Work and children beckon. Back Monday with more of the usual nonsense.

You may have noticed that posting has been er, nonexistent today. The reason is because I’ve been using my writing time to make the pastry. I’ve discovered that the “authentic”, “reliable” recipe I procured has several problems with it, a couple of which I should have spotted right away but didn’t. So, my apologies to anyone who attempted the recipe this past week and met with mediocre results. I’ll fix the problems and put up a corrected set of instructions as soon as possible.

UPDATE: We’re all set now, I believe.

The exploits of Jancsi and Clara are very poorly documented. Most of what’s written in regard to their years together is culled from gossip columns. They were married for seven years, during which passions ran high in all senses. They loved loudly and fought loudly all around Europe and the Mediterranean. By some accounts they […]

Reader Jimma writes:

I’m from Michigan, live in Belgium, and hang out with Hungarians. I think I am destined to try making this cake.

That is, if I can find the chocolate. You might laugh, considering how famous Belgian chocolate is, but baking chocolate does not exist here — the closest thing I can find is some rather expensive unsweetened chocolate that, while technically the same thing as baking chocolate, costs quite a lot more than what I cooked with in the States. I’ve been told that I can substitute cocoa powder mixed with butter or some other fat, or use bittersweet chocolate and cut the added sugar in the recipe, but haven’t tried either so far.

READ ON

Business beckons, gang. I gotta run back up to Chi-town for a couple days. More as soon as I get back!

There are plenty of myths about that, which is hardly surprising. Clara and Jancsi were the sex symbols of the era despite the fact that he was rather wiry and somewhat stooped and she was quite plump by today’s standards. But for the time their looks, especially hers, were considered bewitching.

So read Clara Ward’s hometown newspaper, the Ludington Record, on Christmas Eve, 1896. It was the point at which all reportage on the subject of Michigan’s princess of Caraman-Chimay ceased appearing in the society pages and moved over to the gossip columns. It would stay there for the remainder of Clara’s life.

But what exactly caused Clara to stray into the arms of a penniless restaurant violin player? His raw animal magnetism, the newspapers said. That and his gypsy allure. According to most accounts, the first meeting occurred at a restaurant in Paris where Clara and the Prince were dining. Rigó Jancsi (whose name I’m told means “Johnny Blackbird” in Hungarian) was roving among the tables when his smoldering black moustache — I mean eyes — eyes fixed on young Clara. She was mesmerized. Over successive evenings she would implore her husband to take her back and back to thrill to his languid movements and haunting gyspy melodies. Then, one night, she simply disappeared.

Despite the insistences of (mostly female) chocoholics, all clinical evidence points to no, Reader Connie. I’ve done my best to debunk the purported effects of chocolate’s trace components here, here, here, here and here. Of course all that’s done is earn me a reputation for being no fun. There are hundreds, thousands of pop journalism pieces out there that imply the contrary of course, though if you read carefully they’re always peppered with escape-hatch words like “may”, “could” and “might.”

Huh? A Gilded Age tale of gypsies, royalty, heartbreak and chocolate starts in…Michigan?

Well yes. Sort of. That’s where one Clara Ward was born in 1873. She was the daughter of a Midwestern captain of industry, a man known as the “King of the Lakes,” Eber Brock Ward. His personal fortune was valued at some $6 million ($133 million in today’s dollars) and when he died he left young Clara fully half of it.