What's In a Name?

My intentions for this recipe and post was to explain my blog title, sel adore. But it ain’t working. I’m over it. Totally. Over. It. In the months, even years, I’ve had the dream of creating a food blog, coming up with a title has been such an obstacle. It doesn’t really feel like you can do anything without a name. I asked friends and family, made lists, crossed them off again, ruminated over it until finally I wanted to just get on with it, so I settled on what I thought was my most decent idea.  I knew from the inception that the name “sel adore” wasn’t quite right; almost a placeholder for what would eventually be something amazing (still hoping!) and it’s time has come quicker than I thought.

Well, why did I go with it? Before I had the opportunity to attend culinary school, I went to university for about a million years, switching between majors and schools and even states. The general track I was on throughout my indecisive undergrad years was an English studies one, which as everyone knows is one of the most useful, marketable degrees. I ended up with a diploma that says, “creative non-fiction writing” on it, even though I’m still not totally sure what that means. I wasn’t a very good student and I sorta skated along, writing mostly about big, important, life stuff like emotions and feelings and drama (cue worlds tiniest violin).

But where does “sel adore” come from? Creative non-fiction writing majors spend a lot of time workshopping (aka: sitting in a circle, pretending you read everyone else’s work while nice-judging each other), and well, the memory is old and was never really that clear to begin with, but during one of these workshops someone brought up the concept of “cellar door,” saying it was considered by scholars to be the most beautiful phonetic phrase in the English language. The phrase and it’s meaning stuck with me and came to mind when I was brainstorming a blog title, I looked up where the concept was from and I found out I might have attributed more to it than it really deserves (Shakespeare didn’t actually use it, huh), but whatever. I took it and ran with it, cellar door to sel adore. “Salt love” is it’s translation from French (I’m sure you figured that out) and that spoke to me as a baker and a cook, because salt is essential in everything.

Why isn't sel adore right? Well, I don't speak French and I haven't spent much time there (and to be honest, it ain't my fave country or cuisine). It isn't catchy or memorable and it doesn't make sense grammatically (in English at least, is it correct in French? I wouldn't know!). I spoke with an entrepreneur and she recommended a change to something simple and straightforward, something that actually says me and what I want this blog to represent. I have a lot of figuring out to do.

So. I baked a cake in which to say all of this, it’s got salted caramel to speak to the sel and chocolate to reflect the adore and it was really, really good (if I do say so myself, which I really can because I ate half of it). You should still make this cake even though I need a new blog title; I promise they really have nothing to do with each other.

The cake/filling and frosting recipes are from my first muse, little Ms. Martha Stewart. Gah, did I love her. And for my first dedicated recipe just to my blog, I wanted to honor her as my original inspiration. She challenged me, (sometimes unjustly, do you think she leaves instructions out?) and her magazine and the photos in it defined beauty and esthetics for my small life as a kid. I used her recipe pretty verbatim, adjusting the cake only for my altitude here in Colorado. I baked her three layer cake recipe in two (tall) 6 inch pans and one 8 inch with a little batter left over that I may or may not have heavily sampled. I cut the larger layer into a 6 inch circle (using my cake pan as a template) to create three 6 inch layers that I split in half before constructing the cake. This dessert is super over-the-top, so don't do anything silly like skimp on the homemade caramel…really layer it in there, you will not regret it. 

Do you have any ideas for my blog title? Can you help me out? Let me know if you come up with something, I'm certainly listening! This whole thing is a new adventure and I'm thrilled to even be doing it, the title and everything else will fall into place. But first, there is a salted caramel chocolate cake you should be making!

Martha has the recipe for the cake, caramel and frosting right...here. Thanks, girlfriend.

If you want to read more about the concept of "cellar door" check out this article.