bread and cupcakes

I have a bit of a confession to make.

I have recently rediscovered my love of something that comes pre-sliced, wrapped in plastic to preserve all it's marshmallow-y softness and bears the word 'Americain' on the label.

Yes folks, it's sandwich bread. Which, when I was little, we actually called marshmallow bread. I remember quickly becoming repulsed by the way it would gum up behind your teeth when you had it for sandwiches, but I always loved it toasted with margarine and cinnamon sugar.

Anyway, I've had to buy a couple of packages of this stuff recently for other recipes that I've been making (mainly as a binder type thing in meatballs), and of course once the one or two slices that the recipe called for are gone, the bag stares at me daring me to eat it.

Which of course I do. Because it seems like I've met very few foods that I don't want to eat.

It didn't take long to remember that sandwich bread was basically good for two things: toasted with cinnamon sugar, or grilled around cheese. Seeing as I've pretty much satisfied my sweet tooth into the next millennium with that batch of brioche, that left only the cheesy option left to try. And let me tell you, I think I ate grilled cheese for lunch almost all week. Until we ran out of cheese. And every time I took a bite, I asked myself why I hadn't made this sooner.

My fondest grilled cheese memories are from camp, where one of the most popular meals was grilled cheese and tater tots. Of course the cheese was of the presliced and plastic wrapped variety, but I still remember how excited we would be on grilled cheese day. I haven't yet resorted to buying cheese slices (which are unfortunately available here, I think they call it hamburger cheese, and if I ever blog about loving that kind of cheese, please buy me a one way ticket back to North America because I clearly do not deserve to be living in this land of cheese any longer), so I like to think that my grilled cheese sandwiches were slightly better than the fare being offered by the kitchen staff at RPC. My favorite was the cheddar version, and Erik was a big fan of the bleu d'Auvergne one, and the tater tots were replaced by salad. Although I have been served a scary amount of oddly shaped potatoes as part of my school lunch on Thursdays, but don't even get me started on that...

Moving on to the cupcakes.

It's birthday season at the nursery school, and one of the little American girls in the 2 year old class had her birthday on Valentine's day. And of course her mom brought in a special snack for the class to share. Before I tell you about that special snack, let me just give you a quick recap of pretty traditional French birthday fare: flourless dark chocolate cake. No icing. Sometimes the parents get a fancy bakery cake which may also contain some kind of chocolate mousse. I have never in the three years I've been at the school had any kind of non-chocolate cake for a birthday. Ok, well one time there was a pie and one time a parent brought in boozy fruit cake (for the kids), but never any other kind of cake. I don't think I've seen cupcakes here before either.

So, mommy americain brings in cherry chip cupcakes with bright pink icing. The leftovers always go into the kitchen for the rest of the teachers, and usually they're all gone by the end of lunch. By mid afternoon there are still three cupcakes in the fridge, and I've already heard the verdict from one of the teachers: too sweet! I took one bite into the pink cake and quickly understood the problem. It's about as far away from flourless chocolate cake as you can get. The cherry chips make the cake part pink, the cake itself is light and fluffy and the icing was the stuff from a can, which I used to love eating off a spoon. I loved that cupcake, from the spongy greasiness of the cake to the tooth achingly sweet icing, mainly because I can't remember the last time I had cake like that, and I have so many good memories of making cakes from mixes when I was a kid (which is funny, because my mom's a good cook. What were we doing with cake mixes? And canned icing???)

So there you have it. Don't get me wrong, I'm still obsessed with baguette, to the point that Erik has decided that we need to do a blind tasting this weekend, because I have very particular preferences about where the baguette can come from (at the very least, not the bakery next to the grocery store! And if it has to come from the grocery store, the loaves downstairs are much better than the ones upstairs) and he doesn't think that I'll be able tell the loaves apart. And well, I still love cake, but have definitely developed a love of chocolate cake that I never had in Canada.

Hmm. I guess this has kind of turned into an "I love food, all food!" post, but for anyone who knows me well, that shouldn't be much of a surprise.

I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's day yesterday. We had a very romantic one: Erik came and took my BodyPump class, then I went out to see a movie while he finished up some work :). We're continuing our tradition of not celebrating on the day, and will be going out for dinner tonight, to the awesome little restaurant near our place, la Cerisaie.