“Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.” — Hunter S. Thompson
September might be the ninth month of the year, but somehow it always feels like the beginning of a new one. Perhaps it’s because September is all about new beginnings: back-to-school, back-to-work, back to routines, and, for those of us who celebrate, the Jewish New Year.
In the hotel business, September is the busiest month, and yet it’s somehow more relaxed. Perhaps it’s because September welcomes a different clientèle: the families, the sportifs — those who come to the Loire Valley to bike or hike the roads and trails through this lush river region — have all returned home, leaving our French wine country, the châteaux, and the agreeable pre-autumn weather to those who come to savor them. It’s busier, but calmer, slower, maybe a bit more lowkey, even as the hotel work and worries increase with the increased number of guests.
And yet, there is something vibrant happening in town, like the excitement of a first day of school, the new clothes, the sharp pencils, and clean notebooks. A new year as promising as the crisp, pre-autumn weather and fresh with possibility.
For the past year, I’ve been working on a research project that began, as most of my projects do, with food. I’ve been studying the lives and work of three 19th-century Parisian pastry chefs. It’s a wonderfully delicious subject: These three brothers together had an immense and important impact on both the art of pastry and the business behind it. But to understand these three brothers, their pastry and the business they built around it, I knew I had to take a few steps back and learn about the world in which they lived and worked. And what I discovered was a France that had barely emerged from a revolution before it found itself living through one upheaval after another: the First Empire, the First Restoration, the Hundred Days, the Second Restoration, the July Monarchy, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, devastating cholera epidemics, recurring rebellions, a foreign siege, and, finally, a bloody civil war on the streets of Paris. They, along with an entire nation, endured Kings and Emperors and Communards, a city partially destroyed and a city completely torn down and rebuilt.
My three pastry chefs lived and worked in a country that, over the course of a century, could barely seem to decide what it wanted to be. And while the world around them churned and shifted, while governments rose and fell, regimes changed and their fellow citizens sometimes erupted on the streets of their city, they baked, created, experimented, and wooed their clients with elegant, pretty, tasty treats — the Savarin and the Trois-Frères, the Saint Honoré, and the Soleil among so many others. They took the world of French pastry by storm and left a legacy of extraordinary innovation, elevating a modest craft into an art, reinventing the pastry shop, and laying the foundations of modern French pâtisserie. Even Alexandre Dumas was said to have called them les Géants de la pâtisserie (the Giants of pastry).
Oh, their lives were so much more than just pastry: They spent immeasurable time and resources helping those in need, founding and running the Société de Secours Saint-Michel, a mutual-aid society in which members supported one another — as well as their workers, employees, apprentices, and families of pastry chefs and bakers — in times of illness, unemployment, hardship, etc. And, at the end of each day, they gave away cakes to those less fortunate than their wealthy clients. They understood from the earliest days of their success that giving to others was a measure of that success, and both an obligation and a privilege.
The moral of the story is that we can innovate and create, we can enjoy the beauty of our surroundings, and we can care for one another through even the worst political and social upheaval. These uncertain times might even call for more calm and creativity than less turbulent circumstances. September is a moment of renewal, a new year, a month of joy and celebration. It is tradition for Jews to welcome the New Year, Rosh Hashanah, with round, sweet foods that represent the wish for a round, sweet year to follow — apples dipped in honey, honey-sweetened round challah, and pastries rich with fruit, spices, and nectar.
“Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.” — Henry David Thoreau
I know I sound corny, but maybe there is a lesson to be learned from my three Parisian pastry chefs. They didn’t bend under the weight of historical chaos; they met upheaval and calamity with even more sweetness and with gestures of benevolence. They understood that baking wasn’t a frivolous escape from reality but hard work and industry and a way to sustain the people through unstable as well as peaceful times. Sweet pastries couldn’t calm a revolution or change a government, but it could make a great number of people happy.
As September settles over the Loire Valley and Chinon allows me the breathing room to forget everything happening in the world for minutes, sometimes hours, at a time, I realize the privilege I have to be able to do just that. I try to meet the world’s insanity, the uncontrollable brouhaha, with cake and kindness.
Honey Whiskey Bundt Cake with Honey Whiskey Butter Glaze
This is an amazing cake, moist, dense, and buttery with just the right hint of whiskey. Honey with the addition of butter and a pinch of salt create a syrup with the splendid taste of salted butter caramel or those buttery caramel candies with the added kick of the whiskey. Don’t be shy about bathing the cake in the syrup; spoon or brush a good amount of it on several times, beginning when it is still warm and just turned out of the pan, until you have used most or all of the syrup. The cake won’t become soggy, but simply moister and really infused with the whiskey, buttery flavor. Magnifique.
Makes one 8 ½ inch (21 ½ cm) Bundt cake.
For the cake:
1 to 2 tablespoons of softened butter for buttering the pan
½ to ¾ cup (50 to 90 grams) chopped pecans
2 cups less 1 tablespoon (250 grams) flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup (60 ml) good-quality liquid/runny honey
⅔ cup (155 ml) milk at room temperature
⅓ cup (80 ml) whiskey or bourbon
6 tablespoons (90 grams) unsalted butter at room temperature
¾ cup (150 grams) sugar
2 large eggs
For the syrup/glaze:
4 tablespoons (60 grams) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons water
¼ cup (60 ml) good-quality liquid/runny honey
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
¼ cup (60 ml) whiskey or bourbon
¼ teaspoon salt
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare an 8 ½ inch (21 ½ cm) Bundt pan by using a pastry brush to paint the inside and around the edges liberally with butter. Don’t be shy.
Sprinkle the chopped pecans into the bottom of the buttered Bundt pan.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl and set aside. Combine the milk, whiskey or bourbon, and honey for the batter in a measuring cup and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together your butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating well between them. Now add half of the flour mixture and half of the liquid mixture and beat well. Add the rest of the flour and the liquid mixture and beat well again. Gently scoop or spoon the batter into your prepared pan, on top of the pecans and smooth to even.
Bake for 30-40 minutes in the preheated oven or until set and a tester comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before turning the Bundt cake out of the pan. Turn the cake right side up (nut side up) and prepare the syrup glaze.
Put all the ingredients for the syrup in a small pot and heat it until boiling. Allow to boil for a few minutes, until it reduces slightly. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes.
Put your still-warm Bundt cake either on a rack or a piece of parchment or foil in a pan or plate with sides to catch the glaze that doesn’t soak in immediately. Spoon or brush the syrupy glaze, at little at a time, over all of the cake. Continue to brush the syrupy glaze on and all over the cake — on top, on the sides and inside the center hole — over a period of an hour or so, allowing for the syrup to soak into and imbibe the cake gradually; it will just run off the cake if you pour it on all at once or too much at a time.
Slice and serve warm or at room temperature.
Jamie Schler is an American food and culture writer — immersed in French culinary history — living in France where she owns a hotel, makes jam, and writes the Substack Life’s a Feast.
That cake looks just like one an elderly neighbor from my childhood used to make. That’s a pleasant memory!