“Wait a minute. Say that again?” She zipped around to my side of the counter to hear better.
I was explaining the term manufacturing cream to the clerk at Trader Joe’s as an explanation for why I had a five-high stack of their Pound Plus 500g bittersweet bars and not much else to check out; one bar, I told her, a cup and a half of that super-heavy cream that I bought around the corner at Milk Pail, and you’ve got the glaze for two chocolate tortes.
And a half gallon of that cream is enough to make ten of them. (Or lots of truffles to go with.) Hence the stack.
“You’re a baker!”
I grinned.
The first two tortes were already cooling. I got home, threw the first bar on the floor over and over inside its sturdy paper wrapper (usually I put it inside a ziploc too, but I was living dangerously) to break up the chocolate for melting into the cream, and glazed and cooled the cakes.
And then I took one to each friend who’d played airport taxi for us on last week’s trip. I loved loved loved seeing the looks on their faces as I rang the doorbells and handed them over.
I saved a spoonful of the glaze for melting into my hot cocoa tomorrow.