How to Bake for View and Chew

Yes, I have to finish mid-term reports and get my grades online.  And today, after the Y and joining Javier in la recamara, we met another couple at The Plant at the Embarcadero to have lunch for her birthday, and then we went to the Railroad Car Museum and to the California History Museum.  But that's not how to bake for View and Chew.  This is how:

You come back from a big day out (and a big day for you means doing more the one thing or staying out for more than 3 hours).  Then you start the gateau basque that your German friend Jutta sent to you in the form of a postcard recipe years ago with the suggestion that you make it together.

You decide not to do it with the recipe in French because you can't convert the measures of grams, etc.  So you look one up online.

Then you see that it calls for butter at room temperature, so you look up how to get butter to room temperature without doing that aniquated things called waiting.  You see that you can put it between two sheets of wax paper and roll it with a rolling pin, so you do that.

Then you see that it calls for an egg at room temperature but you don't think you should press that under a rolling pin, so you get an egg out of the refrigerator and put it under a comforter and an afghan.  But then in occurs to you that there may be another way, so you look that up online too.  The suggestion is to put it in warm--not hot--water.  So you do that.

And you use your paddle attachment for the mixer for the first time!

To be continued.