Brown Sugar Meringue

After poking around on the internet a bit, I found out that you're not even supposed to attempt making meringue on a humid day (or if you've recently boiled water or run the dishwater or laundry).  So maybe I was wrong to blame the sogginess on the ganache.  A good excuse to try this again!

Some people are intimidated by ganache, but it's nothing more than chocolate and warm cream.

To make the base of the meringue, all I did was whisk the egg whites until they formed soft mounds then
slowly added one cup of brown sugar.  This only took about three minutes in total, but some of the brown
sugar didn't entirely dissolve, so the uncooked mixture piped onto the baking sheets a bit unevenly.

Poached Rhubarb with Elderflower Sabayon

I tweaked this dessert a bit, but it's based on a recipe you can find here.  The sabayon is quite an interesting element; it seems like it would be nice paired with other fruits or even drizzled over a simple cake.  Its warm, whisked, egg yolk foundation stikes me as a pretty versatile base for any number of other flavored accompaniments.

Poaching fruit is a little tricky because it's so easy to overcook.

I have really bad luck with custards, so I was a little wary about attempting a sabayon,
but it ended up being pretty easy.  I just whisked four egg yolks, two tablespoons of sugar, and three
 tablespoons of St. Germain over a water bath until it tripled in size.  I bet this rich, foamy topping
would be really nice over fresh berries.

As far as floral liqueurs go, St. Germain is quite a stately one.

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

While typing this it occurred to me that while there are obviously alignment issues with the Underwood's typebars, I think there's also a problem with the platen.  It doesn't seem like it's gripping the paper tight enough, so the vibrations from hammering at the keys makes the lettering even more askew.  I'll have to test this...

Anyway, this really is a nice, light summer cake with a very fine crumb.  You can get Melissa Clarke's recipe here.

Not only is rhubarb super easy to grow, it also comes back every year.

The batter was nice and buttery and the lemon zest adds a really nice dimension.

Pre-flip, all the sweet rhubarby goodness stews at the botton of the pan.

It's Electric: Smith-Corona Coronet Super 12

The obsessive compulsive in me really cringes at the typos and misplaced apostrophes in this typecast, but all these errors are organic to the process.  With these errors included, the page itself becomes like a moment trapped in amber.  In practicing my typing I've also realized how dependent I've become on spellcheck and auto correct.  When typing on a computer, I sometimes don't even bother to capitalize the first word in a sentence because I know that Word will take care of it for me.  Conversely, writing on a typewriter forces me to be more mindful of what I'm doing.

These keys call for a light touch.  The Coronet is also the first of my typewriters that has a numeral 1
and an exclamation point.  Still have to find that backspace, though...

Part of the typewriter's body can be lifted off to replace the ink cartridge,
so you can really get into the belly of the beast.

Got to love the 1970s styling!