soup was a wonderful way to offset the heaviness of available cuisine, and also absurdly delicious, as I never knew that simple brothy soups could be so tasty.

And you’ll have to bear with me, as I know it is probably not soup season where you are, but between New York’s rainy 55 degrees yesterday and the bad cold Alex and I have passed back and forth in the last eight days, it sure was needed here.

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I am not proud of this, but I’m really just a one trick pony in the language department. Sure, after four years of high school French and the shortest exchange program ever, I can get by in Paris and because of this, can occasionally make sense of written Italian or Spanish, but Czech? German? I couldn’t be further from makings heads or tails of it.

As you might expect, as Alex and I luckily found ourselves at some untouristy eateries in Vienna–without a waitstaff that catered to the language-deficient or menus reprinted in 16 world languages–quite a bit of Hilarity Ensued. After many hours of walking on a hot day, Alex and I were beat, so we flopped down at a cafe and mindlessly asked for “iced coffees” completely forgetting that “ice” equals “eis” equals “ice cream” in German, and ended up with a big cup filled with coffee, cream, whipped cream and a scoop of vanilla gelato. I wish all mistakes were this tasty!

Looking to offset the heavy dishes Central Europe, I also ordered something that I guessed was going to be a light, healthy vegetable strudel, something I’d imagined dreamily warm with crispy, flaky edges and something I was certainly going to want to repeat at home. Unfortunately, I received a brick of rice with a few flecks of carrots and parnsips, wrapped in phyllo and smothered in a creamy herb sauce. It all went very well with my eis Kaffee!

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This is the cake in which I did everything wrong.

1.It was impromptu, on a week that I have been trying to embrace salads, vegetables and water, or all those things I got too little of on Alex and Deb’s Central European Vacation. But I’m a sucker for any and all upside-down cakes, and this one sounded so good, my resolve was immediately weakened.

2. Cherries are not in season around here, not even close.

3. I said if I couldn’t find frozen cherries, I’d take it as a sign and skip it, but then Alex went to the store for me and he’s so good, so eager to get everything on the list that he bought fresh ones that cost so much money, I cannot discuss it in mixed company. But it was still really sweet of him.

4. I do not own a cherry pitter. Oh, I have looked at them, marveled at an extra-cute one at Williams-Sonoma last summer, but that time, like all of the times before it, I determined such a purchase fussy and of little use. Halving and pitting cherries took forever, a forever I would have happily swapped for a $10 limited-use gadget.

5. I do not own a cast-iron or oven-proof skillet that is 10 or 11 inches, though this, too, I have often discussed buying one but the thought of lugging it home always talks me out of it.

6. I had worked until 7 p.m. on Tuesday, swam a mile at the gym, got home after 9 p.m. and still determined that I would have time to bake this cake, cherry pitting included. I hate rushing through recipes; something always goes horribly wrong and I forget an egg or the sugar and swear I’ll never rush again. Yet this is exactly what I did.

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These are scandalously good, yes, scandalously. Do you want to know why? Because I had one bite of one of these cookies and honestly think they’re one of the best cookies I have ever made. Like, top five good. Like, I think that the homemade Oreos just got the boot because I had to make room at the top. I hope the dozens of you who have made them can forgive me.

It took me a long time to get an oatmeal cookie recipe on this site, and the reason was that most people really like oatmeal cookies, but they have a very specific view of what they should be. Some people like them heavily spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, others want them buttery and nutty and still others think that if they don’t have chocolate chips or large gobs of dried fruit, they weren’t worth the oats they were cooked with. To add further complication, 99.9 percent of oatmeal cookies fall into one of two categories: thick and cakey or thin and lacy, and oh, how it all made my head spin.

Well, meet the new category: thick and shatter-y, and you’ll have to make your own to believe it. They’re crispy, but not because they’re hard or because they’re thin but because they practically hollow out when they bake, leaving you with this… shell of an oatmeal cookie with rich bits of white chocolate scattered about and the tiniest flaking of sea salt on top.

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I’m sorry. I know, this isn’t right. Not fair. Totally cruel. We’re just weeks from bathing suit season and this here is no friend to lycra.

But I had to. I promised you this and I had to make it right.

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