Cold Duck Memories & Coconut-Cranberry Cake

I made a visit to my friend Suzanne's blog, and enjoyed some pictures of her New Year's Eve festivities in Amsterdam. I was surprised that, although they live in an urban setting, they are allowed to purchase fireworks for home use. In my county in Virginia, if I lit anything more incendiary than a sparkler I'd have Homeland Security hammering on my door. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if even sparklers are illegal where I live. I played with a lot of sparklers when I was a kid. The last time I held one was when my friend Brenda rented a beach cottage on the Outer Banks, and her young daughter Emily, our friend Jean, and I ran around the pool with sparklers one night.


My New Year's Eve was spent in my usual style. I was curled up in the arms of Morpheus when 2008 arrived. I'd probably been asleep long enough to be in the REM phase of slumber, because I didn't hear a thing, and I'm sure someone around here set off some firecrackers. Staying up late just doesn't hold the appeal it did when I was little.


I remember being allowed to stay up late to welcome the New Year when I was a kid, and it seemed magical to be awake at midnight. Midnight was the hour never seen by children, the Mystery Hour when anything could happen! My parents weren't party-people, so we'd be at home with some neighbors, and as the moment grew close we'd all chant the countdown together. They probably had champagne on some of those nights, but what I remember is the grown-ups toasting the New Year with glasses of Cold Duck. It seemed so exotic, and no one could explain why it had such a weird name. Jimmy, the neighbors' boy, and I would be allowed a sip of the sweet, bubbly stuff, but I had to be promised that there were no real ducks in the concoction before I'd touch it.


As I've grown older, New Year's Eve doesn't excite me much, because I believe a new year starts every morning when I awaken. Sleeping through the Big Event has become a tradition in a way. One time about twenty years ago, my mom had traveled to my place for a post-Christmas visit. At the time I lived in a three-story apartment (just one bedroom, but three floors). It was a cozy New Year's Eve...just me, my mom, and my partner Michael who lived in town but came out to stay the night. We were in my den on the ground floor, and about nine o'clock I said I'd better grab a short nap if I wanted to be alert when the new year chimed in. Exit me.


Sometime after I went up to my bedroom on the third floor, Michael said a nap sounded like a good idea, so he stretched out on the sofa in the living room (second floor), and mom snoozed on the futon in the den. The next morning we all met up in the kitchen. We had slept through the new year's arrival, each on a separate floor. That's just the kind of exciting life I lead.


This morning marked the start of a new AA meeting that my morning group has started. We meet Monday through Friday at 6:45, and decided to start Saturday meetings as well. Because most folks don't have to go to work, we chose 8:45 for our weekend meetings. We had a wonderful time this morning, and last night I decided to bake a cake for the inaugural meeting. I'm going to share the recipe, which is one I made up using another recipe for inspiration; folks seemed to like it a lot. Then again, I had a captive audience since the only other thing available was coffee.


Coconut-Cranberry Cake

2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening
4 eggs
2 teaspoons coconut extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (scant)
1-1/4 cups flaked coconut
3/4 cup whole fresh cranberries, chopped

Grease & flour a 10" bundt pan. Preheat oven to 350.
Cream butter, shortening, and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well. Add extracts.
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl.
Add dry ingredients to butter/sugar mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Do not over-mix, or cake will be tough!
Fold in coconut and cranberries.
Bake 60 - 70 minutes or until cake tests done. Let cool on rack in pan 15 minutes before removing to serving platter or cake saver.

I pulsed the coconut and then the cranberries in a mini-processor before adding them to the batter. This worked well, allowed for cleaner cutting, and gave the cake nice tiny flecks of pink and red. Frankly, I had cranberries left over from holiday baking, and decided to throw them in at the last minute, and the tart berries balanced the sweet coconut nicely. Obviously, the baking time will depend on your oven and the pan you use. I'm still getting used to a heavy Nordic Ware bundt pan, so I always test the cake with thin appetizer skewers before I turn off the oven. You can, of course, play with the ingredients. Using all butter would be great, but I've been baking so much over the holidays that I started substituting a little shortening in some recipes because butter is so darned expensive these days.


Even though I put some cranberries out for the wildlife, I still had some left, so I just pulled an apple-cranberry-cocoa cake out of the oven. If it turns out, you may see that recipe soon.


There are beliefs interwoven in the concept of New Year's Day that I embrace whole-heartedly. One of these beliefs is that each one of us can make a new start. Others are the thoughts of freshness, growth, and new possibilities. Words like sunrise, horizon, discovery, exploration and frontier burst in my mind. The world outside my windows looks dormant, but I know that inside those trees and beneath the frozen ground new life is gathering strength and preparing to push forth, unnoticed at first, but before too many months have passed, in the glory of full bloom.


I hope everyone is off to a good start in 2008! If you make resolutions each year and have already slipped, don't be discouraged. You have a new year starting tomorrow morning.