bits & pieces
We’ve had a good number of cakes recently due to Easter and birthdays — including a lavish trifle, flourless chocolate cake, a Victoria sponge, one other one that I’m not remembering, a sophisticated and lemony one from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking book, (affiliate link) and then for Deirdre’s birthday, the requested Birthday Cake for All Occasions.
I was also making the birthday supper, going to the endodontist, taking my mom for a test at the hospital (how busy we are in this shut-down!) — so I didn’t get any truly stellar pictures. We just sang Happy Birthday and dove in!
How about a few mediocre ones…
I want to tell you a variation from my tried-and-true “Sacher-torte” treatment (apricot jam in the middle, simple ganache glaze on top — so quick, so elegant).
The cake is really just so nice — I don’t know if I can adequately convey the serious moistness of it, the lovely crumb, the satisfying chocolate-y-ness…
I will say that it’s best made with (peanut) oil. I know I said in that post that I don’t use vegetable oils, but I make an exception for peanut oil in certain things, and this is one of them. (The recipe is here.)
My new variation is to make the whipped ganache from the Gateau Paris-Brest, a dessert I used to make for Easter but the truth is that there are so many wonderful cakes and desserts and so many bakers around here that these old standards don’t get much of a work-out anymore.
Anyway, that ganache is also much more bang for your dessert buck — simply just bring to the boil 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream, take off the heat, and add 8 oz. of high-quality chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60%), whisking until melted.
Let the mixture cool — but don’t let it get cold. I had made it the night before and stuck it in the fridge, and then it was too cold, so then I had to warm it up over a bowl of warm water, and then it was too warm, and so on… it needs to be just… cool.
At that point it will whip up in your mixer to be a kind of delectable chocolate whipped cream. If it’s not too cold (sigh) you can spread it on your layers and it’s just… perfect.
bits & pieces
By now I’m sure you’ve seen this stunningly ignorant, chillingly aggressive piece on “a presumptive ban on homeschooling” from Harvard Magazine, leading up to a “homeschooling summit.” The thinking it represents is a threat to families everywhere, not only to homeschoolers.
Lots of good responses all over — here (“I was 5 years old, and we lived in a trailer park in rural Central Florida”), here (five key points that challenge the article’s primary claim that the alleged “risks for children—and society—in homeschooling” necessitate a “presumptive ban on the practice”), and here (“Strangely enough, the article left out the fact that nearly two-thirds of US students aren’t proficient in reading”), just for starters.
Yesterday there was a conference hosted by Cevin Solig of the The Disinformation Campaign Against Homeschooling. I think that link will work, that provided a lot of information to refute the article and what it stands for.
My husband’s initiative, the Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture, is hosting what promises to be an important conference on May 13 to address the question “Who Owns Your Children?: Home Education in an Authoritarian Age”
This conference is not only to oppose the Harvard Law School one, “Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform,” (which has actually been canceled!) — but to provide positive understanding going forward. Please sign up to receive mailings and to be sure you can register to hear Robert George, Douglas Farrow, Andrew Beckwith, Kerry McDonald, Frank Edelblut (NH Commissioner of Education — himself a homeschooler!), Jamie Gass, and others.
They will expose the elites at Harvard Law and elsewhere who want to regulate homeschooling out of existence — but they will also provide the religious understanding, Constitutional framework, and natural law arguments for the primacy of the family and the role of the state in education.
This conference will go far beyond simply rebutting Elizabeth Bartholet’s groundless assertions. Please share the information with your fellow homeschoolers and groups. The Harvard conference may have been canceled, but the urge to control parents and usurp their rights over their children is going forward.
This video is hilarious (you kind of have to know how demanding being an altar server for the Traditional Latin Mass is, but once you know that, a quarantine workout makes sense!):
Leo Tolstoy’s Children’s Stories Will Devastate Your Children and Make You Want to Die
Witty upending of the logical consequences of slavish acceptance of policy: When a Bishop Mandates ‘Social Distancing’ for Brides and Grooms
Surrogacy and IVF are wrong. Whenever I see news of some gay celebrity “having a baby” my heart breaks for the child, deprived for good of his mother, whose identity is erased. Michael Brendan Dougherty reminded me of this excellent article he wrote some time ago, that poignantly reveals how our laws change our view of the child from person to commodity. (By the way, this relates to the usurpation of parental rights in the area of education as well, see links above.)
“And rather than the state “recognizing” an antecedent and natural institution of the family whose claims trump those of the state, it will have to take the new commercial understanding of parentage into its hand as it usurps the power to assign legal parentage regardless of biology. The intent of the contracting parties now trumps nature.”
For those following the development of a COVID vaccine, an important clarification on what a British bioethicist actually said about whether a person of good will can accept one derived from aborted fetal cells.
One of the best essays I have read on how the state should respond to lockdown policies. “My protest does not concern the medical assessment of the COVID-19 virus and its propagation. It concerns the public policies designed to confront this problem.”
from the archives
The Bossiness Cure — and really, do check out all the discipline posts. Just remember that discipline is something learned over their whole childhood. It doesn’t have to be perfect today (and it won’t be). Aim high, but don’t worry about shortfalls.
Seems timely: To Be Happy at Home
liturgical year
The feast of the great St. Athanasius, bishop and doctor
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