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Those of you who have been visiting so patiently, hoping for a trace of the prose promised before the weekend...you are good and patient souls, and I'm sorry to disappoint again.  Here I am with a spanky new laptop, and all I can do is look at it, enraptured, murmuring "look at the pretty fonts!" in a voice much like Gir from Invader Zim.  (If you're not familiar with Zim, or with Gir, trust me, it's a funny voice.  Gir is my sweetheart.)

Tonight, I am headed out on an after-work adventure, so I'll have to save all of those juicy topics for another night.  For now, though, dear friends, it's the same old story in the same old way:  Elk Candy Company, an Upper East Side mainstay in the vein of Schaller and Weber and the late, much-missed Paprikas Weiss, closed its doors forever on Saturday, following a spike in their rent.  You have heard it all from me before, so I won't say it now.  I'll just ask you to take a moment to think of another sweet, singular piece of New York, now a piece of history.

(Did you notice how I did not rant about Elk losing its lease when the rent spiked to nearly triple what they are paying now?  Or how I did not revisit my continuing rant about how all that is most unique in New York City is meeting a similar fate, or that while these businesses, which used to attract visitors from around the world, are disappearing, New Yorkers are lining up in the rain to shop at Trader Joe's?  Or that I certainly did not confess to having what the diplomats call "a full and frank discussion" with two women in their 70's, who stood outside of Elk on its last day of business and complained about the price Elk was charging for a hand-molded, hollow chocolate Easter egg, halved and filled with a generous chocolate assortment -- essentially an edible box of chocolates? Yes, I kept it friendly.  No, I didn't drop the f-bomb on my elders.  No, I wasn't nearly as strident then as I am being now.  Really.)

After almost a full year of malingering, loitering and generally making a pest of myself, my baking hero’rina has done it- she has mystically and osmotically made a cook out of me.  Of course, it’s been the bread that I’ve been especially interested in so far.  Look down a few posts and you can see the disaster that was my braid, way-too-complicated-for-a-beginner, one would think (in hindsight) .  So I backed up a few pages in Madeleine’s book, and found the All Purpose Batter Bread that would be my success.  ‘Third time’s a charm’, they say.  Thanks to the fact that “the kneading is omitted and replaced by beating of the batter with mixer beaters, or the vigorous beating with a wooden spatula”.  Of course it was this part that appealed to me.  It would at least eliminate my sweaty hot hands from the variables of the process.

So with the karmic assistance of my mother, who decided to buy herself a new food processor, I ended up with her Oster food processor/standing mixer set up on my counter by 11.  She is uncharacteristically excited at the prospect of my new cooking habit and even brought me her vintage ‘73 McCall’s cookbook.  Here is the recipe, in-entirety (but edited a bit to suit my lazy fingers), before I forget:

3/4 cup milk, scalded
4 tspns granulated sugar
1 envelope dried yeast (4 tspns?)
1 tspn salt
2 large egg whites, lightly beatn (i too, have developed a whisking disorder, bakerina)
1 large egg
1/4 cup oil (of your choice)
2&1/2-3 cups unsifted unbleached all purpose

Pour the scalded milk into a large mixing bowl and let cool to 110-115F, add sugar and yeast and stir well.  Let stand 10 minutes.  Mix salt, beaten egg whites and egg, and 1/4 cup of the oil together in small bowl (I also put in tspn of vanilla extract- cause well, i just put that shit in everything).  Place (’place?  is that the same thing as ‘Put’?’ 2 cups of the flour in with the milk; gradually add the mixture of liquid ingredients using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer on low speed.  Add the flavorings (here I put in 1/4 of diced cheddar just for experimentation purposes).  Add the rest of the flour prn, stirring or mixing on medium-high speed until the batter shreds from the beaters or spoon.  Turn into large greased bowl and let rise until doubled, 45min-1 hr. 
Preheat oven to 375F.  Punch the dough down (heehee, this too, is fun), then...(wait for it)...beat it with a woodn spatula for a few minutes.  Let rise again until level with rim and bake, about half an hour.

I knew as soon as the knife punctured the light crust and the steam escaped visibly from the middle, the light-white super-soft semi-sweet stuff is delicious beyond my wildest dreams.  Success.