What a week! I’ve been subsisting mostly on leftover barbecue and ham sandwiches, but I have big plans to cook Molly Baz’s take on chicken Marbella on Saturday night. It’s been too long since I made a Molly Baz recipe. I’m also going to make a massive apple pie, which calls for so many Granny Smiths that I could barely lift my basket in the Whole Foods checkout line.
Writing this newsletter, I’m often faced with the uncomfortable feeling that I’m bragging. Maybe that’s painfully Midwestern of me, but I can’t shake it. Here, look at this cocktail I ordered. Let me tell you about this award-winning restaurant I love. Did I mention I made these cookies, and everyone liked them? Ugh, I hate newsletter me.
But let me tell you, it’s not all chocolate chip cookies and cappelletti spritzes around here. There are ugly moments in my kitchen. Lots of them. They happen almost every time I plate a meal.
I am terrible — awful! embarrassingly bad! — at making any meal look aesthetically pleasing once it’s out of the oven or off the stove. When I cook, I’m patient. When I plate, I’m antsy. I want to eat, now, and I don’t have the time or brainpower to properly layer or proportion. (It doesn’t help that my husband makes us eat most of the time off these horrible, massive wooden plates; he hates the sound of a knife scratching china.)
About a month ago, I started recipe testing for The Washington Post, which effectively means that once or twice a week, my employer dictates what I make for dinner or dessert and pays for my groceries in exchange for detailed notes on an unpublished recipe. It’s not a bad deal. It’s also a guarantee, most of the time, that I’ll be serving something ugly.
Don’t get me wrong; the recipes are great, and they’ll be beautiful if you make them. But when you’re testing them, the final step is to pour whatever you’ve made into a huge bowl or the biggest liquid measure you’ve got, for the purpose of getting a final weight or volume. That helps the developer decide, once and for all, how many servings the recipe makes.
The first recipe I tested was for a stew, which even on its best day wasn’t going to end up on anyone’s best-dressed list. It was beige and a little thick, and to make matters homelier, when I dumped it into the liquid measure, the protein broke apart into a million little shards.
I’d made the mistake of inviting friends over for dinner that night. I was cooking all this stew, after all, and they like to eat. One of these friends also happens to be a great cook, and his meals are always plated quite nicely. So for a moment, staring at the stew, I panicked. I was about to walk out onto my patio with bowls of a dinner that had just gone through war. And then I exhaled.
The stew, I realized, was an excuse. I set the bowls down and shrugged. “Dinner’s ugly,” I announced, “but for once, it’s not my fault.”
Recently, though, I’ve figured out one plating hack that actually works: antiques. When I was preparing to make my own wedding cakes, I started poking around Chairish, Etsy and other antiques sites, looking for cake plates. Everything I found was prettier and better made than what I’d have bought at West Elm or Crate & Barrel, and I love knowing each piece has a story.
I wound up with three cake plates and a platter, and they cut down on how much I had to decorate the cakes — and the cookies and brownies I baked to accompany them. A thick coating of buttercream, a few flowers, and the whole production looked professional. The platter has also spruced up a couple dinners I’ve made this fall — though I’m not sure it could’ve done anything to help the stew.
In the process of shopping, I found a lot of cake plates that weren’t quite the right size or shape or color scheme for what I was looking for, so in the spirit of spreading knowledge, I figured I’d send along a few links. I definitely can’t vouch for the quality or the value of any of these pieces — I’m enthusiastic about antiquing, but not at all knowledgable — but I do think they’re all beautiful in their own way.
a disorganized, unranked list of cake plates I liked but did not buy:
mid-century floral cake plate from Etsy
pink-and-green floral deco cake plate from Etsy
Anchor Hocking emerald green cake plate from Etsy
Anchor Hocking pink glass cake plate from Etsy
Royal Copenhagen blue-and-white handled cake plate from Replacements
Coalport rust flowers cake plate from Replacements
Love this!