Reunions require cupcakes.
Lauren Gunderson, an old friend from college, is now a supersonic playwright on the rise. She’s about to start her second year of the grad playwriting program I went to at NYU, but we haven’t seen each other since our Atlanta days. If it weren’t for Facebook friend finder, who knows where we’d be? (By the way, are you an Amateu Gourmet facebook group member? You should be!) We caught up at my beloved Joe The Art of Coffee on Waverly. After chitting and chatting for a good hour I said: “Do you want a cupcake?”
“Yes!” she replied. “I was just about to say I wanted something sweet.”
“There’s a new bakery around the corner,” I suggested. “We can go and I can blog about it.”
“Perfect,” she said and off we went to Batch.
Batch is an offshoot of P*ng, a dessert bar that serves regular food too–so, I suppose, you might call it a restaurant though it’s mostly a bar. I had a bad experience there in the winter when I went there with Diana and our friend John just to have dessert and they weren’t very gracious about it. (Well, the bartender wasn’t very gracious; he wanted us to order drinks and lots of food. He scowled at us when we didn’t.) But the food was fun and interesting and the chef, Pinot
Hi Adam,
I love your blog. It is hilarious! Glad that you found cooking to be a refuge while in law school; ironically, I started cooking when j-school was kicking my behind. And I will have to use your quote “Reunions require cupcakes” (with attribution) on my blog. It makes perfect sense.:)
Mmmm….cupcakes sound so good. But what is yuzu?
I am now craving cupcakes of all shapes and sizes.
Linda, yuzu is is a citrus fruit originating in East Asia. It is believed to be a hybrid of sour mandarin and Ichang papeda. The fruit looks a bit like a very small grapefruit with an uneven skin, and can be either yellow or green depending on the degree of ripeness. Yuzu typically range between 5.5 and 7.5 cm in diameter, but can be as large as a grapefruit (up to 10 cm or larger).
MMM YUZU! Wish we could get them over here in Australia – there’s nothing like it. Some of our native limes come close but are hard to come by. The US ones are grown in Hawaii – no?
Lauren Gunderson is excellent. And the cupcakes look excellent, too.
I love that bakeries are treating confections with culinary skill by combining simple cupcakes with complex ingredients like strawberry-rhubarb and yuzu. And I adore the play with adding savory to sweet! Batch is in my neighborhood and I’ve tried quite a few of their delicacies. Though I liked them all there was something dissatisfying about rice pudding made without cream and Tiramisu so light I couldn’t taste the mascarpone.