Choose everything

and a recipe for a ricotta coffee cake that may become your new favourite

Do you feel that time is running fast and slow at the same time?

It seems we’re all a little confused these days. Time is elastic, stretching and contracting beyond reasonableness, playing with our heads and wrecking havoc. Is it Saturday or Sunday? Did we last see one another last year? Or the year before? And is it really already almost March?

When we are in our 20s and 30s, we believe there is an unending supply of time to try out new things, new pathways, new identities. But now even those who are young are realizing the fragility of our mortality. Time really does wait for no one.

It’s causing some of us to view our lives like an hourglass, instead of a winding road full of possibilities. As we struggle to gain a firm foothold and put our feet on a path of certainty, it may help to redraw our life’s roadmap and consider a new destination or two.

Choose everything

When time is a speeding train, we want to be sure that we’re spending our days in ways that have deeper meaning. Just what that meaning is, and what our purpose might be, seems to be confounding many of us. Maybe what’s really holding us back is the idea that we have to choose just one thing.

As Kabila Sehgal writes in the Harvard Business Review, the answer isn’t to plug away in your current job, unfulfilled and slowly burning out. It’s to make space for more than one thing. While he calls it having a dual career, and it’s more commonly called a side hustle now, I like to think of it as embracing what fuels us.

I particularly like what Bertrand Wong, over at Medium, said:

People aren’t one-dimensional; we are naturally inclined to have multiple skills and interests.

Here’s the key. The yardstick that measures your “success” at doing more than one thing comes from you and you alone. Fulfillment is not the same as being exceptional; it is more about satisfaction, personal accomplishment, a goal that you achieved you previously thought was impossible. For me right now that would mean actually being able to make a perfect cylinder in my pottery class. So far that goal seems to be eluding me, but I still take joy in the fantastical shapes I’ve created.

In Greek, the adjective enkratês describes having power over someone or something else. Three philosophers, Plato among them, transformed enkratês to the noun enkrateia and gave it a different meaning. For them, enkrateia means power over yourself, power over your own passions and instincts. Perhaps we need to practice a bit more enkrateia.

Inevitably in life we have regrets. It’s how deeply they weigh on us and how much they hinder our forward motion that matters. Now is the time to open our arms wide and take it all in. We can’t create more time, but we can make every minute count.

Crumb-topped ricotta coffee cake

excerpted from Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple

When you combine Sunday mornings and long weekends, you need a little some extra. That’s when you should turn to Dorie Greenspan’s newest cookbook, Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple. With infinite variations for every recipe, Greenspan really does choose everything to make something deliciously magical.

For the crumbs

¾ cup (102 grams) all-purpose flour

½ cup (100 (grams) sugar

½ cup (100 grams) packed brown sugar

⅓ cup (57 grams) cornmeal

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

7 tablespoons (3 ½ ounces; 100 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the cake

1 ½ cups (204 grams) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup (150 grams) sugar

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

¾ cup (187 grams) ricotta, drained if necessary

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 stick (8 tablespoons; 4 ounces; 113 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 ½ to 2 cups (about 250 to 335 grams) raspberries or blueberries

Make the crumbs:

1. Put the flour, both sugars, cornmeal and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low until combined. Stir in the butter chunks until they’re coated and then beat on medium-low for 5 to 7 minutes until the ingredients form moist clumps when squeezed together. Add the vanilla and mix until incorporated.

2. Take a spoonful or two at a time between your fingers and squeeze, so that you get little balls of crumbs, placing the balls in a clean bowl. Cover and chill until needed, ideally for at least one hour. You can make the crumbs up to 3 days ahead; keep tightly covered in the refrigerator.

Make the cake:

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter or spray a 9-inch square baking pan.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and baking soda together. Set aside

3. in a large bowl, whisk the sugar and salt together. Add the ricotta and whisk to blend well. One by one, add the eggs, whisking until each is incorporated. Whisk in the melted butter. When the mixture is blended, switch to a flexible spatula and gently fold and stir in the dry ingredients until you’ve got a heavy, smooth batter. Scrape the batter into the pan, spreading it evenly and taking care to nudge some into the corners.

4. Scatter the berries over the batter. Remove the crumbs from the refrigerator and top the cake with them.

5. Bake the cake for about 50 minutes, or until the top is golden brown, the fruit is bubbling up through the crumbs and a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and let rest for 3 minutes, then run a table knife between the cake and the sides of the pan. Let the cake settle for about 10 minutes and then unmold it onto the rack; invert and cool right side up. The cake is ready to enjoy when it is only just warm or after it has reached room temperature.

   
   Wrapped well, the cake will keep for up to 4 days at room temperature or for up to 2 months in the freezer; defrost, still wrapped, at room temperature.