By the time the book was ready to pick up at the library, I’d forgotten that I’d ever put it on hold; there must have been a good reason for me to look beyond the hugely generic title of Flour. Probably it was back before Christmas when I was still looking ahead, to Christmas baking, whereas now I’ve moved on.

Normally I am more drawn to provocative titles like Samarkand or Bravetart, two other cookbooks on my shelf at present, though I also have had plainer in my possession, such as The Onion Book, and Salt and Pepper — or was it Pepper and Salt? I gave that one away. The Moosewood Cookbook from my youth comes to mind, named after a restaurant, and Mollie Katzen followed it up with The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I guess she had a knack for evocative names!

Before I leave the subject of Katzen, I have to tell you that one of her own three favorite cookbooks has an ambitious title: Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades, and Apulia, by Patience Gray. I definitely need to check my library to see if I can borrow that one; it has several words that arouse my imagination. Katzen’s latest published work has the lovely title, The Heart of the Plate ❤️

I did bring  Flour home, and leafed through its pages a bit. It turns out that the word is in this case a reference to a very specific thing, and place, the Flour Bakery that the author Joanne Chang owns in Boston. Chang graduated from Harvard with honors, and degrees in math and economics, and also studied astrophysics. But even while she was in college she was selling cookies to her classmates.

All these facts make me start wondering about different personalities and how they use language; I’m fairly certain no one whose mind works like mine would ever come up with such a name for a bakery or anything. Her more recent book is titled Flour, Too, which is even more puzzling. In spite of all this distracting analysis, a recipe for Deep Dark Spicy Gingerbread caught my eye, and I decided to make it to serve after my house blessing that was today.

It’s not as though I needed another gingerbread recipe. If you are fond this kind of cake you might explore the other versions I’ve written about here over the years, like the vegan Gingerbread Pear Bundt Cake and Wheatless Gingerbread; I’ve made chocolate chip gingerbread many times but evidently never shared it here.

For the house blessing, we began our prayer downstairs, not far from where I had displayed the air clay owl that my granddaughter Ivy made for me last year. This year someone made a clay sloth for me. Not long ago I was also given a sloth tree ornament. Is there something about me that makes the family think of sloths? Now the sloth has joined the owl, and what they mean together, I am still pondering.

Knowing while sleeping last night that I would bake a cake in the morning, attend my friend Gwen’s house blessing, and drive back here for my own — all that made me wake up earlier than ever, and I had the cake in the oven before 8 o’clock! I was not channeling my sloth friend today.

The cake was not that special. I think it had too much butter — a full cup for a 9×13 cake — which bogged it down; the gluten-free flour probably contributed to its heaviness, and it included a whole 12 oz jar of molasses. It was not as spicy as I expected considering the fresh ginger and lots of black pepper that went into it. If I make it again I will use half the butter, and more egg. And maybe try another sort of flour.

But it was easy to eat
with a dollop of whipped cream on top,
and I sent a big chunk home with my priest,
because it was his birthday.