Seven-Minute Frosting (Page 725)

• Date: Saturday, May 10, 2008 -- 7pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: Matty's Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Ricky
• Dining Companions: Matty, Matt, Mike, Ana, Craig, Grace, Alex, Gunther, Angelica, Jenny, Vero, and Pam
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

I made a yellow cake with seven-minute frosting as the dessert for our mayonnaise tasting last Saturday. Seven-minute frosting has raw egg whites in it, so I figured we might as well have raw egg whites on our cake on the same night we were having raw egg yolks in our mayonnaise in order to consolidate the salmonella risk! I don't know when exactly seven-minute frosting was in fashion, but it seems that it no longer is. I remember this fluffy white frosting from my childhood, but can't think of a single instance of someone serving it to me in the last decade. It's not necessarily a crowd-pleaser of a frosting. You have to like meringue in order to like this, and many people do not. This frosting got several C ratings, which is pretty bad for frosting! I personally like seven-minute frosting well enough, and this was a perfectly fine version of it. It was very pretty, but like all seven-minute frostings, it had no richness or depth of flavor. One of my friends tasted the frosting and immediately said, "There's no butter in this!" Another friend replied, "No, it's made from sugar and clouds." That is a pretty accurate description. So if sugar and clouds on cake sounds good to you, you will likely enjoy this frosting. If you are more of a rich, luscious buttercream person, this is not the frosting for you.

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I just completed week 2 of my half-marathon training, and things are still moving along on schedule. I have a chart on the fridge telling me how much to run each day, and so far I have been sticking to it. I am traveling the second half of this week though, which complicates things a little. I will have to run a bit while I am gone, but I am also trying to frontload my week of running so that I can run less while I am away.

In the past I have battled with shin splints when I run a lot, but so far that hasn't been a problem. In fact, my body is holding up nicely. Granted, I'm not running very many miles yet, but I am running 4-5 days a week which isn't the easiest thing on one's body. So far I have a few blisters and that's it. So I'm not suffering, but I am also not feeling like I am in any better shape than I was two weeks ago. Perhaps progress is slower than that, but if I don't eventually see an improvement in endurance there is no way I am going to be able to run a half-marathon! Honestly, aside from the blisters the only way in which I feel different at all is that I am hungrier than I was before. I am sure in a few weeks the aches and pains will set in and I will start to see some progress!