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Ottolenghi doesn’t call it slab cake, it has some French-adjacent name with an accent on the e, but it’s basically lightly gelatined fruit embedded in a cement of almond sponge. It’s important to me that the slab has squared edges because circular cakes are for sissies (I don’t make the rules). I would happily sell a kidney for regular access to squares of slab cake, but not both kidneys.
Jun 3, 2021
Related Recs
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W/ lemon & powdered sugar. Not too sweet, so good w coffee/tea. I like a cake that can get away with being breakfast, lol.
Feb 9, 2024
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I’m a baker and mostly a cake maker so it’s hard to choose but I love this cake so much it’s so light and fluffy and refreshing and my fav is that it’s not too sweet. Other favs are roll cakes(especially ube and coconut), lord baltimores, basque cheesecake, and Victoria sponge.
Feb 9, 2024
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I’ve baked many a cake in the 24 long years I’ve been on this planet. Cakes covered in cinnamon streusel, pudding-filled, frosting-covered cakes, cakes that look hideous but taste beautiful (never the reverse). This cake, though, is my favorite cake to bake and eat. The recipe (here without a paywall) is perfect when followed as written, though I still tweak it sometimes by browning and re-solidifying the butter for a deeper, funkier flavor or using peaches, blueberries, and most recently, pluots from the aforementioned L.A. farmers market in place of the traditional plums. Any way you bake it, you’ll get to experience the pure bliss of slicing through its warm, crispy exterior, into a pillow-like cake full of fruit even sweeter and juicier than before you scattered it over the buttery batter.
Aug 10, 2021
Top Recs from @raven-smith
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I have absolutely no ties to Italy that I know of, and the last piece I read about it was from a Black woman explaining the near-constant racism and ostracisation she experienced in the more rural areas, and yet here I am advocating an Italian digestivo. I prefer Greece as a destination, my spirit animal is feta, but would never have you chug ouzo like on a balmy night like a chav on a gap year. Like many an amaro, Meletti is bittersweet and you only have to add a dash of prosecco, ice and an olive to look suave which is much less time-consuming than a finishing school in Switzerland or one of the private schools with a riot club. It is a no-frills Aperol for grown-ups (it’s actually best in a half-pint glass, curveless like a supermodel). Drink Meletti, feel expensive.
Jun 3, 2021
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I know what you’re thinking, another gay man with a penchant for pop, another bum boy obsessed with Kylie. But this is the best, most hornily, summery song ever written (Madonna’s Tell Me with the Marlboro men is excellent, but feels less seasonal). After the first note of Slow I can literally taste sea salt and sweat and spf50 on my lips. The video is heaving with ripe bikinis and the heavy gussets of men in Speedos. Saddle up.
Jun 3, 2021
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It’s frowned upon in book circles to push your own (forthcoming) book because everyone in literature is chronically self-deprecating (they also apologise when retweeting praise). I’m lucky enough to have avoided such an affliction. Expect softbois, hard truths, and a rigorous retelling of every time I’ve been punched or fingered.
Jun 3, 2021