Seattle wasn’t right for me. It is for a lot of people. Do I miss it and the gorgeous houses in my neighborhood and being able to walk to Trader Joes and see Puget Sound from my living room window? YES. Maybe in another point in my life I would have liked it better. But I don’t think I could ever move back. I like the warmth too much. And thunderstorms. And friendly strangers.

I app-solutely ♥
my ✄ Fabric U ✄
iPhone app!
http://tinyurl.com/242bua9

I feel like deciding if you want to/can actually live in a city is a weird, very personal choice.

I live in a major city which is mostly hated by its inhabitants and visitors alike. I LOVE it.

Everytime I go to another place, there is something that makes me love my city more. In SF it was sitting at the bus stop headed out only to realize that the ‘homeless’ people around me were checking their stocks on their PDAs.

I really believe happiness comes from within, but if you ever live in a hole like Reno or Wichita, you learn to keep that shit to yourself ;)

Okay, enough Seattle bashing now. I know it’s rude. There are many things about your blog that do indeed make me miss some of the great things about Seattle — and there are definitely some!

Still, my partner and I managed to stay for six more years, and loved it. But then an opportunity came up in LA, and we realized we were making ridiculous amounts of money — what would be filthy rich in other parts of the country — and still sharing a two-flat building with The Least Considerate People on This Planet, parking our car on the street, and hauling our laundry to a laundromat up the hill. It seemed like the right time to leave.

Every time I go back I am pierced with homesickness, but I have to admit that living day-to-day, on half the salary we used to make, is so much easier in LA.

Thank you for sharing these memories and things you share. People are paying attention. As a Southerner who has never ventured west much, you inspire me to look for places to belong in my own suburbs.

We live in Seattle now as well, as of last year. When people ask me how we like it, I tell them it’s so much more “accessible” than SF – friendlier people, better parking, more spacious, lower rent prices :)

ironically, it’s no good as a wedding cake because it needs to have a hole in the middle (it will have a severe dip in the middle if you don’t use a bundt or angel cake pan) and is too light textured to support layers. It is, however, completely delicious, chocolatey, moist and fluffy without any adornment. it’s also really forgiving, and I don’t think you can over bake it.

That being said, I learned to make swiss meringue buttercream and added some firmer more even rising cakes to my repertoire in preparation for my friend’s wedding. I used the buttercream recipe from smittenkitchen’s efforts at making her friend a wedding cake, which she conveniently gives scaled for a few different cake sizes. I would, however, add a few things to her instructions: if you’re using fresh eggs, not cartoned, it’s a good idea to heat them until 160F to pasteurize. Also, her instruction to beat the whites until they’re white and doubled in volume wasn’t descriptive enough for me. You want them quite stiff. Really, the stiffer they are, the more easily the butter incorporates. With fresh eggs, I whip them so thick, my whisk pushes back at me when I try to shove it in. It takes a fair bit of time for them to whip that stiff, so I don’t think there’s much danger of ended up with dry peaks, which would probably be too far. Cartoned whites don’t seem to want to get quite that stiff, and it’s a little scarier when you add the butter, but they still work. Also, don’t ever add the flavouring before it’s done. I’d made a test batch with cocoa powder that was kind of streaky, so I thought I’d try adding the cocoa earlier the next time so it would have longer to mix, and added it before the butter, and the meringue totally collapsed and couldn’t be rescued.

That said, this is one of my favorite entries ever. Such a lovely way with words. It was as nice to read as I bet that cake was to eat.

I also lived in Seattle from 91-93; find it too big and intense in recent years, for me.

I am now back in Buffalo, NY, which I consider a poet’s paradise.

(Been reading for years; first comment. Love the blog!)

PS. I think my downtown office must have been extremely close to where you worked.

That? Is a wonderful turn of phrase.

Thank you for posting!

But congratulations on your site (which I love) and your anniversary.

Can I be so bold as to offer a bit of cake advice? I’ve made thousands of cakes and tinkered with recipes for years… I’ve found the trick to yellow/butter cakes is method… mix your butter with the dry ingredients… you’re essentially waterproofing your flour so the gluten doesn’t develop, add wet ingredients last (Cake Bible is a good reference)… tender perfect cake every time. For chocolate cakes, there’s no substitute for dutch cocoa brought to life with boiling water — using chocolate in any other form falls flat in a cake, IMO. Last but not least, pull the cake out of the oven just as it pulls away from the sides of the pan… much past that and it’ll be overdone. I can also tell you how to make a ridiculously easy meringue buttercream, if you’re interested (no streaming boiling syrup involved).

I’ve been an avid reader of your blog for around 4 years now, and this is now possibly my favourite (of many) posts you’ve made.

(Sorry for the blatant sycophantism, but when a blog is this good, you really have to say so :))