Time Travel Kitchen Turns Three 🥳

Please, have some cake.

Three Candles. 1950. Getty Images.

Time Travel Kitchen is a toddler no more. Pre-school awaits — so much to learn!

Everyone asks me (no one asks me) for my advice about writing on

Substack

and I always say the same thing (to myself) : just keep going.

Since this is a celebration issue, I’ll be focusing on cakes and I found myself wondering how cakes and candles first got together. It would appear they met in Ancient Greece.

Cakes the shape of the moon were decorated with candles to celebrate the lunar light and then made as an offering to the goddess Artemis. And when the flames were extinguished?

Photo: Getty Stock Images.

Bethane Patrick, author (with John Thompson) of An Uncommon History of Common Things has this to say:

The original idea is that the smoke would carry your wish up to the gods.

As part of the process of individuation in the industrial age, it became increasingly about a single person’s wish instead of the wish of the community.

When you blew out the candle, that carried your wish out to the universe.¹

Cakes and Cupcakes

I’ve chosen two cakes and one cupcake from the past three years to celebrate. There are links to the original posts and recipes below each write-up.

First Up: Icebox Cake, 2021

Photo: Jolene

I love a classic Icebox Cake, so it was a real bummer when in 2023 Nabisco discontinued their Famous Chocolate Wafers. But fear not! Dewey’s Cookies make a Brownie crisp that’s perfect. Here’s the original post: Icebox Cake

Next: A History of Cupcakes, 2022

Photo: Jolene

These cupcakes are delicious for any celebration. I’d decorated these for Easter inspired by

Claire Ptak

of Violet Cakes. Link to the original post: Cupcakes

Finale: In The Night Kitchen

Illustration by Maurice Sendak ©️ for In The Night Kitchen, 1970

Hot Milk Cake. Photo: Jolene

This post is about Maurice Sendak’s remarkable 1970 book, In The Night Kitchen. I was lucky and grateful to have it featured by Substack in 2023. The hot milk cake recipe inspired by the book and the post are here: In the Night Kitchen.

Time (Zone) Travel Kitchen

This newsletter has grown to 4,000 subscribers and I’m grateful to each and every one of you for being here. Extra Special thanks to paid subscribers who REALLY boost my confidence (and help me pay for all these ingredients! :)

Writers on Substack have a dashboard available to them with a feature that amazes me—places where their publications are read. Here’s TTK’s.

When I was growing up, pen pals were a thing. You’d wait for weeks to get an envelope from far away with an intriguing stamp and a message about life somewhere else.

The idea of writing and communicating with people around the world in real time? That was science fiction.

But in the middle of the last century, others were not only thinking about it, but creating it. So, here we are—connecting instantly around the globe.

This has been one of the sweet surprises about writing here. The connections made are real. As someone who writes about food, being in touch with people on six out of seven continents about what is on their tables is nothing short of a “Wow”.

Guest Posts

This week two of my favorite writers,

Jillian Hess

and

Elizabeth

invited me to guest post on their Substacks.

On Jillian’s “Noted” I joined other food writers in sharing our recipe notebooks. Mine was from my days as a baker at Sarabeth’s Bakery. Here is the link:

Delicious Notes: How Colu Henry and Jolene Handy Record Recipes

At Elizabeth Held’s

What To Read If

I wrote again about the editor Judith Jones, expanding on my original post about her at TTK. Here is the link:

You Love Food

Help Celebrate Time Travel Kitchen’s Third Birthday with a $5 Monthly or $35 Yearly Subscription 🎉

Photo:: Getty Images

I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve for Time Travel Kitchen starting in May, so stay tuned. Thanks a million, everyone, and have a great weekend. See you soon.

Jolene

1. This quote by Bethane Patrick is from a 2020 article, link: here